Social Media – Page 2

Should I use Google + for my business?

July 5, 2011 by Raul Colon

Every time that a new Platform emerges, many of us are thinking about the benefits our businesses can get from them. Google + is currently available for some users. At the moment Google has temporarily stopped new from joining.

This is a good testing ground when trying to figuring out what Google + can leverage over other platforms like Facebook or Twitter when you are one of the first to use it.

I guess no matter what platform you decide to use you have to look at it from the perspective of being able to enhance the process of meeting your business goals and always keep that in mind.

So many people jump into every platform with only one thing in their mind and that is selling and marketing.

Thankfully the early implementers have created a good ambience in the Google + eco system that leaves a lot of opportunity for exploration with very few people pushing their products on to you for the moment. It is time for every business owner to strengthen relationships and get to know other people on this platform.

So my business advice for Google + : Get to know the people with access and see how you can help your customers with this new tool.

If you are new to Google + this video created by our friend @chrisbrogan can give you a quick idea on how to start using it.

@chrisbrogan also wrote this awesome list on 50 ideas and opportunities where he thinks Google+ can benefit all of us. I would recommend you to take a look at his unique ideas.

THE GOOGLE PLUS 50

Feel free to add me on Google + (http://bit.ly/RcolonPlus)

Interviewed at Hispanicize Conference

April 11, 2011 by Raul Colon

Raul Colon, President and Co-Founder of CIMA IT Solutions was interviewed by La Opinion, a Spanish newspaper based in Los Angeles, about the Hispanicize 2011 Conference and his perspective about attracting brands to bloggers.

He was among 450 plus attendees at the 2nd annual conference for Public Relations and Social Media. Raul was invited to moderate and speak at several sessions last week.

Thanks to reporter Jorge Morales Almada for the interview and La Opinion for this opportunity to promote our small business.

A comercializar el blog by Jorge Morales Almada

We will be @ Hispanicize 2011!

March 30, 2011 by Raul Colon

This year we were presented with the opportunity to join prominent Latino professionals at the Hispanicize 2011 Conference. If you don’t know what Hispanicize is, here are a few lines from their website to let you know what they are about:

“Hispanicize 2011, the 2nd Annual Hispanic PR & Social Media Conference, (April 6-8, 2011) is the premier marketing event devoted to provide in-depth professional development and networking opportunities for brand marketers, bloggers, non profits and marketing agencies focused on Hispanic public relations and social media.

We are thankful for the opportunity given to us by the founder of Hispanic PR Wire and CEO of Hispanicize, Manny Ruiz (@papiblogger) .

Below are the sessions that Co-Founder and President Raul Colon, will be moderating and presenting along with Louis Pagan (@LouisPagan), managing partner and co-founder of Hispanicize.

COMMUNISPACE’S HISPANIC IDENTITY PROJECT: UNDERSTANDING AND TAPPING INTO THE U.S. HISPANIC MARKET VIA PRIVATE ONLINE COMMUNITIES

SESSION OVERVIEW: The session will focus on Communispace’s Hispanic Identity Project, a research project conducted to better understand the growing U.S. Hispanic population, and its findings.

The Hispanic Identity Project’s research findings will help companies better understand and engage with the Hispanic market via online communities in the U.S., and tap into the business opportunity this growing market represents.

The new partnership between Communispace and Starcom MediaVest to create on a new online Hispanic community will also be covered.

MODERATOR:
Raúl J. Colón, Co-founder, President of CIMA IT Solutions Corp
PRESENTER:
Manila Austin, Ph.D., Director of Research at Communispace
Maria Vasallo, Community Manager, Communispace

THE DO’S AND DON’TS OF DEVELOPING CORPORATE HISPANIC WEB SITES IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
(SPONSORED BY: STONE CROSSING SOLUTIONS)

SESSION OVERVIEW: Developing Hispanic corporate web sites has radically changed in an era where Latino Internet and mobile usage trends show that Hispanics are highly engaged, heavy users of social media.

In this panel session led by Joe Kutchera, author of “Latino Link: Building Brands Online with Hispanic Communities and Content” , you’ll learn how some leading corporations are transforming their Hispanic web sites and other digital properties to make them more engaging and culturally customized. Attendees will discover why the Digital Divide is practically over and they’ll hear why and how online content initiatives can drive measurable results among Hispanics.

MODERATOR: Raúl J. Colón, Co-founder, President of CIMA IT Solutions Corp
Panelists include:
· Dave Rodriguez, Marketing Manager, Ford
· Joe Kutchera, Director of Digital Marketing, Acento agency
· John Vojtush, President/COO, Stone Crossing Solutions

POWERFUL INSIGHTS ON HOW TO USE TWITTER TO BUILD FOLLOWERS AND ENGAGE WITH LEGIONS OF LATINOS

SESSION OVERVIEW: Next to Facebook, Twitter is the social media of choice for most U.S. Hispanics but brands and agencies are still struggling with how to effectively use Twitter to build communities and engage with Latinos. If this describes your predicament, this is the session you’ve been waiting for!

Join Twitter Latino thought leader Louis Pagan, managing partner of Hispanicize and co-founder of LATISM, as he takes you on a detailed guided tour through everything you need to know to become a confident, community building brand on Twitter Latino.

Join Hispanicize managing partner and LATISM co-founder Louis Pagan, one of the nation’s best known Twitter Latino masters, show you the tricks of the trade as he gets granular on every best practice you need to use to become a Twitter Latino champion.

PRESENTERS:

Louis Pagan, managing partner of Hispanicize and co-founder of LATISM
Raúl J. Colón, Co-founder, President of CIMA IT Solutions Corp

Broadcasting equals less Engagement

January 25, 2011 by Raul Colon

255658719_1113bbdc97_z — Photo Credit: Flickr

Many business accounts are constantly Broadcasting their sales, accomplishments, product features, company news, and anything they can find about themselves that appears to be interesting to them. When people broadcast a message it is mainly to attract the masses not focusing on quality. Something I have found through social media is that the more you broadcast the less interaction you get.

I have outlined the reasons why some twitter business users end up broadcasting and end up with little or no interactions.

Self-Promoting products, services, and company

Many twitter business users that are new to twitter create accounts and immediately start sending messages about there products, services, and other information relevant to company and interests. I have even seen a few that go after users and beg or harass them to follow them.

Most of these users also lack interaction with other users. On the other side they feel that everyone should learn about there company but they don’t take the time to learn about the others. They fail greatly in not looking for the interests of their community and clients.

Sharing Accomplishments

It is human nature to feel you need to be recognized for your accomplishments. A good example of people that want to be recognized are the so called Social Media Experts which share a collection of names such as Guru, Evangelist, Kings, and Queen. One of the terms still up for grabs is “Swami” for those of you who want to make the recommendation to these experts feel free to recommend it to them. They are constantly bragging that they have a certain klout score or have to announce how many followers they just gained. What they don’t realize is that other people take there perspective they really don’t care about how many followers you have they are to worried about their own.

Let other people share your accomplishments you will get better results. If you feel like sharing something find a polite way to share it but don’t bombard your users with your constant accomplishments.

Hoarding Followers

When I started using twitter I confused it with other social networks. I remember when I used ICQ in the late 90’s where my objective was trying to get in contact with as much people possible just to be able to keep multiple conversations all the time.

Twitter is a micro-blogging portal very different from others in social media. It is key that you earn your following and focus on quality of contacts. The more interested your followers are to your tweets the more probable is that they can be advocates of your message or thoughts (and maybe later on your company and services).

Always look for contacts that have things in common. Many people start adding people randomly in hopes to get someone to follow them back. Even if they follow you most people might not even read your tweets. By interacting with the people you have and really taking care of your audience you will start building a community that will be well worth waiting for your follower count to rise organically.

More Attention

There are no many ways to call attention to yourself. But something you need to keep in mind is that you can do it in a negative or a positive way. People that try to hard end up sharing a negative image. When you are using twitter and/or other social media platforms it should be with the purpose of establishing relationships. To increase the opportunities to establish those relationships you should do a great job at projecting a clean and positive image.

If you need some help on getting attention to attract clients in a positive way @jimkukral’sAttention! This Book Will Make You Money: How to Use Attention-Getting Online Marketing to Increase Your Revenue.

In what ways do you interact with your online communities?

How are you going to increase interaction and eliminate Broadcasting?

Social Media for Digital Artists

January 24, 2011 by Raul Colon

Guest Post by : @ricklipsett

Some time ago, my friend Joseph Garrahan told me that we should create a blog for our Digital Artists Collective: UNDOdigital. At the time I was somewhat unaware of the potential that Social Media had. I had a personal page in Facebook, and one in Myspace for UNDOdigital (which I almost never updated) but that was about it. I did not realize that Social Media could have such a positive impact (if managed well) on our Artists Collective.

Today, I can honestly say that social media works. After we created the blog, and posted a few articles, I was afraid that no one was reading. Our message was getting nowhere. The few that knew us were the only ones reading. I wanted to make sure more people knew what we were up to, so after much inner-battles, I opened up a Twitter account.

The rest came soon afterwards. As I write this, our Twitter @UNDODigital has 263 followers, our Facebook Page (Facebook.com/UNDOdigital) page shows 202 likes, plus the RSS followers of the blog (35), casual visitors, etc… I know that some of our Twitter followers also follow us on Facebook, but not all. Actually the majority of our Facebook fans are NOT on Twitter. This is without counting our YouTube followers or the people who have listened to our podcasts on Audiofarm(Audiofarm.org/UNDOdigital).

All this can be really overwhelming, I’m the first one to say it. It’s a full time job to keep up with all social media channels. I mean, not only do we add content to the blog, but we follow up through social media, email, word-of-mouth, etc…

By now, the usual person asks me: Is it worth it? What’s in it for you? Well, UNDOdigital is on its way to becoming Puerto Rico’s only/leading front for Digital Art. The more people we reach through our efforts, the closer that goal gets. Let’s say we wanted to invite people to one of our Art Shows. Normally, or rather, traditionally we would invest in some flyers and/or invitations. A catalog would also be on the works as well as many other print media to let people know of the event. We now, don’t have to kill a forest to let people know of us. Through our social sites, at the very least, 500 people (and counting) will know of it. Social media works by word-of-mouth, so you can be sure, many will re-tweet, re-send, forward, etc, etc…

Also if, say a few of our followers need to know something art-related, is more than likely that they will reach any of our 4 writers and start a conversation on the blog, or via any of the other social websites we participate in. This helps in posturing UNDOdigital as a knowledgeable community in our area of expertise: Art.

At first, we envisioned these efforts only to promote our shows. In the long run, we’ve seen how we can do more good, by promoting artists from our group and out of it, cultural/art related events, we share trends, give out wallpapers, talk about art topics, start discussions, interview artists, and so on. I guess you could say that we got in sync with what Social Media really is by accident, but we got there. We now, share like crazy.

Results. That is what you must be thinking now. Well internet is a very analytical medium. We, at UNDOdigital, know how many people have visited us, from where, which browser they use, which connection speed they use, how many links they clicked, which posts are they’re favorites, how many time our tweets have been clicked, and more. We have and know it all. This gives us complete control over what we achieve with these sites. Of course all of this is long term. After all, Social sites are like dating. And dating is a process.

About the Author

Rick Lipsett – http://www.ricklipsett.com is an Illustrator/Graphic Designer/Digital Artist. Co-Founder of UNDOdigital; Puertorican Digital Artists Community. Fan of blogs, social networks and Del Eses(http://myspace.com/deleses). You may find him on Twitter as: @ricklipsett.