Blogging and Social Media is rising everyday with a impressive rate and sooner many of you taking it as a profession. Already, there are many gurus and agencies offering these services and may of us like me making  a living from it. This infographic clearly shows that 61% use social media to identify & attract new customers, 70% use social media to monitor their brand online, 26% tweet, 77% engage in email marketing, 93% is the success rate of social rate of using message boards and YouTube.

After seeing this infographic do you think that, there will be any saturation point in blogging and social media? If yes, then what would be that?

ClickDesk, a social live chat service integrates social communications and voice support, to have the fastest live chat service. It is now available for public beta. It has a built-in browser phone and easily integrates with other IM applications like Google Talk and Skype. It provides social media integration, faster Live-Chat, localization of languages, uptime guarantee-SLA, and a 1-agent free plan for lifetime.

ClickDesk promises to be a unified live chat service that integrates all forms of communication including social media options like Twitter and Facebook and other forms of communication like email, text, voice, video, and so on.

It functions in a fully cloud-based live chat system that is one of its kind and has never been done before. This means that as a user you do not need to waste time with dealing with installation and configuration. It also provides extensive service by ensuring 24-hour support for users that log in to their IM client (Google Talk and Skype) through their computers or mobile devices.

It has been reported that Manohar Chapalamadugu, CEO of ClickDesk, has said that

we are providing more options like live call, live chat and social widgets so businesses can engage with web visitors to boost customer satisfaction and increase sales conversions.

Overall the company hopes for the most effective outcome as there was a lot of positive feedback during its closed beta.

Social Media one of the fastest rising industry and many of you already using it promote your business or brand. Recently, I came across this beautiful infographic, which clearly depicts how social media agency works. Meanwhile let us know what social media strategy or system you follow?

The general rule about social media is that it is only as good as you can use it. So, finally being efficient and effective on social media finally depends on you. Twitter is a social media that has been gaining in popularity with millions of users accessing it. With the kind of population it has it becomes of prime importance to ensure that your voice is heard and you understand the implications of what you put out there for everyone to see. Here are a list of 10 tools that Twitter offers to make your tweets reach the right kind of audience, at the right time, and can provide you with feedback on how you have done.

1.    Tweetdeck : This is like a personal browser to stay in touch with the latest updates and being in touch with your contacts. It can be used to customize tweets with columns, groups, saved searches and automatic updates. It helps you stay in touch with people and topics of your choice easily.

2.  HootSuite : It is a tool that helps you manage multiple social networks all using one client the HootSuite. It also makes it easy to manage many users over many social network accounts for companies that have more than one contributor. Additionally, it also provides graphs to show individual and group contribution statistics.

3.  Nurph : This is a tool that helps you chat on Twitter. One of the best ways to make a social network work for you is to be on it and have a voice. Nurph. You can tweet to nurph.com YourTwitterName, this can then be used to bring your friends & followers together for a real-time chat.

4. CoTweet : It helps marketing and customer support professionals to manage their social media conversations from a centralized dashboard. This ensures that the communication goes from corporations of any size are all speaking in one language. This is useful for companies of all sizes.

5. Twellow : Twellow is similar to the yellow pages, except that this maintains a directory of public Twitter accounts. It also categorises the accounts and has search features that can help you find the people and categories that are of importance to you.

6. Twoorl : Twoorl is a web application that gives you updates on the impact that your Twitter account in the Twitter world. It provides you information with metrics on usage trends, associated clouds and user comparisons. It is priced at $9.90 a month and has a 20 day free trial available.

7. Twaitter : Twaitter helps you schedule your Twitter messages with easy. It helps you regulate the Twitter messages, manage your calendar, translate your tweets to different languages and update your blogs and RSS feed to your Twitter account.

8. Dlvr.it : This tool provides you the option to unite your blog with your Twitter. If you have written a blog and want to share it with your Twitter followers, this tool makes the transition easy. It provides you the option to syndicate content from social media.

9. ManageFlitter : This tool helps you manage who follows you and see who is not following you back. It also provides information on which of the Twitter accounts are inactive. This ensures that you follow and are followed by people that are serious about tweeting and therefore make you more efficient.

10. The Archivist : This is a service that uses the Twitter Search API. It helps find archived tweets. Using the information that the tool returns you can create an archive, analyze, export or share the Tweet. This is developed by the Microsoft’s MIX Online team and help you gather older information easily and effectively.

Social Media Marketing has taken over all types of business and this infographic clearly shows how real estate industry using social media. Real estate owners using social media to provide online property tours, schedule showings and showcase local expertise.

Let us know in comment section how your company uses social media?

[Via] Mashable

How To Be Awesome On Twitter is a nice presentation by @princess_misia where she described about an effective way of using Twitter. If you want to know “How to choose focus on Twitter?”, “How to decorate your profile” or “How to grow followers base” then you should go through this presentation on twitter.

Social media has seen a consistent and explosive growth in 2010. Additionally, experts are hopeful that this trend will continue in 2011. According to the blog Royal Pingdom, the statistics for popular social media in 2010 are as follows:

• 152 million blogs were posted on the Internet (tracked by BlogPulse)
• 25 billion tweets were sent on Twitter
• 100 million new users created accounts on Twitter
• As of September 2010 over 175 million people were on Twitter
• At the end of 2010 over 600 million people were active on Facebook
• In 2010 alone over 250 million new users signed up for Facebook

According to The Creative Department ,

Facebook users also shared 30 billion pieces of content each month throughout 2010, uploaded 20 million videos each month and installed 20 million applications, including such popular games as Farmville and Cityville, each day.

Social media, experts say will grow into a bigger beast in 2011, with more people following social media. It is believed that in 2011 more and more people will start to rely more on social media for decisions that they make. This means that in 2011, more and more brands will start to take social media seriously, and spend a lot more time and money on social media advertising and brand promotion activities.

Algeria has been under the scanner for a while because of the riots that have spread through the country. The riots broke out last week and is said to be instigated to protest the rise in prices. The protests have been suspected to have gained popularity, using the far reaching access of social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

The government of Algeria has tried to block these social networks for a while to reduce. According to a report in the Next Web

Social Media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have been decisive tools activists and rioters use to expose governmental atrocities throughout the riots. These tools have also helped show the aggression expressed by Algerian youth towards public and private property

Therefore, the Algerian government went ahead and completely blocked social media in the aim to reduce the coordinating and organizing protests. Additionally, this ensured that the information of the protests were not reported to the rest of the world and were channelized through formal media.

As much as social media may be blocked in Algeria, social media has not blocked Algeria out of its burning issues. Many people outside and within Algeria have voiced their opinions on the crisis and hope that normalcy has been reinstated quickly in the country.

Dan Schawbel, personal branding expert and guru, reveals 5 common mistakes one makes while trying to make social media work for you. Dr. Woody, CEC certified professional coach who holds a PhD in organizational psychology, interviewed Dan Schawbel.

In an interview reported on Fox Business, Dan Schawbel stated that your brand

what makes you special and stand out from the others

1.    Not Defining Your Brand: In the interview this was one of the first points that Schawbel had said; he said If you don’t define your brand someone will do it for you’.

2.    Inconsistency of Message: There are many options in social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. He emphasized the importance of ensuring that all these networking options communicate the same message about you.

3.    No Clear Targets: To use the different social media, he said, there must be a definite outcome that you expect from the media. If the target is a little unclear, even the communication will be unclear.

4.    Not Converting: He said that the easier thing to do is to get people to come to your page; however, to ensure that the viewers look at your media page and take action is more vital for success.

5.    Failing to Move from Online to Offline: He identified that social media just works as a networking option, finally, it is up to the person to develop on the relationship in the real world.

LifeChurch.tv’s Global has launched the Share the Bible Day initiative. It is an initiative between LifeChurch.tv and the YouVersion mobile Bible application. The Oklahoma-based Edmond-based church’s pastor Rev. Bobby Gruenewald initiated an effort to use the power of social media to spread the word of Christ and his teachings.

Gruenewald said

We’re encouraging everyone to take time on Christmas Day to tweet a Bible verse, share the Christmas story by posting it on Facebook or tell people about the free Bible app’. He added, ‘We basically want to see emphasis and focus on God’s story in all their social spaces online and offline

The church’s free YouVersion Bible application is an initiative that has reached many milestones including over 11 million downloads. Apart from the other milestones, the Bible app was listed as one of the top 10 iTunes 2010 list of top 10 apps and the Apple’s list of reference apps.

On the Bible app, Gruenewald said,

Part of the focus of the Bible app is to make it easy for people to read and share the Bible. He added ‘We really see it as a real revolution in Bible engagement

Like most others, the church and Rev. Gruenewald too are trying to leverage the reach and popularity of the social media to spread the message of Christ, the Bible and the gospels, on Christmas day.

The American Medical Association (AMA) has been wary about the increasing popularity of social media amongst the medical community. It therefore came up with policies and guidance on social media conduct. These policies were approved in the AMA House of Delegates Interim Meeting. Some of the recommendations made by AMA:

• Physicians must not post information that helps identify particular patients. This is to preserve the privacy and confidentiality of patients.
• Physicians should use all available privacy settings and monitor their presence.
• Physicians should consider having different personal and professional profiles on social media or anywhere online.
• Physicians must monitor each others. For instance, if a physician notices that another physician post information that is unprofessional, it will be the duty of the physician to advice the person posting the content to remove or edit it.
• Physicians must be aware that posting information online can affect their reputation in both positive and negative ways.

Overall, AMA has tried to put all the checks and balances in place to ensure that both the patient’s confidentiality and the doctor’s reputation are kept intact. However, with over 500 million users worldwide just on Facebook and the increasing popularity social media, without a doubt this will not be the last time AMA will speak out about social media.

For more information, visit American Medical News website.

In an interesting, yet predictable turn of events, Australia seems to be affected by emails and social media’s like Facebook, Twitter etc. The increasing popularity and accessibility to people and information caused by social media and emails is forcing to close down post offices across Australia.

The Sunday Herald Sun has reported that it has received a list of 27 post offices nationally that will be closed starting December 31, 2010.

The organization, which employees 34,000 people, has seen a dip in profitability for from $500 million a few years ago to $100 million last year.

In its annual report the company said

If we do not take action now to reform our business model, Australia Post will lose money in the next few years. This is not an option.

Australia Post national media manager, Lanie Harris, said

The 27 outlets identified in July represent 0.6 per cent of our network. Those on the list will be monitored before any final decision is made. Any decision to close a post office is taken as a final resort

The union was informed of the closure during the week and told that the staff will be offered new positions. Employees were also told that the selected outlets to be closed were identified based on their long-term sustainability and future. $150 million has been retained for a redundancy program.

Siemens IT Solutions and Services Pvt Ltd are the Indian arm and a 100 per cent subsidiary of Siemens IT Solutions and Services GmbH. They announced a media platform iNeevM that aims to unify the management of digital content with the value of social media. iNeevM, according to Siemens, can be adopted to provide social media benefits to broadcast and publishing sectors. Additionally they can be used on unexplored specialized segments like educational institutes among others.

Siemens IT Solutions vice-president Seetharaman Krishnamoorthy told reporters

Our platform enables enterprises to manage and distribute rich digital content along with the benefits of social media collaboration to enhance efficiency, engagement and productivity

Kishlay Baranwal, senior consultant from Siemens said

The platform, developed in-house with support from our development centres in Germany and Britain, protects infringement of content rights and enables incremental revenue streams by supporting local, remote and live ingest, automated transcoding, frame-accurate annotation for stored and incoming live feeds and online collaboration

iNeevM aims to help content owners and service providers to manage and deliver digital media content over the Internet. The idea is to help provide this information, within an environment of social media and advertisement management, to a large volume of online users.

Social media is gaining popularity, however, with each blunder, organizations are realizing that social media is not as easy as one might imagine. Also, that a lot of research is required before going into social media as an option or hiring top social media agencies . The following are famous blunders on social media.

1. Wall Mart on Facebook : After Target’s successful stint with social marketing, Wal-Mart decided to try its luck too. However, it used a different approach to restrict comments and feedback on its Facebook page to “Wall Posts”, while Target set up a discussion board. When Bloggers took notice of this lack of conversation, it resulted in anti-Wal-Mart posts on the wall. Apart from providing a discussion board for its users, other blunders were that they didn’t study the media enough to see how it works, additionally their general target were older people and were publishing content in a media that is younger, worse still they did not rebrand in this medium to attract their target new audience.
2. InsidetheBCS on Twitter : The BCS system was considered flawed by many college football enthusiasts. However, the company performed public suicide by taking this flawed argument and made it even more visible on Twitter. They hired a public relations firm to help highlight the positive aspects of the BCS. Also, for most part of their first few tweets all they dealt with was image management. Needless to say, this invoked a lot of responses by angry fans.
3. WPMI-TV’s Twitter Billboard : An Alabama news station, WPMI-TV, decided to put up tweets from the LOCAL15NEWS Twitter account on a highway billboard. The 30 ft billboard was used to display tweets, as a way to connect to the station’s follower. It adorned an image of three of its most photogenic anchors, and added a live Twitter feed. The problem was that some of the tweets caught drivers’ attention because of their rather graphic nature. One time though one of the readers took a picture of a tweet with a concocted tweet that lead to the suspension of WPMI-TV’s general manager and news director. (Image Credit – Palmetto Scoop via Mashable)
   
4. Skittles on Twitter Campaign : Although it should have worked out in their favor, Skittles underestimated the power of tweeting when it utilized Twitter. They had created a website that pulls content from Twitter when anyone mentions ‘skittles’. Twitter users felt let down because there was really no communication with the product or the company, instead their posts were just used as fodder for the sites website. What followed was Twitter users posting profane messages on Twitter with a mention of ‘skittles’. All these messages were pulled into their website. This forced the company to move the Twitter feed from being prominent on the page to a small link in the page.
5. Ryan Air and the Blogger: In 2009 a blog post was put up which pointed out problems with the Ryan air booking system. During a booking, a web developer named Jason Roe spotted that the cost of his ticket was at £0. He blogged about this on his site explaining what he had seen and including screenshots. However, Ryanair staff started commenting on the post in an aggressive and unhelpful manner. The Ryanair staff comments made the blog post very popular and a very entertaining read. The Ryanair employees ended up losing a few prospective clients because they just didn’t address the problem and went on a defensive and rude approach.
6. Time Warner : While competing companies had made a name for themselves with their helpful social media customer service, Time Warner has gone another route: squatting on the username TimeWarnerCares. However, TimeWarnerCares, unlike its competitors, didn’t bother to follow anyone, so they had no way to know who wanted to talk with them. Additionally, the twitter page had no bio, photo or link to a website to indicate who was writing these blogs. This social media, it is safe to say, died its natural death.
7. Vodafone on Twitter : One of Vodafone’s UK employees posted some derogatory comments on homosexuals as a tweet on Vodafone’s Twitter page . This could have given a big blow to the company and its reputations, because a lot of readers reacted and started to debate on the tweet. There were some speculations that the Vodafone page was hacked. Vodafone, however, reacted quickly to the tweet, and apologized. They also confirmed that it was breech of rules, that their page was not hacked, and that they were sorry. They also apologized to each twitter tweeter, removed the tweet, and fired the employee.
8. HabitatUK on Twitter : In an attempt to promote the spring collection an intern from the company hash tagged current topics to the HabitatUK’s twitter page . This list included the Iranian Presidential election that caused 12 deaths; this caused a lot of outrage and anger from many Twitter Users. However, HabitatUK instead of apologizing immediately just deleted the tweet until they were eventually dragged into an apology because the controversy was getting bigger, and the damage was already done.
9. BP, the Oil Leak and the Social Media : When the Gulf of Mexico had an uncontrollable spill for what seemed like a 100 years, BP was getting all the attention for all the wrong reasons. The embattled oil company made high costing advertisements, set up a Facebook page and a Twitter page to show that they were doing everything in their control to clean up the mess. However, this effort was a too little and too late. By this time too much of time had passed and BP was criticized for spending all the effort and time to promoting themselves as opposed to stopping the leak and starting the cleanup operation.
10. Toyota Australia and Social Media: Saatchi & Saatchi an advertising giant won the pitch for Toyota in Australia to launch a social media campaign. Their idea was to host a viral filmmaking contest featuring the Yaris car model. But the campaign embarrassingly saw no entries submitted and gained very few Facebook and Twitter followers. This was followed by a desperate attempt by Saatchi to up the numbers by sending out an even more embarrassing call-to-action email to production companies. If that was not embarrassment enough, the viral video advert, that was finally selected as a winner offended many viewers with its sexism and overtones of incest.

Maybe there are more such failed campaigns you might have come across, we would like to hear the same from you. Share it via comment and let us know!

Human Resource Manager of a company knows the complexity involved in recruiting employees and maintaining corporate brands. But not many are aware that the process can be made simpler yet effective with the use of Social Media. Although the world is embracing social media, some HR management is still wondering on how they should be taking part in it. Human Resource of a company can make use of social media to share information, learn, educate, collaborate and get connected with the world.

Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, microblogging, wikis, podcasts, pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking. It can serve as a significant tool in networking with professional contacts, hiring employees, making new contacts and also maintaining corporate brands. So here are some Top 10 ways an HR can make use of Social Media.

Recruitment

As more people sign in with social media to locate appropriate jobs, conversely HR management sign in to find applicants and segmenting tools to make the process narrow and easier. LinkedIn is of course the most important and interesting social media tool available today to help hr in recruiting employee. It serves as an opportunity for candidates to place themselves on industry and approach the companies without hassle. Simultaneously it becomes easier for HR to locate employees and pre-screen the person’s resume and move ahead with the process for future hiring. It really helps the recruiter to save time in the virtual process. Create a page on your intranet using Yahoo Pipes to consolidate the WatchLists for key candidates and competitor hires. Another latest option available is a job search engine called TwitJobSearch.

Build relationships

Joining groups like RecruitingBlogs, and HRMToday can offer great learning for HR. You should also not miss out on Ning that offers anyone to make their own social network online at free of cost. You have a chance to search for and join Ning groups that is particularly dedicated to your market or positions that you recruit for developing relationships with and hire candidates. After all, social media is simply the act of expanding and grouping the number of people you know by meeting your networks’ friends, their friends’ friends and so on. You can use social networks Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, LinkMe, Twitter to build relationships with potential candidates.

Communicate

Blog can be an effective form of communication, which let you communicate important messages or announcement to the people. It allows reader to post feedback and comments. Further social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are incredibly powerful tools for communicating ideas and information. For example, Ernstandyoungcareers is making best use of Facebook for sharing ideas. So build your company’s Facebook Page and have a dedicated tab for your current openings.  Instead of sending emails, write blog posts, tag them & refer employees to the key posts for communicating information.

Training and development

Social Media is another effective tool for training and development of employees at work. Physical class room trainings are traditional ways and no more required with the advent of social media. Implement a microblogging tool, such as Yammer or Co-op, internally for training and development. Creating and sharing YouTube videos can be of great help in training employees of company. In addition developing micro-training programs for induction training using Udutu Teach Facebook application can be easier. Wikis and other sharing tools are optional. Any doubts can be addressed via instant messaging!

Employee Management

One of the major tasks for HR is employee management that involves, new employee, performance of existing employee, salary details, and so on. HR need to have all the employee related information stored at one place, so that accessed when required. Sites like Orangehrm is world’s leading open source HRM solution for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). OrangeHRM offers a flexible and easy to use solution for small and medium sized companies free of charge. By providing modules for personnel information management, employee self service, leave, time & attendance‚ benefits and recruitment companies are able to manage the crucial organization asset – people. The combination of these modules into one application assures the perfect platform for re-engineering and aligning your HR processes along with the organizational goals.

Compensation and Benefits

Candidates can surf through sites like SalaryScout which is a network of users seeking fairness in compensation and benefits. Other site called Glassdoor is a free career community where anyone can find and anonymously share an inside look at jobs and companies. The information comes from current and former employees, interview candidates, and even the companies themselves. Now with more than a million salaries, company reviews, interview questions, office photos, and more, candidates have all the information they need to manage career and make more informed career decisions. Companies and HR can negotiate better with candidates about compensation via such social media sites. Ann Bares blog on compensation force should not be missed that offers practical news, information, tips and musings about employee performance and compensation.

Task Management

Virtual reporting involves hassle, disturbance and can be time consuming for both manager and employers. Now the task management can become simpler with the advent of social media for HR. All you can do is create a group in Facebook/MySpace and let the employee post their task done for the day on that page. They can discuss and add the entire task on daily basis and report the tasks of the day so everyone in the company is aware of what the other person is doing. Additional they can place complains, issues or any other problem directly to HR via this.

Maintain Corporate Brands

Who are you? What do you expertise in? What can be accomplishing about your brand? How would you like to be known and documented by colleagues, other professionals, and potential employers? This entire information you can put in your social media profiles and this will eventually improve your corporate image and personal brand in market. Having a company’s website is a must, as visiting your social media profile users will then want to more about it. So a website will complete in and out can maintain corporate brands well.

Promoting and Advertising

There are various ways an HR can promote and advertise with the help of social media. Advertisements targeting users on social media channels are turning more widespread with social ads. By knowing who is using which social media site, HR can promote their company to the targeted audience on the suitable social site. Other option could be to have your employees & managers run online career fairs, talk about life in the company, court potential talent using social media.

Learn and Share

Human Resource of a company can learn through some amazing slideshare presentations regarding webinars and seminars. Likewise learn to subscribe for RSS Feeds that can be really helpful, for example Top 50 HR Blogs by BSchool can be a real source of information for Human Resource of a company. Of course, sharing what is needed is possible via various sources of social media.