Handshake specializes in social media public relations, not in social media marketing for social media sales, because the latter use of social media remains unproven as a research-based way to achieve results. 

Research shows that traditional marketing can result in sales, although less so in an age of media fragmentation and in today’s economy.  In contrast, the challenge with social media marketing is that the only results of its effectiveness with regard to generating sales are anecdotal.  Just this month, David Cooperstein, a senior advisor with Forrester, probably the top marketing research firm, said as much:  “So how can we move beyond the abundant proof that social media impacts buzz to proof that social media positively affects revenue?”

I define marketing as attempting to communicate with a specific customer segment in hopes of generating sales, and public relations as offering information broadly to a wide audience in hopes of engaging interest, memory, and mentions to others.

Whether using an offline strategy through traditional means such as hosting a networking mixer, or an online strategy through updating a corporate Facebook page, PR’s purpose is the same:  awareness.  If people are aware of you, they can buy from you.  If they’ve never heard of you, they can’t because they don’t even know you exist.  Awareness can result in word-of-mouth referrals from people who know you to people who don’t.  Is PR buzz correlated positvely with sales? Yes. Does a direct one-to-one-correspondence exist between being known through PR and sales?  No. And that's also not one of PR's claims.

For businesses, I don't see social media as A Good Thing. I'm not a social media evangelist.  I’m not a fan of social media any more than I’m a fan of a hammer.  It has no ethical or moral value.  It’s a tool that works well for certain tasks. 

Handshake is in the “abundant proof that social media impacts buzz” business - social media PR.  While big corporations and big marketing research firms with big budgets are in the process of collecting data about the relationship between social media and sales, we’re doing what social media is really good at - generating buzz and awareness for our clients through social media public relations.

Public speaking is the number one fear reported by people in the U.S.  That's probably why some companies have challenges making corporate videos.

In Why the Contest Prize is a Flip Camera for the Blacksburg Foursquare Swarm Party, we restated the bottom line about online marketing with videos, though:  Gotta do it.

Sometimes if someone else goes first, it helps us get started.

We asked Allen Fuller.  He went first.  And his friends went, too.  That's leadership.  Thanks, Allen.  Great friends, too.

Allen Fuller is a freelance writer, photographer and aspiring entrepreneur.  He blogs at AllenJFuller.com, you can find him @AllenJFuller, and read more Allen Fuller on Handshake 2.0.

***

We invite you to share your company video on Handshake 2.0 with a Warm Handshake.

"Not only are video results increasingly common in Google's search results, but your videos stand a much better chance than your text pages of being shown on the first results page."
- Forrester Research

"You have to see it for yourself."
- Morpheus, The Matrix

"It's still who you know."
- Handshake 2.0

At the Foursquare Swarm Badge Party in Blacksburg, Virginia, we're giving away a Flip UltraHD Camcorder. 

It's not a "re-gift" that someone gave me that I'm passing off as a prize.  I took this cheesy picture to show that I ordered it directly from Amazon.com brand new for the contest winner. (Yes, I did want to open it, but the plastic tab closure is intact. I hope the contest winner will let me have a look!)

Why is the contest prize a Flip Camera?

We cited the stats in Should My Company Use Online Video Marketing in 2010?

According to experts, to know us and to know our companies - and to do business with us - people want to see us for themselves.  So we have to video ourselves.

Okay!  Our Flip Camera contest winner will get us started!

We'd love the contest winner to take a company video, upload it to YouTube, buy a Warm Handshake for $49, and let us feature the video on Handshake 2.0.

How are we doing as a company with video at Handshake 2.0?  We have a Handshake 2.0 YouTube channel and a magnum opus, The Handshake Video.  The Energy Check video is solid.  After that, we're a work in progress.  We continue to experiment, including with bad hair days, Handshake 2.0's cat and Mr. Handshake 2.0's cat.

Is making corporate videos sometimes hard, sometimes embarrassing, sometimes baffling? Yes.  But, first page matters. According to iProspect, 68% of search engine users click on first page results.  For 32% of search engine users, results on other pages essentially don't exist.

We exist!  First page, here we come! We've got another Flip Camera in the game!

Is being a featured guest on a Twitter chat akin to being a public speaker or presenter? Oh, yes, but with a few differences: 1) the potential audience size is roughly 75 million and, 2) you have fewer than 140 characters to get your point across and keep the audience engaged.

So, what do you, as the person taking center stage, have to do to become the rock star of Twitter chats? Easy: Be prepared. Be on time. Be friendly. Be quick.

BE PREPARED

Prepare 10 - 12 key talking points as you would for any presentation and write them out in an email to yourself or in a document to make it easy to copy and paste from.

Keep the word count of these messages to 120 characters (or fewer) so as to allow room for the 11-character hashtag string (ex: #CampusChat) and retweets (RT). This post on the anatomy of a Twitter tweet may be helpful.

Decide which Twitter support tools you are going to use and install or configure these hours before the chat begins (not ten minutes before).

BE ON TIME

About 15 minutes prior to the start of the chat, set up your tools, browser windows, the document with your prepared statements, and whatever else you are going to use to track and respond to the chat conversation. (I recommend TweetChat or something similar since it automatically applies the chat hashtag to each statement you post.)

Be prepared to greet the chat participants, introduce yourself, and/or respond to the introduction made by the host.

BE FRIENDLY

Respond to any questions posted with the hashtag in the tweet. Some participants will post a question to you, the speaker, directly. For example, tweets on the next #CampusChat could read:

@RealYaverbaum What was the best advice from the GCs you interviewed? #CampusChat.

while others may state their questions as if to the group expecting you to respond:

What's the best GC advice you ever got? #CampusChat

It's fine to post a welcome to everyone and to individuals, esp. if you know them.  People appreciate acknowledgment.

Say thank you when appropriate for RTs, good points made by others, etc.

At the closing, thank everyone for attending and tell them how to contact you. For example:

@koofers:  Thanks to everyone for coming out tonight! Thank you @CollegeVisit for organizing this. #CampusChat

@koofers: Stay tuned - many exciting, new things coming this Fall to @Koofers! #CampusChat

@koofers: If you have any additional questions or comments, please feel free to E-mail me at michael AT koofers.com #CampusChat

BE QUICK

Respond quickly to direct questions. The more quickly you respond, the more time you have to post more of your content/message and engage with participants. Participants are the ones who can make your messages go viral. The more often you can communicate clearly and quickly, the greater the chance of having your message spread across the Twitter-universe and keeping your audience engaged.

Type fast and stay focused so you can respond quickly. It's impossible to know how many people will attend your chat or how fast the tweets will fly across your screen. One of Matt Collier's #blogchats rocked with over 2,500 tweets and 300 participants.

You can, of course, "wing it." Many subject-matter experts are completely comfortable doing this, and if you do, please take a few minutes to make sure you technology tools are loaded and working. Even rock stars need a sound check.

***

From Handshake 2.0:

Z. Kelly Queijo wrote about the history of #Blogchat in An Interview with Mack Collier, Founder of Blogchat, covered the biggest blogchat ever in her interview with Mack Collier, and wrote Drink Up - The Morning After Blogchat with Amy Africa.

Gowalla recently offered free Nets tickets to anyone who found the digital tickets they scattered in the surrounding area. (Here's a case study by VaynerMedia.)

Foursquare (which turned one in March 2010) was rumored to have been offered $100M for acquisition by Yahoo.

Mayors, millions of dollars, weird names.  What exactly is going on here?

The last year especially has seen the growth and proliferation of location-based social networks and social games.

As Anne Clelland has posted in the past, her formula for a killer app is:

Game Mechanics + Social Networking + GIS + Business Data
+ Algorithm, Formula and/or Idea + Mobile = Killer App

Location-based apps are killer. 

In Foursquare I can compete with my friends to get the most badges and to become (and stay) Mayor of my favorite shops.  I can leave my mark by reviewing a business in Yelp or leaving a tip for others about my favorite item.  Gowalla lets me collect items left by other members and leave them at new locations, and add photos of the decor and food.  Plus, I never know when I will unlock a mayorship special or find an item that gets me a free ticket to a basketball game or a free ride from Chevy to SXSW.

And these are the benefits to the users.  Each system is offering real-time location-based promotions and advertising for businesses.  Foursquare also recently launched a whole suite of analytic tools to let businesses glean valuable data from those members that check in to help plan specials and marketing campaigns. No wonder the rumored offer from Yahoo for Foursquare was so high and Facebook is trying to move into the space. 

This new way to interact with friends in the digital and real world is not without its concerns. PleaseRobMe.comis a caution to be careful how much information we post online and where we let our check-ins be posted. At the end of the day, however, it is an exciting new way to explore a new town or your hometown.

Hey, Jeremy Hart, I am coming after your mayorships! Watch out!

***

Allen Fuller is a freelance writer, photographer and aspiring entrepreneur.  He blogs at AllenJFuller.com and you can find him @AllenJFuller.

I find watching Twitter's public timeline of world updates by over 75 million Twitter users fascinating.  Every language and symbol flows along in a stream of human expression, from the sublime to the profane. 

Is someone watching my tweets stream by?

When I post an update to Twitter, who sees it?  When I repost an update - retweet a tweet - who sees it?

The answer is not tweet-short.

When I began using Twitter in October, 2008, thanks to the encouragement of Jeremy Hart, I opened the  corporate account @handshake20.  In the past month, I have begun using @anneclelland as well. 

When I use the @handshake20 account and tweet directly to someone with @ preceding the Twitter user name - in this case from @handshake20 to @anneclelland - that tweet shows up directly in @anneclelland's Home Twitter feed.

Except, as Hillel Fuld explains, "If someone you are following replies to someone else, you will not see that reply unless you follow both sides."

The plot thickens when I use a period before the @ or I retweet, or post someone else's tweet.

The "." before the @ can be read as, "This is a direct reply being made public."

A retweet, or RT, can be read, "The following text is being attributed to another user."

The screenshot below shows a period before the @  and two ways to retweet.  The middle tweet is a retweet using Twitter's retweet symbol.  The third tweet shows a retweet using manual typing of the letters "RT" for retweet.

If I use the Twitter Retweet button and function, the tweet is only visible to my followers.  I don't know if it's searchable or not.  If I type "RT" manually, it's visible to everyone and searchable by Twitter.

From Twitter Support Frequently Asked Questions:

What does RT, or retweet, mean?
RT is short for retweet, and indicates a re-posting of someone else's tweet.  This isn't an official Twitter command or feature, but people add RT somewhere in a tweet to indicate that part of their tweet includes something they're re-posting from another person's tweet, sometimes with a comment of their own.  Check out this great article on re-tweeting, written by a fellow Twitter user, @ruhanirabin.

Here's Twitter's example of how its retweet button works from Project Retweet: Phase One from the Twitter Blog:

Let's say you follow @jessverr, @biz (that's me), and @gregpass but you don't follow @ev. However, I do follow @ev and the birth of his baby boy was so momentous that I retweeted it to all my followers... You'd see @ev's tweet [It's a boy!] even though you don't follow him because you follow me and I really wanted you to have the information that I have.

And here's another version from How Does the Auto Retweet Thing on Twitter Work.

Here are the results of my own research.

I can see the dot tweet and I can see the manually typed RT.  But at @anneclelland, I wasn't following @handshake20. So I couldn't see the tweet made using the Twitter retweet button.

That means that the Twitter Retweet button is easy to use, but it reaches only my followers, not everyone.  And, again, I don't know if it's logged for later search in Twitter or not.

My conclusion? To get the greatest possible reach for each of my tweets, particularly for those publicizing our clients, I want to manually type RT.  If someone's looking at the public stream of all humanity on Twitter, I don't want to miss a chance to be seen.

***

Update 5/27/10

From The Next Web:  Twitter responds to missing RT's saga: "Some Twitter users were noticing that anything with RT in it wasn’t being seen in certain search functions.  The community as a whole went into an uproar. It seems that Twitter heard that message loud and clear...The RT function is important to many of us, and Twitter sees that fact."

Whew!

Thanks to Allen J. Fuller for the link.

***

Dan Burdi, Allen J. Fuller and Maureen Carruthers contributed to this post.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media platforms provide me with unprecedented connection to friends and businesses.  It is hard to do a Google search now without coming across a few sites trying to tell me how it can make "'millions" of dollars if I make a Facebook page or use some five-step plan to exploit those connections.

Scams aside, the use of social media opens up many doors for networking and advertising.  As awesome as these new opportunities are, I recently learned how important it is to read the fine print.

As I dreamed about my future businesses, ideas for promotions came to mind.  I planned to use Facebook and Twitter to tell people about these events when they happened.  Then I found this.

Facebook is pretty strict about promotions.  No purchase can be necessary, prior approval is required, and many other prohibitions exist.  Advertising on Facebook is a whole different situation. 

IKEA executed a really innovative contest recently, but the contest completely broke these rules.  To my knowledge, IKEA was not penalized for this contest but I do not want to roll the dice with my company's web presence.

Twitter, YouTube, and Foursquare all have similar rules and restrictions for the use of their network.  Each is offering a free service that is largely ad or venture capital funded.  They deserve their cut.

Keeping track of all these rules is yet another reason to convert social media followers (or likers) to blog and newsletter subscribers. Then, only FTC rules apply.  (Handshake 2.0 has what Mark Schaefer named the "world's first social media authenticity policy" to address FTC rules.)

I am not a lawyer, so I will consult with legal counsel before trying to execute any social media promotions in the future.  At this point I can now go into those discussions with confidence with a basic understanding of the rules. I save time time and money by easily rejecting the ideas that break the Terms of the networks I want to use.

***

Allen Fuller is a freelance writer, photographer and aspiring entrepreneur.  He blogs at AllenJFuller.com and you can find him @AllenJFuller.

If you've logged onto Facebook since April 21, 2010, you've likely noticed Facebook fans are a thing of the past.  Now, instead of becoming a fan, page visitors click the thumbs-up button to "like" a page.  The good news is this lighter-weight action could mean more connections for businesses - after all, it's easier to "like" something than to "love" it.  That having been said, some adjustments may be necessary for businesses to make the most of this change.

First, drop the word "fan."  If you ask website or blog readers to become a "fan on Facebook," it's time to update your language.  The official phrase Facebook uses is "like this page."  Unfortunately, there is no easy way to refer to the people who like your page as a group.  The word "likers" is gaining some momentum, but it is too early in the transition to know what the final word will be.

Next, be ready for bigger changes.  Facebook has more updates in store, including a universal like button and seamless integration of pages into the interests section of user profiles.  This could mean greater exposure for a company, but only if the page fits the new paradigm.  Pay special attention to your Facebook account over the next couple of weeks to make the most of the shift.

A word of caution.  "Liking" might be a lighter action, but it doesn't mean customers will suddenly start flooding your page.  An effective social media strategy, including Facebook,  focuses on building relationships, listening to customers, and expanding networks.  By providing useful content, responding to questions and concerns, and being your authentic self, you can continue to create true fans through your Facebook page, no matter what the button says.

***

Maureen Carruthers is a nonprofit communications consultant and a graduate of Virgina Tech.  She writes about social media and other relationship-based marketing topics at Low Hanging Fruit.

What do we do with a post on Handshake 2.0 for our clients?  We make it a "handshake" and extend it far and wide.

The content of our clients' posts on Handshake 2.0 share insights, news and developments of interest and value to others about their companies, leaders, people, products and services.  A blog post provides strong strides for a company's social media footprint and increases a company's chances over a static web site for listing in search engine results.

So, here's what we do.  First we publish our client's great content in a blog post on Handshake 2.0.  We've used our own post on Foursquare for this example.  Here's a screenshot of the top half of the post on Handshake 2.0.

We then publicize the post on Handshake 2.0's Facebook page.  In the right side of the above screenshot, you can see a mini-version of the post in a Facebook widget.  Here's what the post looks like on Facebook itself:

We next use bit.ly, the URL shortener, to create a Twitter-friendly length for the post's URL.  The URL for the post in this example is a whopping 66 characters. 

http://www.handshake20.com/2010/04/mayor-of-handshake-20-headquarters.html 

Add to that our 11 character Twitter user name, handshake20, and we're left with only 63 characters in which to create "value added" content. In seeking business results with a Twitter update, every one of those 140 characters count.

Bit.ly shortened the long URL to this short form of 20 characters:  http://bit.ly/dknelI

That left us plenty of room to share the post with a Twitter "tweet":

Different people like to receive information in different ways - that's media fragmentation - so different potential customers, clients, partners, vendors, investors, you name it - "reside" in many places online.

In each of the social media venues we've covered - Handshake 2.0, Facebook, Twitter - Handshake 2.0 interacts with, and has relationships with, lots of different people.  Individuals in those groups, interested in the content we share, click on our links and share the content with their contacts. 

What we do to a post on Handshake 2.0 populates the top of the sales funnel by reaching an online handshake out to invite those online, wherever they are, to visit our clients' web sites.

***

We invite you to use Handshake 2.0's specialty - a Warm Handshake - custom-designed and value-priced to invite your potential customers and clients to want to know more about your company by visiting your web site.  Please read more about a Handshake 2.0 Warm Handshake for your company.

According to Mashable, as "The Mayor" of a location in Foursquare, I'm one of one million users connected to a company currently valued at $100 million.  Further, I'm hot!  "Foursquare has been on fire in a way that no startup since Twitter has come close to achieving."  Better:  "[Foursquare] is changing the world..."

What is Foursquare?  According to its help page, Foursquare is "a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide and a game that rewards you for doing interesting things."

Jeremy Hart (hands down Foursquare Mayor of Blacksburg, Virginia!) was the first person I knew to use Foursquare, and Patsy Stewart used it in a way I found gave personality to places.  Knowing I had a cross country plane flight ahead to do a beta test, I joined last week.

For me, Foursquare is a way to use the GPS function in my BlackBerry to connect me in new ways to people I follow on Twitter. 

Ha!  And it's fun!  Look at my stats!  I want to be Mayor of The Weight Club!  Who is Bluto H.?!

Ahem.

Anyway, Foursquare has also inspired some new formulations.

I first heard the term game mechanics used by Frederick Cook, founder of Actifity.

I offered this GIS R.O.I. formula in a post about client InteractiveGIS

Business Data + Algorithm, Formula and/or Idea + GIS = New R.O.I.

and this Killer App formula

Business Data + Algorithm, Formula and/or Idea + GIS + SaaS = Killer App

and saw a demo of NewCity's Nomad mobile app.

Then I joined Foursquare.

Now I'm thinking:

Game Mechanics + Social Networking + GPS GIS + Business Data
+ Algorithm, Formula and/or Idea + Mobile = Killer App

Now I'm off to The Weight Club to do some more thinking.  And to Check In with Foursquare!  Watch out, Bluto H.!