I went to the Marcom10 conference last week in Amsterdam and followed an interesting session about Social Media Strategy given by Hans van der Meulen from WDM.
WDM conducted a survey in the Netherlands (Social Media Barometer) to understand the average usage of Social Media by Dutch people.

Some interesting insights were surprisingly the low number of people that actually use Twitter in the Netherlands (6%) , the large number of people using Hyves on a daily basis, the increasing number of people using Facebook, and the relatively large number of people reading blogs (30%).

Seeing these numbers only strengthens my opinion on focusing on creating a sensible strategy for reaching your customers , whilst using the social media tools that they use too.

Using Facebook to build your online business community is great, however for many business owners, having too much of their information shared is still holding them back from using Facebook.  

Facebook is working on new privacy control settings that will give people simple control of all information shared.

Here is how Facebook’s New Privacy Controls will work, illustrated in a simple screen capture.

I am curious as to how long this privacy control settings will last and who will eventually get the upper hand: Facebook or Facebook Users?

Many people I meet are afraid to use social media because they are not sure about what they should be communicating about, so here are some ideas:

Please share your ideas for communication

Yesterday Tag-On has reached a milestone in the implementation of Social Media at the Expatriate Archive Centre.

For the First time, we integrated all the social media elements to broadcast an announcement about an academic research that was conducted using source material from the Archive.

We started by thinking about the angle of the message that we want to post and who would benefit from hearing about it. We created a blog post . Then, we wrote a tweet about it, shared the blog with the Archive’s Linked In group, and shared the blog with our Facebook group.

Finally we put key words in Google Alerts to check the responses and feedback. So now, the only thing that is left is to monitor how many people read the blog and as result of it want to conduct their own research at the archive too…

Please join our discussion in the Tag-On LinkedIn group about Integrating Social Media elements. Share your own experiences

You meet people on various occasions. Some you meet face-to-face, some have shared information on the internet, some participated in a virtual discussion. Others, you have heard their name through someone else, etc.

Eventually, you ask them to join your network, but did you ever take a moment to ask yourself why do you really want them to join your community? Is this just for being able to say that you have a large number of followers or is it for a particular purpose?

An interesting approach to deciding who you invite to your virtual network is by looking at their potential “role in your business” and their level of involvement .

They could be now:

• prospects/competitors who are listening, but not getting in the way  
• colleagues who are providing resources but no getting personally involved
• prospects who are actively involved in the community and participating in discussions

and potentially:

• your ambassadors who are taking a stand and talking about you and your ideas with their contacts.  
• Your sponsors or customers taking a high personal risk

This approach will only be successful if you focus on those activities that nurture the relationships between you and the ones you have invited.

 How do you decide who to invite? Please share