I’ve written about list building extensively in connection with social media.

It’s time to revisit social media list building once again. In this article, however, I focus more on where to build lists than how to build them. In other words, I focus on social media list building destinations.

A few remarks are in order before I address the where-to of list building.

Importance of List Building

In List Building Using Twitter, I discuss the importance of list building in marketing. List building is equally important in PR, CRM and other types of communication.

Reach is the quantity of people your message reaches, while frequency is the average number of times each person is reached.

Frequency builds trust and drives your message home. Advertising without frequency is rarely effective. Marketers rely on list building to repeatedly reach their audience and achieve their target frequency levels.

New List Building Paradigm

In List Building Paradigm Shift, I discard the stereotype of list building as “a well-written lead capture page linked by a web form to an auto- responder” and redefine it as the process of acquiring and nurturing followers.

More precisely:

List building is the process of subscribing members of your target audience, in order to engage and nurture them and brand yourself and that which you represent.

This definition leaves plenty of room for creativity and customization of the list building process, yet it defines our objectives: engaging, nurturing and branding. Prescribing our objectives enables you to gauge the relative merits of each list building venue at your disposal.

List Building Destinations

These are my five favorite venues for list building. They are just as useful to owners of static websites as they are to bloggers.

I use all of them and let people choose for themselves which they prefer.

1. Autoresponders - Reports of the death of email have been greatly exaggerated. Everybody receives email and knows how email works. Every website should provide email subscription. Emails sent to opt-in subscribers will have an open rate of about 30% and a click through rate of approximately 10%, which is excellent. The downside of email subscription in general is anonymity, lack of interactivity and changes of address. I use an autoresponder service to maintain my database and deliver my email. My service has a high delivery rate, many important features, good customer service, and it integrates with Google’s FeedBurner RSS if you have a blog.
2. Ning Social Networks - You can connect with members of a Ning network, interact with them and broadcast messages to them as the site creator, as an administrator, as a group creator and as a friend. They all work. However, only as the site creator do you actually own their data. My primary Ning sites are Beyond Business Coaching and Let’s Follow Each Other. Subscription through Ning can be powerful, but it takes much more work to join a Ning site than to opt into an email list. A big problem with Ning is that if somebody joins more than one site or group of yours, they can receive duplicate mail from you. If you’re already established on Ning, incorporate it in your list building strategy. If not, to Ning or not to Ning will not be an easy question to answer.
3. Facebook - A Facebook fan page widget lets Facebook members register for your page with one click. Based on my experience, response to posts runs at around 5%, about half the rate of email, which is good. The quality of traffic is superb with high average time spent on site. Your posts on Facebook can promote interaction and draw comments themselves from the members of your page, which helps you brand yourself. The potential also exists with Facebook pages to benefit from viral effects.
4. Twitter - Posts on Twitter, or tweets as they’re called, can easily be retweeted and spread virally throughout the site. In a future post, I might list the reasons why, not withstanding the viral effect, I like Twitter much less than I like Facebook for list building. Nevertheless, I’m very happy to make Twitter subscription available, and I love all the traffic it brings me. (I’m @larrybrauner.)
5. Google Friend Connect - This is Google’s attempt to add a social element to every website.  I doubt that it’s very successful from a social perspective, but it’s from Google, so I’m in. If Google uses or will use GFC membership to assess the relevance of websites, I’m covered. One nice feature of GFC is its newsletters. Make sure you enable them and use them to email your GFC subscribers.

I also use RSS subscription for my blog, but it doesn’t support interaction, and I believe that the response rate from RSS is very low.

If you’re not yet a subscriber, please choose a destination and subscribe.

Your comments about list building or social media list building destinations are welcome.

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Tags: autoresponders, Blogging, email marketing, Facebook, Google, List Building, Ning, Social Media, target, Twitter

In 8 Simple Ways to Penetrate Social Media Clutter, I recommended  that you leverage multiple traffic sources. In Looking for Traffic in All the Wrong Places, I gave you a partial list of the places I look to get more web site traffic.

Based upon Google Analytics data pertaining to my recent blog visits, bounce rates and average time on site, I present my top 10 blog traffic sources along with some notes on each:

1. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing - They account for 35% of my traffic. When my blog was new, I didn’t get any search engine traffic at all. Now, however, I get 5,000 visits from searches per month — including business people seeking precisely the types of services I offer. The credit goes to search engine optimization and to a growing reservoir of content.
2. Entrecard, a traffic exchange for bloggers - Admittedly, Entrecard provides me with lots of worthless traffic. Fortunately, however, the site provides me with some great traffic too and an opportunity to build key relationships with other bloggers. One of my favorites at Entrecard is Gera from Uruguay, owner of the Sweets Foods blog. He and I are now also connected by email, Facebook and Twitter. As with all other traffic sources, to benefit from Entrecard you’ll need to make a long-term commitment to developing it.
3. Twitter - I’ve written at length about Twitter. Read Twitter Stats Defy Measurement. I’m happy to have started with Twitter in 2008 when Twitter’s rules didn’t get in the way of building a large following. Today, different tactics are necessary to connect with your target audience. Start by encouraging your website visitors and friends on social networking sites to follow you on Twitter. Then gradually introduce new Twitter tools into your mix.
4. Facebook - I turned my attention to Facebook in June 2009 and experimented with the NetworkedBlogs application, which may have introduced new readers to my blog, but proved to be a poor source of ongoing traffic. On the other hand, profiles, fan pages and events showed themselves to be excellent traffic sources. It seems to me, so far, that Facebook fan pages are very effective as a form of web site subscription.
5. Ning social network - I’m sorry to report that Ning has morphed into a host of unrelated niche sites. If you have your own Ning site, or a group or lots of friends on someone else’s Ning site, you can use that site to move traffic. As with Twitter, getting started with Ning is harder than it used to be, and the marketing benefits are fewer. I belong to many Ning sites and have several of my own. My primary Ning site is Beyond Business Coaching.
6. Business Exchange - Discovered this social bookmarking site recently and wrote about it in 12 Tips for Using Business Week’s Social Bookmarking Site. I’m hoping that Business Exchange will help me generate a lot of high quality traffic in the year to come.
7. Blog Catalog - If you have a blog and decide to use BlogCatalog, start your own group there; make many friends on the site and invite them to join your group. Those who join are interested in you and your group’s theme.
8. StumbleUpon - Planning to learn much more about StumbleUpon and use it much more this year. I’ll keep you posted.
9. LinkedIn - While well connected on LinkedIn, I’m not using it much at present. Most of my LinkedIn traffic is coming as a result of the Twitter LinkedIn integration.
10. Ryze - Here I first encountered online social networking back in 2003. I  find Ryze very underwhelming in 2010. The traffic I get from Ryze comes from posting in groups, which are really forums.

I believe that Blogger is sending me visitors because of Google Friend Connect. Also, I heard a rumor that Yahoo! is dumping MyBlogLog. Will let you know about both of them.

You made it all the way down here. Why not scroll down a drop more and leave a comment?

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Tags: blog, Blogging, Business Exchange, Entrecard, Facebook, Get More Web Site Traffic, Google, increase website traffic, LinkedIn, NetworkedBlogs, Ning, Ning social network, Search Engines, Twitter

A shorter article than the past one.

Privacy and spam concerns continue to induce Facebook and Ning to make changes that hurt marketers. Facebook, for example, will end network affiliations, while Ning has already disabled the sharing of any content across participating sites.

Good-Bye Facebook Networks

Facebook members now use school, city of company network affiliations to control access to their personal content.

Since network affiliation is less relevant than it had been at the network’s conception, and since  the display of network affiliation can jeopardize members’ privacy and security, Facebook is replacing affiliation-based permissions with a friendship-based alternative.

This solution better protects Facebook members.

However, it also takes away an important targeting mechanism from honest business users wishing to find people in the regions where they operate.

Thanks Ning for Duplicate Messages

If you and I are friends at several Ning sites, I probably send you duplicate messages. Since I can no longer share content across sites, I send the same information from several sites, and you receive that information multiple times. I try to minimize duplication but haven’t yet eliminated it.

Ning has made it less convenient for spammers.

However, if a spammer is motivated enough, you’ll now receive their spam several times instead of once.

Good-News Bad-News

The good news is that social networking sites will continue their efforts to safeguard the privacy and security of members and to create an enjoyable networking experience… great when we have on our networking hats.

The bad news is that more safeguards can mean more limited access to members, and when we have on our marketing hats… not so great!

What are your thoughts on this hot topic?

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Tags: business networking, Facebook, Marketing, Ning, Ning social network, privacy, security, social networking sites, SPAM

We learn nearly every day of developments in the social media world which have the potential for far reaching impact.

Take for example the recent integration of LinkedIn with Twitter. You can now tweet your LinkedIn status to your Twitter followers and automatically post your tweets to your LinkedIn status.

It is easy to see that this Twitter-LinkedIn partnership has many practical implications. Based on my research, these are my top 10 takeaways from the new Twitter-LinkedIn hookup:

1. Microblogging has gone mainstream. Facebook has its own microblogging platform, and Twitter tweets can now show up on MySpace, LinkedIn and lots of other places on the web.
2. Twitter is the de facto king (queen?) of microblogging.
3. Twitter is a medium for real business conversation. You can still tweet about  breakfast, diapers or the light turning green. Small talk and chit-chat are the norm on Twitter. However, increasingly, people and companies are branding themselves and exchanging ideas on Twitter, 140 characters or one link at a time.
4. The Twitter-LinkedIn integration helps LinkedIn by adding new life and meaning to its neglected status-update function and by adding much more dynamic content to the site as a whole. As a result, LinkedIn can be more competitive. Hopefully Ning will take notice and react!
5. The Twitter-LinkedIn integration helps Twitter by attracting new professional users from LinkedIn who were previously too skeptical to join.
6. The Twitter-LinkedIn integration enables members of both Twitter and LinkedIn to cross-post with ease, providing users with greater social marketing leverage.
7. LinkedIn helps to reduce an enormous amount of content, functioning almost as would a Twitter list containing only members of your LinkedIn network.
8. The hashtags #in and #li allow for selective cross-posting from Twitter to LinkedIn. This wasn’t possible when cross-posting with Ping.fm.
9. The use of hashtags to selectively cross-post from Twitter to LinkedIn suggests the possibility of using hashtags similarly with other apps.
10. Aggregation (using the semantic web or tools like Ping.fm and FriendFeed) has been touted as the next big thing in social media. However, the Twitter-LinkedIn  partnership demonstrates that collaboration too (when it can be achieved) has very much to offer. I suspect that the absence of conflict between Twitter’s business model (whatever that is) and the ad-based models of competitors helps to create a favorable climate for collaboration.

What are your thoughts on the Twitter-LinkedIn integration, and what are some of your takeaways?

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Tags: LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Social Media, Twitter

Chris Patterson, President & CEO of Interchanges.com and founder of inSocialMedia, is one of the busy people with whom I strive to keep in touch. He’s very enthusiastic about social media and a great people person as well.

When speaking with Chris last week about inSocialMedia, the 3,200 member Ning network he started to enable practitioners to discuss social media strategies, I agreed to join his site’s team. An avid social media strategist myself, to work on inSocialMedia is very exciting.

I’ll continue to moderate and develop several of my own Ning sites, Beyond Business Coaching, Let’s Follow Each Other and Online Kosher Networking.

Reasons You Must Use Ning

Knowing my passion for Twitter and Facebook, you might think I’d lose interest in Ning. I’ll explain now why this isn’t at all the case. These reasons (not in order of importance) are based upon my own personal experience and feedback I’ve received from other Ning users:

1. Create a Community - Ning enables you to create your own social network, and Ning is free. There are also premium features which site owners can purchase if and when they want them.
2. Use Ning with Ease - Ning is fairly intuitive and easy to use. Ning collects your basic personal information such as name, location, e-mail, password, and photo one time, and that information is used automatically at each Ning site you join.
3. Customize Your Ning - Ning sites, and to a lesser extent members’ profile pages, can be easily customized without any programming. However, the Ning program code is open, so that site owners can achieve even greater customization with the help of a programmer or by installing plug-ins.
4. Build a Niche - Ning sites are built around niches. Site members tend to share a common interest or characteristic. As the site grows, it retains its niche orientation.
5. Publish a Blog -  Ning lets you post and syndicate internal blog entries, and lets you import external RSS feeds as well.
6. Form a Group - Groups within Ning can serve as forums or as mini-blogs. They can also help segment a site and bring together members according to various interests or characteristics.
7. Share Content - You can make friends across Ning sites and share content with them across sites. This happens to be my favorite feature, since it ties in with my macro approach to online social networking. UPDATE: NING HAS DROPPED THIS IMPORTANT FEATURE, however, you can still share content with all friends at the site on which the content is posted.
   
8. Link Out - As far as I can tell, all Ning links are “do follow” and your SEO can benefit from pointing them back to your website or blog.
9. Communicate - Ning offers a variety of communication modes such as profile comments, forum and group discussions, blog and blog comments, photos, videos, events, status updates and private messages. Site creators also have the option to enable chatting.
10. Control Your Ning - Ning site administrators can choose which members and content to feature or to ban.

Since you’re reading this article, you must be interested in social media, so click here to join us at inSocialMedia. See you there.

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Tags: inSocialMedia, Ning, Ning social network, Social Media

It’s simpler to start a blog than most people think. You do not need to pay for a fancy course nor buy some hyped-up e-book, so put away that credit card.

If I were to say that getting to the top of Technorati or Alexa is difficult, that would possibly be the understatement of 2009. However, believe-it-or-not, jumping in and getting your feet wet blogging will be easier than you imagine once you’ve completed this little article.

A new blogger faces two main types of challenges:

1. Technical - how to start a blog
2. Content - what to put on a blog

How to Start a Blog

There are three basic ways to start a blog:

1. Start a customized stand-alone blog on web hosting that you lease from a provider such as Go Daddy or 1&1 Internet using software from Wordpress.org - most effective but the most difficult to implement
2. Join a blogging community, e.g. Blogger.com or Wordpress.com - most popular and moderately easy to implement
3. Join an online social networking community on Ning such as these two of mine, Beyond Business Coaching and Let’s Follow Each Other, and begin blogging immediately - least effective but adequate for beginners and very easy to implement

There are clearly trade-offs, but choose an option that enables you to start your blog right away. Remember what I learned from Mike Litman, “You don’t have to get it right. You just have to get it going.”

If you strongly desire a customized stand-alone blog but don’t have the technical skills to set it up and maintain it yourself, help is always available.

Content Development

Developing good content isn’t easy. I suggested in Social Marketing for Non-Gurus that you could create videos instead of writing text, but perhaps creating a video isn’t a viable solution for you.

Here’s an idea: Why not use somebody else’s video?

Not only is it totally legit, it helps the video’s creator to promote it — a win for both of you.

Find a video in YouTube that interests you and copy and paste the cryptic piece of code that YouTube provides directly into your blog. Give your blog post a title. Write a very short explanation. Add a few tags to classify your post and publish it.

You’re finished! Wasn’t that easy?

Here’s another idea.

One of my favorite blogs is Who’s Blogging What, “a newsletter that keeps thousands of web marketing professionals informed, connected and productive.”

What do they do?

They digest and summarize other people’s posts.

What if you find one article at a time and critique that article on your blog? It’s done all the time, and you’ve probably seen it done more than once.

You Are a Blogger

I’ve removed the obstacles. You’re ready. You now have choices how to start a blog, so one way or another you’re going to start a blog. Right?

Learn and improve as you go, just as I have. And please… Have a blast!

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Tags: blog, Blogging, Go Daddy, how to start a blog, mike litman, Ning, WordPress, You don’t have to get it right, YouTube

I am about to discuss targeting and connecting as they apply to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Ning networks, the most popular social networking sites for business networking.

I could have broken the material into four separate blog posts, but decided instead to deliver it to you as four articles wrapped up into one long one.

For simplicity, I am assuming that your target market uses each of the sites. Since that may not be true in your case, feel free to adapt these business networking techniques to all other social networking sites as needed.

Facebook

Targeting and connecting on Facebook are pretty straightforward with one caveat. You are limited to 5,000 connections on Facebook, so you can’t afford to cast too wide a net. Be fussy about whom you connect with and remove from your friends anybody who spams you.

To identify people in your target market, search for groups and Facebook networked blogs that would likely interest them. Join the groups and follow the blogs yourself. Then browse the members of those groups and followers of those blogs to find potential connections.

I believe that blog followers as a whole are more active on Facebook than mere group members. However, consider selecting only members with some minimum number of friends such as 100 to weed out people who don’t really engage with the site.

If you’re not sure which groups and blogs to select, try connecting with others in your niche. You’ll be able to see which groups they lead or belong to and which blogs they publish or follow. You can also examine their Facebook walls to find additional potential connections.

Connecting isn’t difficult. When you invite another member, include a short note such as, “You and I are both members of the Social Networking Haters group.”

Please, promise me that you won’t write anything nerdy like, “I’m looking to connect with like minded people.” Don’t use a line like that with anybody anywhere ever. I mean it.

Twitter

The Twitter learning curve is steep. If you’re not well versed with Twitter, try the advice and resources in my Twitter articles. I’m going to assume that you pretty much know what you’re doing.

Since Twitter is bloated with spammers’ phony profiles, targeting on Twitter is difficult and getting more difficult all the time. It’s going to be a messy job, so be prepared. Don’t say that I didn’t warn you.

Do not connect with anybody who has:

• no profile information or inappropriate profile information
• no picture, avatar or business logo
• a lopsided relationship between following and followers
• almost no tweets or spammy looking tweets

Do follow back anybody else who follows you. Unfollow anybody who spams you.

To identify Twitter members in your target market, start your search by using Find People to look for other people in your niche. Avoid the biggies, since they are magnets for spam, and a large percentage of their followers are spammers.

Look for the ones who have a few hundred to a few thousand followers.

Follow them and follow their followers — unless of course a particular follower looks suspicious based on the criteria I just listed above. A portion of their followers will hopefully belong to your target market.

Unfollow the people who don’t follow back after a few days and repeat the process.

Consider using a tool to manage your account.

LinkedIn

On LinkedIn, targeting is fairly straightforward, but connecting can be a challenge.

If you’re a job hunter or a headhunter in the recruiting industry, you should probably connect with as many people as you can. Since the limit is reportedly 30,000, you can afford to cast a very wide net.

In any case you should accept all invitations. Remove any connection who who spams you:

1. Click on “Connections” which is on the left side bar.
2. Click on “Remove Connections” which is currently near the upper right corner
3. Then follow the instructions.

The main difficulty with LinkedIn is that if you invite someone who then indicates that they don’t know you, you get a strike against you. If this happens often, LinkedIn restricts your inviting privileges.

People who are open to invitations and implicitly agree not to indicate that they don’t know you are call LinkedIn Open Networkers, abbreviated LION.

There are at least two groups for LinkedIn Open Networkers:

• OpenNetworkers.info < 50.000+ members across 60 social networks >
• TopLinked.com (Open Networkers).

You can join and browse these groups to find people to link to. They of course have an option to accept you or to archive you, i.e. ignore you. Usually they accept.

If you are not a job hunter or headhunter, you’re probably better off targeting than trying to connect to thousands of people. That’s your judgment call.

You can do both, just as I do. But I admit that I started as a job hunter years ago and built a large base at that time. If I were starting today, I think I would stick to targeting.

To make the best connections, join the groups that people in your target market would join, and participate in the groups’ discussions. You’ll naturally make connections and get some traffic to your blog or website along the way.

Ning Network

Targeting on Ning is a little tricky. Cast a wide net on Ning, since I’m not aware of any upper limit on the number of Ning friends.

Here are the challenges that you face when adding Ning friends:

• You can only have 100 outstanding friend requests. You’ll have to dis-invite people who don’t respond. Do this from the “Friends” tab of your Ning dashboard at Ning.com.
• Most of the people you invite won’t respond. Either they don’t know how or they’ve already abandoned the site.

You improve your results by posting a friendly, non-spammy and non-nerdy comment to their profile at the time you invite them.

You also improve your results by inviting people who have recently joined the site, the ones at the beginning of the member list, or people who are obviously engaging with the site.

Find people in your target market by joining Ning networks and groups that are likely to attract these people. Invite a hundred people, and wait a day. Some will accept, so you can invite more.

When you get stuck, trim your invite list starting from the end. While this can be a slow process, it has worked for me and for others.

Be careful not to spam your friends. Don’t invite them directly to join new Ning sites.

The best way to communicate with your Ning friends is to write informative blog posts on a Ning site about something that would interest people in your target audience. Then use the share feature on Ning to let them know about your post.

Read Introduction to Using Ning Sites and other Ning articles.

Now It’s Your Turn

I don’t have a monopoly on online business networking techniques. Why not share some of your own targeting and connecting ideas?

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Tags: business networking, business networking techniques, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning, social networking, SPAM, target, Targeting, Twitter

The rapid growth of Facebook and Twitter has created lots of excitement.

Alexa ranks the world’s most popular websites. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn and Ning are ranked 4th, 11th, 25th, 89th and 154th among all websites in the world, respectively.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the Ning family of social networking sites are the most popular social networks with wide business appeal. From a business point of view, MySpace has become primarily a niche site for the music industry.

I have taken the time to position my self on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Ning, with approximately 1K, 33K, 3K and 2K connections on each network respectively, consistent with my online social networking strategy.

Each social networking site is different. Choose the sites you will use according to your business objectives and personal style. Don’t base your decision solely upon site popularity. There are features of each social networking site that differentiate the site and contribute to its popularity.

Facebook

It’s important that you realize the full scope of Facebook’s plans. Take ten minutes now to read the Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network’s Plan to Dominate the Internet — and Keep Google Out.

This article has several important implications:

• If Facebook succeeds, even partially, our influence and the content we post on Facebook will affect Facebook search results. In other words, we can to some extent impact the outcome of Facebook searches.
• Facebook will evolve to compete both with Google and with other social networking sites. Facebook will implement powerful new features that enhance our networking experience.
• To profit from an evolving Facebook, we must master Facebook now and start building our influence on the site.

I like the realness of Facebook. Most members use their actual names, provide factual information about themselves, and share interesting pictures, videos, and other content.

I also like the ease with which I can contact my Facebook friends with a private message or a comment on their wall.

I use a Facebook application that conveniently merges my Twitter updates with my Facebook feed, updating my Facebook status. I post in one place and it appears in both. When a Facebook friend comments on my status, I comment back, others join in, and a discussion ensues.

We’ve been discussing spam a lot lately. There’s a 5,000 friend limit on Facebook, so friend slots are precious. If a “friend” spams me, I remove him or her, unless of course it’s somebody I know from outside Facebook, in which case he or she gets an earful about spamming.

Twitter

Some people believe that Twitter is merely a fad. Not I. However, I’m not as confident in the future of Twitter as I am in the future of Facebook or LinkedIn.

For now, Twitter is growing, and it’s very useful if it’s used properly. I have created more traffic using Twitter than with all my other social networking sites and social media sites combined.

The ability to connect with and reach large groups of people makes Twitter attractive from a marketing perspective. I use a simple yet powerful tool that helps me connect with people and manage my profiles and those of my clients.

If you can reach your target market on Twitter and keep their interest, you will benefit enormously. For some niches, it’s not possible to identify your target market directly on Twitter, so you must build your Twitter following using outside referrals to your Twitter profile.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great business-only social networking site that is under new management.

LinkedIn’s potential lies in it’s many diverse and successful groups and their ongoing discussions. What better way to network than to participate in the discussions of groups that attract the types of people you want to meet?

You can also build up a very large network on LinkedIn which will enable you to communicate directly with the people you want without having to get past the usual gatekeepers. Members will also be able to search for and find you.

Ning

I have written much about Ning and Twitter as well. I recently discussed Ning in my article, Introduction to Using Ning Sites. Ning let’s anybody set up their own social networking site for free.

Many of the Ning sites appeal to narrow niches, but others are more general. Two of my many favorite Ning sites are my own site, Beyond Business Coaching, and Chris Patterson’s, inSocialMedia.com.

I appreciate most a feature that is very controversial, the ability to share content with all Ning friends across all networks simultaneously. I can write a blog post and share it easily with thousands of friends. Unfortunately this feature is too often abused.

Keep in mind that while these are the most popular social networking sites for business, popularity isn’t everything. Less popular sites may offer you precisely the audience or the features you want.

See also my list of social networking sites article from 2008.

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Tags: Alexa, business networking, business networking sites, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, social networking sites, Twitter

When I read comments on What is Wrong with Ning and other articles, a recurring theme is that spamming on Ning and on other social networking sites has become a major nuisance.

I often speculate about why people spam — regular well-meaning people like you and me, not the offshore criminal type. What are they thinking? Why do they spam?

Ignorance a Big Factor

While there are many possible reasons, an eye opening experience last week convinced me that ignorance is definitely a factor.

A newcomer to the Internet is repeatedly exposed to the much too prevalent practice of spamming and easily concludes that it’s the way business is transacted. From then on, it’s monkey see, monkey do.

It matters little whether or not they’ve heard that spam is bad, since they don’t know what spam is anyway. Therefore, they don’t realize that sending unsolicited commercial messages or advertising on other people’s pages is spam. To them it’s just advertising, and advertising is good, not bad.

Now let me tell you about what happened last week.

SPAM on My Ning Site

I received spam from a member of my Beyond Business Coaching Ning network, a private message sent to me and other “friends” on the site:

Tool for any business that will put money into your pocket. Lead generation software which automatically extracts leads and traffic from other targeted websites and systematically does the selling for you: http://www.—-.com/?ID=—-

Not only is this message spammy, it’s hypey and a little scary too.

I replied to the sender and to the other message recipients:

The message you sent is a violation of the terms of service you agreed upon when joining, which prohibits spam. Please refer to these two articles about spam:

Introduction to Using Ning Sites
How Do You Like Your SPAM?

I request that you use a more compliant marketing approach.

This should have been the end of the story, but it wasn’t.

I Can’t Believe It’s SPAM

I received a call from a woman I had once-upon-a-time banned from my site and had later reinstated. She had received a copy of my reply quoted above, and she was angry enough to pick up the phone and ring me.

She felt that my rules were too restrictive and unfair. Here her friend was trying to help by sending out useful information, and I was accusing her of spamming. How could I?

I asked her what she considered spam. She said that spam was a message with banner ads or images. She wouldn’t believe that her friend’s message was in fact spam.

There was a difference of opinion, but I tried to be as nice as possible. I didn’t ban anybody, but I did take the liberty of deleting some spammy profile comments that my caller had recently made on several members’ pages.

I naively assumed that this would be the end of the story, but again of course, it wasn’t.

Spillover onto Facebook

A couple of days later I was promoting my Beyond Business Coaching network on my Facebook profile, and the controversy resurfaced, this time taking on a new dimension, our freedom of speech.

Here’s how it started:

Do not join this group unless you like being restricted to what and how you say things. The rules and restrictions are irrational and don’t allow freedom of speech.

Freedom of expression and ideas are not the same as spam!

The comments went back and forth, but this was the essence of my reply:

I’m sorry to say that while there is freedom of expression and ideas in the US, that freedom DOES have limitations.

For example, what would happen if you planted election campaign signs on all the lawns in your neighborhood or painted your ideas on the walls of the Empire State Building?

Fortunately, several people came and supported me.

Stacey Chadwell wrote:

This is an impressive professional site with superb information about social media and marketing. I have been a member for some time and highly recommend it.

I am sorry you feel this way. I’ve written on a few of Larry’s sites without issue. He has always been fair and professional even when dealing with members who spam the rest of us. I applaud him for doing his best to protect his members from spammers.

Jim Canto, creator of mexXcentral Community wrote:

The best part about the Internet these days is the number of free services out there including at least one where you can create your own social network for anything… AND.. you get to make the rules. So, if you feel “slighted” by someone’s rules.. just remember, it’s their house and their rules, same as it will be when we join a community created by you. You make the rules and we the members see if we can live with them.

I have a community of my own,  and I can assure you, it has its restrictions. Why? Because it has a direction and a purpose. To keep it on track, I must make sure I’ve laid the track down, i.e.the rules.

If you want to build your own community, Ning.com is free.

Luc Despres wrote:

I’m a member of Larry’s social network and I REALLY appreciate his rules on spamming.

What next? This can’t be the end of the story.

Better Education

See my article, 8 Great Choices for SPAM Free Promotion, which identifies methods of promotion on Ning and other social networking sites that work without resorting to spam.

To the extent that ignorance contributes to spam, better education might provide some relief.

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Tags: Facebook, Ning, Ning social network, SPAM

I’ve written quite a few articles about the Ning family of social networking sites focusing primarily on social marketing and business networking concepts.

In this article I address every type of Ning user.

By using Ning sites, not only can you transact business, you can also make new friends, discuss special interests, and promote favorite causes. You can network with people all over the world from the comfort and privacy of your home, any time of day or night.

I cannot cover every possible contingency, so feel free to ask questions below in the comments, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Before looking at what you should do on Ning sites, I must explain one thing that you should never do on Ning or on any other social network.

Thou Shalt Not Spam

Last September, I slammed the practice of spamming in How Do You Like Your SPAM? If you’re not sure what spam is, please invest a few minutes to read through that article.

Spamming is something that you should never do on Ning or anywhere else. You’re spamming on Ning if you push unwanted advertising, commercial or otherwise, on other people by using:

• private or instant messages
• profile or blog comments
• forum or discussion posts or comments
• site, group, event, page or comment sharing
• something I haven’t dreamed of listing here

Be considerate of your fellow site members at all times. If you want to advertise, use only your page’s profile and blog, and watch for my upcoming piece, Promoting Yourself on Ning.

Uploading Your Photo

When you join your very first Ning site, you need to upload your photo. While you can theoretically skip this step, a picture makes your site page friendlier and more credible.

If for some reason you believe that you cannot use your photo — or a family photo — then find another image to upload in its place. Avoid using the dreaded default image, since it implies a lack of seriousness on your part.

Creating Your Profile

Although volumes could be written on this subject alone, here are ten suggestions to help guide you:

1. Get clear about who you are and what you represent.
2. Study other people’s profiles. What do you like about them? Dislike?
3. Know how you want to portray yourself on each Ning site.
4. Express yourself in an accurate, friendly and interesting manner.
5. Write in the first person. Avoid bad grammar, misspellings, overused clichés, exaggeration, distasteful slang, etc. Learn to write well — or find somebody who will help you.
6. Include links to your relevant websites or blogs.
7. Fill in the details each site requests as best you can. If the site doesn’t ask for enough, use your page’s Text Box to present additional information and links.
8. Revise your profile often, as you re-invent yourself or gain clarity.
9. Ask others for their opinions and listen carefully.
10. Don’t wait to get started. As Mike Litman taught me: “You don’t have to get it right. You just have to get it going.”

Making Connections

Once you have set up your page, you’re ready to invite people to be “friends” and accept friendship offers from other people.

I know that you’re not naive enough to believe that you can make friends with the click of a mouse, so I must explain to you what it means to be friends on Ning.

Please read the following very carefully:

When you make friends on Ning, you are each giving the other explicit permission to communicate directly using private messaging and Ning’s content sharing features.

E-mail messages will inevitably arrive in your inbox. Some will be spam and others not.

Ask yourself whether you’d mind receiving direct messages from a person. If yes, be friends. If not, pass. However, don’t be too cautious, since you always have the option to remove a so-called friend who has turned out to be problematic.

Communicating One-on-One

When you meet a new person offline, you communicate cautiously at first. You make small talk. Gradually you reveal details about yourselves, and a relationship develops. Approach online communication in the same way.

Be genuinely interested and ask questions to give your new friend an opportunity to open up to you. Reciprocate appropriately as you go along.

Use a profile comment or two to get a conversation going, and then switch to private messaging if and when it seems right. Don’t force anything. It’s better to take your time.

Communicating with the Community

In my opinion, the best way to communicate with all members at one time is by writing blog articles within the Ning site.

If you don’t know how to write, you’ll learn. This is a great way to get practice before starting a stand alone blog on Blogger.com or your own hosting account. Your writing will improve as you do more and more of it.

Write about topics that are important to you. Create a desire within your readers to return and read subsequent blogs. If your articles are helpful, the site creator may feature them, and that will help you to gain readers.

In Promoting Yourself on Ning, I’ll teach you how to promote your blog articles.

Inviting Friends

Social networking sites need new members to grow and thrive. All members share the responsibility for bringing in new members.

Use the Invite feature to send a short invitation to people whom you know. In the comments area of the invitation, say briefly why you like the site. If everybody participates in this process, everybody benefits from the new faces on the site.

Now It’s Your Turn

Ask questions below, so that I can clarify or elaborate on any of the points I’ve made in this article — or address any omissions.

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Tags: Ning, Ning social network, SPAM

Nearly a year has passed since my first Ning article, Ning Social Networking Sites.

Since then online social networking has taken some exciting twists and turns. MySpace has lost luster, while Facebook and Twitter have become social media darlings.

Ning Still Facing Obstacles

Ning seems to be in somewhat of a holding pattern.

There have been some changes here and there, mostly for the better in my opinion, but no exciting breakthroughs. There are new apps, a new Ning central networking site, and new flexibility, but site creators and users still have their reservations.

As mentioned in Ning Social Network Controversy, the Ning management has been criticized for its policies and its tactics and, as too many people are aware, Ning sites haven’t been immune to spamming by both Ning members and by intruders.

My Ning sites now all require membership pre-approval, since I know of no better way to deal with persistent outsider spamming.

What is Right with Ning

Despite any shortcomings, I still feel as when I wrote about the Ning controversy, that Ning truly epitomizes Web 2.0. Ning sites are communities of people, and Ning is a community of community sites.

I’ve certainly written a good deal about social media list building including both List Building Paradigm Shift and List Building Using Ning Social Networks. Nevertheless communities are the essence of social media, not lists, and social marketing must therefore favor community building over list building.

Fortunately Ning can be used to build either communities or lists. There are creative ways to build communities within Facebook and Twitter, but Ning networks were designed expressly for that purpose and afford marketers a variety of useful tools and a degree of social media ownership.

Ning Still My Favorite Networks

I still use Ning social networking sites more than all others. I like them for the reasons cited above and for the many other reasons I’ve discussed in previous Ning related articles.

I have so far created four Ning sites of my own and hope to create more in the future:

• Let’s Follow Each Other - This is a fun networking site for Twitter folk who want to gain followers, share ideas, promote themselves and network with each other.
• Beyond Business Coaching - This is a site for entrepreneurs and marketing professionals who are interested in social media, customer acquisition, customer retention and CRM.
• Online Kosher Networking - This is a niche site for orthodox affiliated members of the Jewish faith to network and share their ideas about Jewish values, Israel, religious observance, charities, politics, jobs, business, etc.
• Outside the Box - If you enjoy my blog, but you don’t use Twitter, and you aren’t necessarily business oriented, this may be the right site for us to connect and network together.

In all fairness, I must tell you that Ning has competitors such as SocialGO, GROU.PS and others but admit that I haven’t yet evaluated them. If you have tried other social network platforms, I invite you to share your experiences with them.

To learn more about using Ning, please read Introduction to Using Ning Sites.

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to my RSS feed or by e-mail. Also, visit my About, Services, Media Buzz and Connect pages to learn about Building Your Audience and Brand on the Web.

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Tags: building a list, community building, List Building, Ning, Ning social network, online social networking, social marketing, Social Media, social networking, social networking sites, SPAM

A comment last week to my October 2008 blog post, Ning Social Networking Sites Update, linked back to Ning Exposed - Tech Company Scams its Clients, an article which sharply criticizes Ning’s latest business model and platform, and it alleges foul play on Ning’s part in reacting to complaints by network creators.

As a Ning social network creator and user, I happen to appreciate Ning’s recent platform improvements and tend to disagree with the article’s assessments. While the allegations of censorship are disturbing, my careful reading of Ning’s Terms of Service leaves me hopeful that Ning has acted fully within its rights.

Aggregating Ning Social Networking Sites

I have always looked at Ning as a family of social networking sites. An individual chooses to become a member one or many Ning sites.

Ning members can connect to become friends, and the friendships that they make will extend across sites. Friendships aren’t limited to the site at which they were forged.

I have found managing my Ning memberships and friendships across sites somewhat complicated, so I was pleased when Ning tied everything together for me in one place at Ning.com.

I always viewed myself as a member of the larger Ning community, not just the semi-independent sites which I created or joined, so aggregating Ning sites and Ning members made perfect sense to me. I didn’t view it at all as some kind of sinister plot.

Member Contact Across Ning Sites

The article referenced above mentions a “hole in the system, which is convenient for Ning, which allows people to gather friends across any website using Ning’s technology and then invite them all to join their website.”

The article is referring to the ability of members to share their favorite Ning social networks and content with all their friends across Ning sites as a convenient loophole, not as an intended and beneficial system feature.

I admit that this feature can be and is often abused by members, but that’s not Ning’s fault. The real problem is that people often make friendships indiscriminately. If the friendships were truly meaningful, they would naturally anticipate and welcome contact, even across sites.

Ning Social Concept Epitomizes Web 2.0

As I indicated before, I believe that Ning is true Web 2.0. It takes social collaboration a step farther than Twitter, Facebook, MySpace , LinkedIn and other social networking sites. Individual social networking sites are created and contributed by users, not just the content within these sites.

I applaud Ning for providing us with a unique social networking venue.

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to my RSS feed or by e-mail. Also, visit my About, Services, Media Buzz and Connect pages to learn about me and my social media and web marketing services.

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Tags: Ning, Ning social network, Scam and Ripoff Alerts, social networking, social networking sites

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