On April 9th I’ll be speaking in one of the Breakout Sessions at the expo about “Social Media for Your Business.”

The event is going to be pretty neat and is geared to “motivate, educate, and inspire entrepreneurs from all walks of life.”

The New Brunswick Business Journal recently ran an article about the Fredericton event.

It’s an honour to have been asked to speak at the event and I’m really looking forward to it. Now that things are officially gearing up and we’re a little over a month away I thought that I’d share the good news.

Search Engine Optimization is one of those things that most people think they can do easily, while this is somewhat true, there are a lot of common mistakes that are made which either hurt you or do absolutely nothing to help your ranking.

Search Engine Optimization is not as easy as you might think. It requires a lot more effort than just adding a couple of keywords here and there and waiting for the Google Fairy to come along and rocket you to the moon. That being said, Search Engine Optimization isn’t complicated either. Whoa! Hold the phone! I just said that it wasn’t easy and then I turn around and say that it’s not complicated? What the deuce? It’s hard work and you need to be on top of things but it’s not overly complicated at all. The underlying principles of Search Engine Optimization are pretty simple; use keywords wisely, focus on your target market and don’t be stupid. It’s not rocket surgery.

With all that said, I’m going to talk a little bit about common misconceptions and mistakes made with Search Engine Optimization which for sanity’s sake we’ll refer to as its more common abbreviation; SEO.

Myth: Meta-tags carry the most weight in rankings

What is this, 1995? This couldn’t be further from the truth. Meta-tags are essentially one of the most useless things on your website as far as SEO is concerned. Google has even said it themselves, they don’t look at meta-tags like meta-keywords anymore. They have absolutely no weight in SEO and rankings anymore. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Who is to blame for that? Porn. Plain and simple. The porn industry used to, and still does for that matter, flood their websites with keywords not related to their content just to get you on their sites. Search engines saw through this ploy and opted to focus on other aspects for rankings.

Fast-forward from 1995 to today and you’ll find that search engines now use hundreds of variables to determine rankings including title tags, content and the freshness of said content, incoming and outgoing links, alt and title attributes as well as your header tags.

All that being said, not all meta-tags are bad. Meta-descriptions help users find out more about your site on their search results. You can also add in useful data like your geo-location, the author, copyright information and much more so don’t write off meta-tags altogether – just meta-keywords, toss those buggers to the curb.

Myth: Hidden text is a your key to success

Designers and developers used to think that they were clever when they hid content on a website by making it the same colour as the background (white text on a white background). These clever chaps flood their websites with keywords that may or may not (usually the case) be related to the content of their website. Their train of thought was that they were being clever hiding the content this way because you as a user couldn’t see it but the search engines could.

Well Hot Shot, guess what. It doesn’t work. It does absolutely nothing to help you out. In fact, it actually hurts you. That’s right, it hinders your ranking. Search engines aren’t dumb robots that troll through websites collecting data and throwing it in a database. Like the T-800s in Terminator, they’re “learning computahs”. They’re smart and they know what to look for and most importantly they know when someone is trying to trick them. When search engines find that someone has attempted to trick them by flooding their sites with hidden keywords red flags shoot up and you get classified as a jerk for your shenanigans.

Long story short; hidden text on your website is a no-no.

Myth: If you build it, they will come

So, you paid good money to have a website designed and coded by a world class designer and your site goes “live”. Days pass and no matter how much you search yourself on Google or Bing you just don’t show up. The first thing that shoots through your head is that you’ve been had! That SOB walked away with your hard earned money! Sue that sumbitch!

Ok don’t. Simmer.

This semester my students have been building their portfolio sites and a week after one of their sites went live one of them asked me why he couldn’t find himself on Google. The answer is simple – Google didn’t know that the was there yet. Their bots hadn’t stumbled across his corner of the Interweb. Patience is a virtue. It takes time for search engines to crawl your website for the first time. Having incoming links to your site will help speed up the process so get on those social media sites and share your URL with people.

Before you run off to Twitter and Facebook and piss off all of your friends by flooding your status with “Check out my new website” and “I done got me one-a-dem-der websites” you also need to consider that there’s more to it than just patience and incoming links. According to Google, “[c]rawls are based on many factors such as PageRank, links to a page, and crawling constraints such as the number of parameters in a URL. Any number of factors can affect the crawl frequency of individual sites.”

A website not only needs to be built in a search engine friendly way but once it’s launched it will need an Internet marketing campaign or at least a reason for people to visit your site. Hopefully you’ve already taken this into consideration before you decided to get a website and paid someone to design and code it. If you haven’t then what the hell?

Competing websites are probably already using some sort of marketing campaign so a site without a campaign of its own will fall to by the wayside pretty quickly – and no one wants to be by the wayside, it smells there.

Remember that it will take days, if not weeks for search engines to find you in the first place and then even more time for you to climb your way up the rankings. Keep your content fresh with blog posts and changing content. Give the search engines and ultimately more importantly, the users, a reason to come back to your site more and more often.

Myth: Your website will be “number one on Google”

This is such a common request for designers and developers to come across. Mary Sue Internetexpert wants her website to be “number one on Google.” It’s not going to happen for a couple of reasons. The first being that the number one ranked website on Google is Google. Go ahead, try to get ahead of them. If you do it, I’ll give you a buck. The second reason being that I’m fully aware that when the client wants to be “number one on Google” that they don’t mean the first ranked site on Google itself but that they want to be the first ranked site under a certain keyword but they don’t know how to articulate that.

That being said, chances are that you won’t be the number one ranked site for your search term either unless your search term is something completely obscure like “The mating rituals of the Lower Shibobian Albino Alpaca”, in which case, it’s yours for the taking.

Vague search terms are not your friend. You really need to narrow down what search terms users will find you with. Personally, I know that I’m not going to be ranked anywhere near the top of the Google search results for the phrase “web design” but if I narrow it down to “Fredericton Web Design” I’m not doing too bad. It’s in your best interest as well as your client’s to focus where and how you want your website to be found. A broader, more vague search term is going to lead to millions of results but if you narrow your focus then you’re going to find it easier to step into the spotlight.

Myth: Flooding your content with keywords helps

It’s a common misconception that flooding your website’s content with keywords over and over again will do wonders for your ranking and search results. The reality of it is that it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Flooding your <title> tag, alt and title attributes and content with keywords is not going to help you. Like good old hidden text; it’s probably going to end up hurting you. Search engines will begin to avoid you like the plague if you start using the same keywords over and over again. Search engines see repetition of the same keywords as spam. The best way to avoid this is to read your content out loud. Have you used the same word 15 times in the span of three sentences? Does what you’re reading sound really awkward to you? If the answer is yes, then you need to cut back on the keywords. Don’t forget; the content on a website isn’t there just for the search engines to read – there are real people out there that will (hopefully) be reading that content as well. If you repeat “[your city]’s number one night club” 15 times in a paragraph then they’re going to think that you’re a bit of an oaf. So be smart when you’re writing your content and placing keywords.

What have we learned today class?
• Meta-tags like meta-keywords do absolutely jack for your rankings.
• Hidden text is for amateurs.
• SEO doesn’t happen overnight so stop assuming that it will.
• Vague search terms are like camouflage; you won’t be found.
• Read your content out loud, does it sound stupid? If so, change it.

Search Engine Optimization isn’t the most complicated thing in the world. A lot of it is common sense. If you know when and where to place keywords as well as to use <title> tags, header tag and alt and title attributes you’re going to go a lot farther than Mary Sue Internetexpert.

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by a reporter at The Daily Gleaner by the name of Molly Cormier asking if she could interview me for an article about web design and social media. Not wanting to pass up any opportunity to get exposure I said “sure”. The end result is what I think turned out to be a great article (I’m bias) with a super exaggerated headline (I’m modest).

Here’s a small excerpt:

Q: How has the Internet influenced our world in the past decade, and how will it change as we move into a new decade?

A: Whether people like to admit it or not the Internet has completely changed the world that we live in. In some places you never actually need to leave your house anymore, because of the Internet. You can order groceries online, order movies online – really just about anything that you’d need to leave the house for you can do online now.

The Internet has made the world a much, much smaller place and with social media sites like Facebook and Twitter stepping into the limelight, it’s only getting smaller.

We’re now able to communicate with hundreds, thousands or millions of people at the blink of an eye.

The full article can be read here.

Thanks again to Molly Cormier for writing the article. You can follow her on Twitter at @mollycormier or follow me at @robbclarke

There are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to social media. People seem to think that every day standards and decency get tossed out the window because of the anonymity of the Internet. Unfortunately for those people, that’s not always the case. First off, the Internet is getting smaller, and by that, I mean that it’s getting easier to find out who people are. You know how the saying goes “It’s a small world.” That reigns true for the Internet, especially social media sites, as well. Everyone is connected one way or another. There’s a whole “Six Degrees of Separation” thing going on.

There are Ten Commandments of Social Media that you should always try to follow. They will not only make you a better person but they will make your followers that much more appreciative of what you have to say.

Commandment #1: Thou Shalt Not Be a Narcissist

Social media is not all about you. It’s about people. It’s about being social, hence the name. Take the time to engage others in conversation. Don’t simply sign on and post something about yourself and leave. For every one post that you make about yourself you should dedicate at least three to engaging others in conversation whether it’s Retweeting what they’ve said, commenting on their photo album or asking them how their day is. A little bit of human contact goes a long way in the social media world; after all, human contact is what the whole concept is based off of.

You need to immerse yourself in the community and become part of the conversation. Social media is about relationship building and if you’re just spouting out posts and Tweets about yourself then people will quickly lose interest in you and what you have to say.

Commandment #2: Thou Shalt Listen to What Others Are Saying

This ties in with the previous commandment; social media is all about engaging others in conversation and to do that you need to first listen to what others have to say. Actively participating in conversation helps build relationships and listening is the most important part.

There are a lot of tools out there that will not only help you listen but will also help you engage. Tools like TweetDeck are fantastic tools for monitoring and engaging the conversations that are happening. TweetDeck is fantastic because you can not only monitor the obvious Twitter but you can also monitor Facebook and multiple other Twitter accounts.

TweetDeck Interface

Commandment #3: Thou Shalt Not Spam

If you’ve been using email for the past 15-20 years then this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Don’t spam your friends and followers with links and chain letters other useless nonsense that just gets tossed in the trash or deleted. Be courteous to others. Just because you think it’s cute to show 26 pictures taken milliseconds apart of your 9 month old rolling around on the floor doesn’t mean that anyone else will.

Think about all of the things that make you roll your eyes when you read them on social media sites. Now think, do you do any of those things? If so, stop.

Shameless Self Promotion With a Side of Spam

Commandment #4: Thou Shalt Say Something of Substance

How often do you get online to find Joe blabbering on about his latest conquest at the bar or how many Filet o’Fish he’s eaten today? How many times have you seen Mary complain about how she didn’t get enough sleep last night or how her friends annoy her? Do these people really actually say anything? Usually not.

Far too often people take to social media sites to air their dirty laundry and complain about something and why? Would they be doing the same in front of a group of their friends, peers, coworkers, and prospective employers? Probably not. So why online?

Scott Stratten from UnMarketing made a great Tweet about posting on Twitter but the same applies for all social media sites. He said “Don’t tweet anything you wouldn’t want to see on a billboard with your name/face/logo/phone # and your mom driving by.” It’s true. You wouldn’t be saying half of what you say online if it was real life so why do it? If anything what is said online is worse for your reputation than saying it in person. Why? Because it’s posted online and people can find it and reference it at any time.

The rule is simple; watch what you say and whom you say it to.

Commandment #5: Thou Shalt Not Abuse Thy Neighbour

Tying in to the previous Commandment comes another Commandment that you would think would be pretty obvious but sadly it’s overlooked. Don’t abuse people online. Flaming on the Internet is just about as old as the Internet itself and it’s just as unacceptable as it has always been. No one wants to go online and be verbally assaulted for his or her beliefs and opinions. It’s not good form.

You know how the old saying goes; “If you can’t say something nice then don’t say anything at all.” Just because you’re online doesn’t make it acceptable to do. Chances are that you’re not going to openly mock or humiliate someone in person so why do it online?

Commandment #6: Thou Shalt Give Credit Where Credit is Due

This is a Cardinal Sin in most circles, especially on Twitter. Stealing someone else’s ideas, quotes, pictures, whatever, are incredibly taboo not to mention amateur. You wouldn’t want someone coming along and stealing your intellectual property and posting it as his or her own now would you?

Here’s an example of the proper way to give someone credit for what they’ve said on Twitter.

How to Retweet Properly

Note that it’s perfectly acceptable to truncate words or paraphrase what was said if Retweeting takes up more than the allotted 140 characters.

Commandment #7: Thou Shalt Learn How to Spell … or at least use a spell checker

This one should be pretty obvious. Learn to spell and use grammar and punctuation properly. It’s incredibly hard to take what you’re saying seriously if it’s full of grammatical errors or you’ve mixed up your to, too and twos.

It’s not the hardest thing in the world to run your blog post through a word processor like Word before you post it. It’s actually in your best interest to type the whole thing in there in the first place regardless.

For those that are Tweeting or updating their Facebook statuses try using Mozilla’s Firefox. It has a built in spell checker. It won’t catch all of your spelling mistakes and it doesn’t catch grammatical or punctuation errors but it will put a dent into your typos.

Commandment #8: Thou Shalt Use Real Words

The previous Commandment is the perfect segue into this next one. Please, for the love of all things holy, try your best to use real words. Seriously. Social media sites have turned people into absolutely horrible spellers and text and instant messaging aren’t doing people any favours either. Quit with the OMGs, the LOLs, the WTFs and the ROFLs.

Neil Patrick Harris had a brilliant Tweet making fun of people doing this. He said “Prfkt. Thx 4 L th advyc evry1. This s a way ezr way 2 cmuNik8. Un42n8ly, itz takn me 3 hrz 2 ryt, but itz much pre4d 2 gtn cut off lyk i u”. I don’t know what he said but that’s what he said. It shouldn’t take 140 seconds to try and decipher your 140 characters on Twitter. I know you’re doing it to “save time” but did you really save time? Did you actually cut seconds off of your posting time or did it really take you minutes longer to be “clever” and come up with those new words? Think about it.

Hard to read, isn’t it?

Commandment #9: Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness

Websites like TinyURL, Cli.gs and Bit.ly all offer a brilliant service; they take your exceptionally long URLs and turn them into short and sweet ones, perfect for the character limiting Twitter. These sites do have a downside though, they enable people to hide spam, porn or even the passé Rick Roll (yes, people are still doing that) in masked URLs.

When URLs are hidden like this users are unable to see where they’re headed and are often lead to undesirable websites. Be courteous to others and don’t hide links using these services.

That being said; these service providers do attempt to warn users of malicious websites that may be hidden in shortened URLs so there is light at the end of the tunnel.

On a related note; how many social media “experts” have you seen on Twitter that claim they know the key to being successful in both business as well as on social media sites? There are thousands of them out there. Do you know what their magic key is? The answer; our last Commandment.

Not Really Nick Nolte

Commandment #10: Thou Shalt Not Be a Friend Whore

Last but certainly not least is our final Commandment of Social Media. Don’t be a friend whore. Social media is not a contest to see how many friends or followers you have. Having thousands of followers does not make you a better person or show that you’re a better quality user.

It’s incredibly common to see people on Facebook and Twitter adding as many people as they can as their friends in hopes that they befriend them in return simply to accumulate higher numbers.

Friend Whore Follows Three Users for Every One That Follows Them

Social media is not a contest. Plain and simple.

Following these Ten Commandments of Social Media will not only make you a better user of social media sites but they will also make your friends and followers appreciate you that much more. They aren’t hard to follow. Give them a shot.

With everyone and their dog jumping on Twitter and trying to promote themselves it’s not hard to spot those that are doing it wrong. You guys stand out like a sore thumb. What are you doing wrong? I’m not only going to tell you what you’re doing wrong but I’m going to tell you how to fix the problem.

The “It’s All About Me!” User

The most frustrating and annoying people on Twitter are the ones that are into shameless self promotion. They’re the ones that get on there and Tweet a million and one times a day about themselves and nothing more. They’re Tweeting about their blog, their website, their company, their promotions but never about anyone else. If you want to lose followers then this is a perfect way to do it. Stop it.

The “Link Farmer”

Who are these people? They’re the ones that post nothing but links to other people’s material and don’t actually say anything for themselves. While it’s great that they’re out there promoting others, it’s beyond annoying to the rest of us when you flood our news feeds with links to random articles every few minutes. It’s a sure fire way to have people stop following you.

The “OMGLOLWTFBBQ” User

I know that Twitter limits you to 140 characters but honestly, use real words. Shortening some words is fine but really there’s no need to have a sentence like “Prfkt. Thx 4 L th advyc evry1. This s a way ezr way 2 cmuNik8. Un42n8ly, itz takn me 3 hrz 2 ryt, but itz much pre4d 2 gtn cut off lyk i u” (Thanks @ActuallyNPH for that jewel). There’s absolutely nothing worse than having to spend 140 seconds to try and decipher what you typed in your 140 characters. English motherf*cker, do you speak it? This is a great segue into the next one…

The “Spelling Bee Champs”

Call me crazy but Twitter has turned people into piss poor spellers. Take the time to spell things correctly. It’s always fun to try and figure out what you just typed because you don’t know how to spell. Not everyone is a great speller, I can accept that but knowing the difference between there, they’re and their is elementary… literally.

What Can You Do To Fix This?

What can you do to fix this? It’s beyond simple. Take the time to engage others in conversations. Comment on their Tweets or Retweet what they’ve said. To “succeed” at Twitter you should really aim for a ratio of about 3:1. That’s three Tweets NOT about yourself for every one shameless self promotional Tweet.

Limit the truncated words to a minimum. Not every word needs to be shortened. If your Tweet is too long then spread it out over two. There’s no harm in that. And while you’re at it, check your spelling.

Now that I’m done and you’re done reading this. Check me out on Twitter @robbclarke and while you’re at it, spread the word about this article by hitting the Retweet button.

In October I had the pleasure of meeting my wife’s cousin Craig, the Director of The Caribou Group, a Brisbane Australia based lighting company. He and I both share a fondness for Twitter which got us talking about the Twitter page for his company. The first thing that I noticed was that they were still using one of the backgrounds provided by Twitter. I decided that I would make it my mission to update their look, at least on the Twitter page. My “mission” being of course to send Craig a Direct Message on Twitter asking him if I could do it. A few weeks later he said yes and here we are.

Click on the thumbnail below for a full size screenshot of their redesigned look or visit their Twitter page here.

It seems today that Twitter is being used by just about every corner of the economy and the restaurant industry is no exception. Twitter has become a fantastic tool for restaurants to not only promote their business but to also engage their clientele and monitor feedback and chatter. I’m going to look at a handful of restaurants, most local Fredericton based and non-chained, that are using Twitter as a means to grow.

The Garrison District Ale House // Fredericton, NB

@garrisonale
The Garrison District Ale House, a great restaurant in Fredericton, NB, has been taking advantage of Twitter for the past few months as a promotional tool. They’ve been announcing specials, new drinks, different events and celebrity appearances. They’ve also introduced Twitter Beer Tasting as a way to gain more followers and get more people into the restaurant. People can only attend and participate in the beer tasting if they register via Twitter. All in all these guys are doing a great job of promoting themselves – the only this that’s missing is a fancy looking Twitter page. **cough cough**

The Blue Door // Fredericton, NB

@theblue_door
Another Fredericton based restaurant, The Blue Door has been using Twitter to announce their daily specials. As someone that can never decide where to eat when we go out, being able to see the daily specials at a local restaurant really comes in handy when making decisions. They promote themselves as one of the most progressive and forward thinking restaurants in Fredericton, using Twitter definitely helps solidify that claim.

Marked5 // Los Angeles, CA

@Marked5
The Los Angeles based Marked5 uses Twitter to announce its location as it travels around Los Angeles. It serves little Japanese “burgers” on a bun composed of pressed rice. They also serve teriyaki salmon, katsu pork, you know, fancy Japanese stuff that they don’t serve in Fredericton. Now if only there were cool lunch trucks like this that traveled around Fredericton and Tweeted their locations. There’s dozens in LA that travel around and Tweet to their followers. They get hundreds of people waiting at their future locations just to get a bite to eat.

Racine’s // Fredericton, NB

@racineschef
Though not for the restaurant itself but for the Head Chef Thomas Gimblett, the Racine’s Twitter account has been great for posting lunch and dinner specials. More recently he’s been posting looking for a prep cook/chef. Like The Garrison and The Blue Door, Thomas has been promoting Racine’s and taking advantage of the massive number of people using Twitter. Also like The Garrison, he sure could use a fancy Twitter page **cough cough**.

Even with just a few examples it’s clear to see that Twitter is helping restaurants help engage their customers and promote their restaurants with upcoming events and specials. Remember though, it’s not enough to simply post about yourself. It’s all about engaging. For every one Tweet that you make about yourself you should have 4 or 5 engaging, re-Tweeting and promoting conversation.

Search Engine Optimization is one of those things that most people think they can do easily, while this is somewhat true, there are a lot of common mistakes that are made which either hurt you or do absolutely nothing to help your ranking. I’m going to talk a little bit about common misconceptions and mistakes made with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

You Will Not Be “Number One on Google”

You would not believe how often I receive requests from people that “want to be number one on Google”. It’s not going to happen for a couple of reasons. The first being that the number one ranked site on Google – is Google. Good luck getting ahead of them. The second being that I’m fully aware that you don’t mean that you want to be the first ranked site on Google, you want to be the first ranked site under a certain keyword but you don’t know how to articulate that.

Vague search terms are not your friend. You really need to narrow down what search terms users will find you with. I know that I’m not going to be ranked anywhere near the top on the Google search results for the phrase “web design” but if I narrow it down to “Fredericton Web Design” I’m not doing too bad. It’s in your best interest to focus where you want to be found. A broader, more vague search is going to lead to millions of results but if you narrow your focus then you’re going to find it easier to step into the spotlight.

In August when I launched my friend Nick Forret’s photographer site he wasn’t even registering under the most common search term for local photographers; “Fredericton Photographer” but now, 2 months later, Nick has sky rocketed up to the first page and is quickly overtaking established sites. What’s this doing for Nick? Well, it’s increasing his business for one. People are now able to find him.

This leads me to my next point…

Search Engine Optimization Does Not Happen Over Night

No, it doesn’t. It happens more often than not that people pay to have SEO applied to their site and then they call the next day or week and ask why they “aren’t the first result on Google.” Half of the answer to that is above, the other half is simply because it takes a while for search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo to crawl your site. It takes time for these bots to travel around the internet and read sites. According to Google “[c]rawls are based on many factors such as PageRank, links to a page, and crawling constraints such as the number of parameters in a URL. Any number of factors can affect the crawl frequency of individual sites.”

Expect the time between crawls to be a week to a month for a low traffic website. Sites with much higher traffic with more incoming links get crawled more frequently and thus have their reports updated quicker.

Flooding Your Site With Keywords Does Not Help Your Ranking

Flooding your <title> tag, alt and title attributes, meta description and content with keywords is not going to help you, if anything it’s going to make search engines avoid you like the plague. Using the same keywords over and over again raises flags with search engines and they see it as spam. The best way to avoid this is to read what’s your writing out loud. Have you used the same word 15 times in the span of three sentences? Does what you’re reading sound really awkward to you? If the answer is yes, then you need to cut back on the keywords. Don’t forget, that content isn’t there just for the search engines to read – there are real people that will hopefully be reading the content on your site as well and if you repeat “Fredericton Web Design” 15 times in a paragraph then they’re going to think that you’re a bit of an oaf. So be smart when writing your content and placing keywords.

Meta Keywords Do Not Do Anything Anymore

This doesn’t count as a full item so it only gets half a point. It’s been speculated for years that search engines don’t see much weight in Meta Keywords and just recently Google announce that they don’t even look at them. It’s true, Google said it themselves. Adding them to your site does absolutely jack. You can thank the porn industry and spam sites for that.

I hope this has helped clear up a few misconceptions about search engine optimization. So next time you’re going to talk to your web guy about being the “first on Google” just stop and think for a second and remember what you just learned.

Thoughts? Feedback? Hate mail?

Before you start promoting yourself or your company via social media there’s a lot that you really need to know. It’s not as clear cut as some people might lead you to believe; that being said, it’s not rocket surgery (see what I did there?) either.

Without further ado, here are some thing that you need to know about social media before you start promoting yourself using Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc.

It’s not as easy as you might think. It requires a lot more effort than just signing up for an account and making the occasional post or Tweet. Social media isn’t like the old standard of creating an ad for television or print and letting the ad do the work. You must constantly be engaging your followers and users and promoting interaction.

That being said, social media isn’t complicated. Yeah, yeah, hold the phone, I just said that it wasn’t easy so why isn’t it complicated? It’s hard work and you need to be on top of things but it’s not overly complicated at all. The underlying principles of social media are pretty simple; sharing, communication, relevance, being helpful, engaging. The major failures out there have come from people’s or company’s inability to share, communicate, be relevant, be helpful and engage their members or followers.

Things can and will go wrong. You can’t forget that things posted on the internet are visible by anyone and everyone. Social media can and will hurt companies. Does everyone remember the infamous Dominos employees in the United States that taped themselves picking their noses and putting it in pizzas? They posted that on YouTube and it immediately hurt Dominos. How about fellow East Coaster Dave Carroll? Dave spent months trying to get United Airlines to fix a guitar that they had broken, when they refused he posted a video on YouTube about the incident (here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo&feature=fvst. Almost immediately United Airlines felt the hit and their stock dropped nearly 20% to the tune of somewhere near $18 million. All that because they didn’t want to replace a $1,500 guitar that they broke. Of course these are all examples of the public using social media to show how the companies had wronged them. Companies should be using social media as a barometer for consumer opinion and acknowledge concerns and try to remedy issues as soon as possible. Use social media as a way to monitor current chatter about yourself or your business. Radian6 a Fredericton based company has made a name for themselves doing just that.

In spite of some of the ads floating around Twitter and Facebook at the moment, social media is not a get rich quick scheme. Doing anything type of marketing via social media requires a lot of time and effort on your part. Personally I’ve been actively networking for about a year now and only now am I starting to really communicate with more people in my field and start to get my name out there – although my name usually incites a “who?” but I digress. Building relationships with others and users takes time and commitment on your end. With millions of people promoting themselves on social media and you need to stand out. It’s all about the quality of your relationships and posts over the quantity of followers and friends. Simply because you have thousands of friends or followers doesn’t mean that you’re doing things correctly. Are they really your target market? Did you start following them or did they start following you? These are all questions that you need to ask yourself.

Can anyone do social media? In short, no. Not everyone is willing to put themselves out there and engage users as much as they should be. Some people just don’t like sharing like others do. Organizations and businesses are often uneasy about the lack of control that social media gives them. The risk of making a very public mistake and having that mistake broadcast world wide in the blink of an eye is something that everyone must be aware of. The other day Scott Stratten from UnMarketing made a great Tweet about posting on Twitter but it applies to all social media. He said “Don’t tweet anything you wouldn’t want to see on a billboard with your name/face/logo/phone # and your mom driving by.” Sure, not everyone can commit to having a presence on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Delicious, Digg, LinkedIn and others all at once. Try focusing on one or two or if you’re a business, delegate different sites to different people.

Back in August I wrote an article about My Top 10 People to Follow on Twitter and I’ve decided to expand on that and narrow the field down my Top 10 people to follow in the design and web industry. This list includes designers, developers, social media folk and much more, it’s list of people that I draw inspiration and learn from on a daily basis.

I use Twitter not only as a social communications tool but also as a resource for learning more about the industry and with the amount of people posting on it, it’s very easy to keep up with the latest trends and learn new techniques. So, without much more rambling, here is my list (in no particular order).

Naldz Graphics / Ronald Bien

URL: http://www.twitter.com/naldzgraphics
Why: Naldz Graphics is a design blog for designers and design lovers. They showcase the best tutorials, freebies, inspirations and other useful and informative resources to help and give love to design community.

Smashing Magazine

URL: http://www.twitter.com/smashingmag
Why: Smashing Magazine is an amazing source for design techniques, inspiration and new lines of code. They’re always updating their Twitter with not only site updates but also useful posts from around the web. Following them has helped me improve my design skill and coding ability a lot.

Site Point

URL: http://www.twitter.com/sitepointdotcom
Why: The official Twitter for Site Point, they generally keep users updated with what’s going on on their own site, not that that’s a bad thing. Site Point is a fantastic resource for designers, developers and anyone in the industry.

Unmarketing / Scott Stratten

URL: http://www.twitter.com/unmarketing
Why: Unmarketing is the Twitter account for Toronto based marketing and social media guru Scott Stratten. Scott is always giving great advice on new social media trends.

Orange Sprocket / Bill McGrath

URL: http://www.twitter.com/orangesprocket
Why: Bill McGrath, the CEO of Orange Sprocket, is a social media addict. Being very into tech and web trends, Bill is always updating his Twitter account with industry news. Following him on Twitter has helped me keep up to date with a lot of new things in the industry.

Carter McLaughlin

URL: http://www.twitter.com/carter_vagrant
Why: The personal Twitter account of Vagrant Web Services owner/operator Carter McLaughlin. Like Bill McGrath, he’s always updating his Twitter with industry news. Following him has been a great way to improve my knowledge and skills.

LogoMotives / Jeff Fisher

URL: http://www.twitter.com/logomotives
Why: LogoMotives is the Twitter account for Portland, Oregon based designer and author Jeff Fisher. Jeff’s creations have been an inspiration for me since I started following him on Twitter and watching what he does has definitely helped me improve with my logo design.

Mashable / Pete Cashmore

URL: http://www.twitter.com/mashable
Why: Mashable’s CEO Pete Cashmore is a social media/networking guru. Following him as helped me improve my knowledge of the industry(?) ten fold. With over 1.3 million followers, the guy definitely knows what he’s talking about. If you want to learn anything about Twitter and/or social media, this is the guy to follow.

Colorburned / Grant Friedman

URL: http://www.twitter.com/colorburned
Why: Colorburned is the Twitter home of the website of the same name as well as owner/creator Grant Friedman. Colorburned is a great design resource featuring tips, tricks and tutorials. If you want to learn any of the new design techniques floating around the web, chances are that these guys can help. Check them out.

Radian6

URL: http://www.twitter.com/radian6
Why: Founded in 2006, Radian6 was created with the idea that companies need to be listening to the social web in order to effectively participate. Intelligence about online conversations is critical: companies need to know what’s being said about their brand, industry, and competitors online. So, they built a listening platform designed to help companies do just that.

Oh, and don’t forget to follow me @ http://www.twitter.com/robbclarke.

Did I miss anyone? Thoughts? Feedback?