Google Alerts is a great free service that scours the internet for mentions of keywords that interest you and then they ‘alert’ you when the terms you are tracking are found.

You can set up to receive the alerts as they happen, daily or weekly. For example if I wanted, I could make a Google Alert for the term “Social Media Breakfast Maine” and when we were mentioned, I would be alerted. This is a really easy way to see if people are writing blogs about you, there is news about you or just to see if people are talking about you.

So the question was, are those terms case sensitive. The answer is no. Upper case, lower case… doesn’t matter.

So go ahead. Set up Google Alerts for your name, your company, maybe even your competitors names or common misspellings of your name.

A few tips:

• Always put quotation marks around the query you are setting up the alert for. That way you will get the exact match for that phrase.
• Set up the digests to come to you weekly or daily but most likely setting them us as they happen will be unnecessary and very distracting.

Good luck and happy monitoring!

Rob is going to talk about social media developments, reflect on things happening in the space and interview a lot of different people on how they use social media. I think Rob’s perspective and network are going to make this an interesting blog to follow.

Hopefully he will be part of the change of demystifying social media and making it just a part of the conversation about how we now live our lives and do business now.

Previously businesses could only see who had been in their establishment in the past three hours and the ten people who visited their business the most. They also could only see the first names and last initial of those visitors.

With the new update, businesses can view more than the three hour span, they can see specific times of visits and have access to visitor’s first and last names.

Another good update for businesses is that now when you add your business Twitter account to your Foursquare account, when people check-in at your business and tweet about it, your Twitter handle will be added to the tweet.

So what does this mean for you as a business owner?

• If you haven’t already, claim your business listing on Foursquare
• Review your business’ Foursquare Analytics to get insight on who is visiting your business when and what they have to say about it.
• Connect your Twitter account to your Foursquare listing
• Take all this new information and make some changes – specials during slow times, get to know your VIP customers, interact with people who check in on Twitter, ask people to leave tips and reviews etc.

Leave us a comment on this blog post and tell us a local Maine business you think is doing a great job using technology to market themselves*.
Friday morning (8/31/12) we will pick one RANDOM comment as our winner.

The commenter will win:

• 1 copy of Small Town Rules by Barry J. Moltz and Becky McCray
• 1 copy of Big-Box Swindle by Stacy Mitchell (one of the founders of Portland Buy Local) and
• 1 copy of the South Portland Buy Local 2012-2013 Business Directory

Easy enough right? So comment away!

Thank you Longfellow books and South Portland Buy Local for the giveaway items.

* What are we going to do with the businesses you tell us about? We will check them out, ‘Like’ them on Facebook and possibly reach out to them in the future to be a SMBME speaker, to feature in a Tech Trends report with WMTW, to write about on this blog or we may just send them some good local vibes.

This question has come up a few times in the Social Media Breakfast Maine LinkedIn Group so I thought I could make a list here too. When people are looking to move to the area, move back to the area or to be more connected in our little city – they look for good networking opportunities with business people like themselves. Here in our lively city there are events and opportunities like that all year long.

Here are a list of great networking opportunities right here in Portland:

• Maine Tweetup – Held about once a month the Maine Tweetups (#metweetup) are a great place to connect in person with people you can continue your conversation with after the night is over on Twitter. There is a Maine Tweetup Facebook Group that seems to be the best place to hear about the next gathering.
• PechaKucha Portland – PechaKucha is for the creative types. It is a really neat event that meets every few months. Area designers and creatives present their work in a unique format. They have a Facebook page and website where you can hear about upcoming events and calls for speakers.
• Portland Green Drinks – Greendrinks is held the second Tuesday of every month at various locations around the city. The goal is to connect people from Portland who are interested in environmental and sustainability issues. You are encouraged to ‘bring your own vessel’ (beer drinking vessel) and you can fill it up as long as the beverage supplies last. Really energetic room.
• Propel – Propel is affiliated with the Portland Regional Chamber. Their mission is to cultivate and foster the interests and careers of young professionals in the area. They have regular events, mixers and the popular Entreverge Awards. You can find out about upcoming events they have on their website.
• PubHub – If technology and entrepreneurship is your thing, you should attend a PubHub – the free beer doesn’t hurt either. This event, organized by the Casco Bay Tech Hub, gets together once a month. They feature at least one speaker a month to talk about challenges and opportunities right here in Maine. They have a website that lists their upcoming events and a newsletter you can sign up for to get an email when the next event is announced.
• Social Media Breakfast Maine – Obviously! Once a month we learn about things happening in the social media space, connect with our peers and eat bacon. To hear about the next SMBME, you can sign up for our email list (right hand side of the page) and you will hear about the next event first!

There are of course many more events happening all the time. I know folks like the Maine PR Council, 2 Degrees Portland and LiveWork Portland have mixers and events but I am not sure how regularly.

If you know of a regular networking event for area professionals, feel free to tell us about it in the comments!

Happy Networking!

Here is a chart with the breakdown of the roles from the Facebook Developer blog:

This should be super useful to organizations with multiple page admins who need to access the admin panel for all kinds of reasons. Nice work Facebook.

After taking a look at our lively Twitter stream from the morning, these were some of my favorite tweets:

#SMBME is a packed house! Cooper is getting ready to introduce himself to the crowd. His teacher @dwdMaine is speaking twitter.com/jackie_ward/st…

— Jackie Ward (@jackie_ward) June 29, 2012

Seriously packed house for @petershankman at #SMBME. And #bacon. twitter.com/therichbrooks/…

— Rich Brooks (@therichbrooks) June 29, 2012

Can’t believe how much #smbme has grown! Wow. This is great twitter.com/shonymac/statu…

— Shawn McGowan (@shonymac) June 29, 2012

@therichbrooks @amanda_pants there’s an #smbme today???

— Ryan Dlugosz (@thatRD) June 29, 2012

I love how real the case studies are at #smbme#smbme

— Marc A. Pitman (@marcapitman) June 29, 2012

“I think using facebook to sell something SUCKS” – @dwdmaine #smbme

— Derek Rice (@derekjrice) June 29, 2012

Social media is a much faster way to screw up in front of a much larger audience in a shorter amount of time. @petershankman #SMBME

— Rich Brooks (@therichbrooks) June 29, 2012

I didn’t know who @petershankman was before today. Now he’s talking about rolling around naked in $5000 cash. I now know too much. #SMBME

— April D. Cohen-Tracy (@SoPo_Realtor) June 29, 2012

Know your audience.Find out how they want to be informed @petershankman #smbme

— Suzanne K. Madore (@GirlOrangeCoat) June 29, 2012

Great Fam Guy ref by @petershankman: “time for the nightly news to tell you about what you read on Twitter 4 hrs ago.” #deadlineisnow #SMBME

— Jackie Ward (@jackie_ward) June 29, 2012

You are only as great as a trusted referral source says you are to a potential client or connection. #smbme @petershankman

— Happy Go Legal (@HappyGoLegal) June 29, 2012

One of the best, most tweetable, presentations at #SMBME I can remember. Thanks, @petershankman!

— Rich Brooks (@therichbrooks) June 29, 2012

Ladies and gentlemen, Cooper has left the building #SMBME

— Derek Rice (@derekjrice) June 29, 2012

Don’t focus on getting new members. Focus on doing amazing things for your members. They’ll get new ones for you. @petershankman #smbme

— Marc A. Pitman (@marcapitman) June 29, 2012

Thanks everyone for a fun morning! Now take everything you learned and go do something awesome!

To change your username: go to your page > Edit Page > Update Info > Change Username.

For more information about Facebook Usernames, you can check out their help center section for it.

If you have experience with Facebook’s Insights, you have seen where your most recent and most popular content is listed. These content items are listed in Facebook Insights with: the post, the reach of the post, the number of engaged users, how many people were talking about this and the post’s virality.

If you click on engaged users, it gives you a breakdown of how people were engaged with your content. Perhaps they watched the video, viewed the photo, clicked on something, created their own update from your post etc. You may also see any ‘negative feedback’ your post may have received. Negative feedback is defined as “People who hid your post or gave it negative feedback in their news feed”.

When your posts show up in someone’s news feed they have the option to like it or comment on it. They also have the option to hide the story, report the story as spam or to hide all stories from your organization. If they choose one of those latter options, it is considered ‘negative feedback’.

I don’t think this is something to really lose sleep over. I do think you should review negative feedback reports as you review your Facebook Insights. Knowing which content people don’t value or hide, will just help you to refine what you are delivering. Maybe it was worded wrong. Maybe you talk about your sponsors too much. Maybe you post too many photos or videos. Perhaps you post too frequently. It could be lots of things.

Don’t let negative feedback derail your efforts too much! Just let it help guide you in your content planning for the future!