Personally, I tend to not sit idly like a deer caught in the headlights, instead I think – what can I do to make them hurt more than they hurt me?

How can I make them lose 5, 10, or more customers?

Well with social media – it’s a lot easier than you would think.

Here’s how to do an anti-company attack when you’ve been taken advantage of.

1. Press Releases – If you’re willing to invest $50-100 you can put out a press release of your negative experience. Press releases get wide distribution and lots of news papers and tv news stations get their news directly from Press Releases. This can be huge if you get featured on a large news publication.

2. Be sure to create a negative post about your situation and save it in a text file. Then login to Facebook, visit their Facebook page and in the discussion area post your negative feedback. If it gets deleted be sure to keep resending it – so that they waste man-hours deleting your negative response.

3. Write a blog post on your website, or even better try and find someone with at least a Pagerank of 3 to submit your negative article too, then link to it from twitter, facebook, etc.

4. Work on your social networks – get more followers, get more fans, get more connections. The more people you know the more likely you are to get even.

I currently have 12k followers on twitter and often when I submit something negative and they see that I have 12k followers they contact me immediately to try and fix the issue.

In fact recently when Allstate dropped our homeowners insurance without cause costing us over $950 (mortgage insurance), we got an immediate call back from their corporate execs, but they told us they would call us back and never did, and wouldn’t answer our calls. We figured they thought the issue would just go away.

I’m here to say that I will be blogging about Allstate’s Crappy Insurance Service at least once a week till they pay us the $950 they cost us, which will probably be never, but it’s an injustice that they can do whatever they want and screw people over left and right.

5. If it’s a local business submit negative reviews at following sites: MerchantCircle, Yelp, Google Places, Foursquare, CitySearch, Gowalla.

6. Be dilligent and keep following up on it. If you know SEO you could even design a consumer-watch type website about why consumers should be wary of the company.

The bottom line is : The more damage you can do to their good name, the more they will strive to do better customer service in the future. With Social media’s wide reach today we finally have a conduit with which we can fight back against corporate greed, and corrupt corporations. Social media is changing the world, but you need to take a stand and let everyone know about your stance on the matter.

Social media can be extremely overwhelming, especially if you’re of the old school business thinking. You’re happy if you can manage your email account, but all these technologies seem a little daunting to master.

You wouldn’t jump into a business without a plan, that would be crazy. Spending some real deep thought and effort coming up with a social media strategy with real measurable goals that include how you will monetize your new social media presence will definitely go a long way towards guaranteeing your social media success.

A social media study recently stated that 9% of small and medium-sized businesses are usint Twitter to market their businesses, but did you know that 50% of twitter users say that they are more likely to buy from companies that use twitter effectively?

Being good at social media says something about your company – namely it says that you know how to communicate effectively with people, and are open to suggestions from everyday people. It also builds trust and other things that go a long ways towards building your brand.

Further 32% of the businesses agreed that they’re planning on using more social media marketing in the next 12 months via other social sites such as: Facebook, LinkedIn, or Myspace.

Another interesting fact of the survey is that 16% of the businesses surveyed who are under 3 years old use Twitter for promotion, compared with only 2% of companies that are older than 11 years. What this basically says is that new companies are more likely to get social media and apply it, and that if larger companies don’t pick up on it -they could easily fall by the wayside and get passed by lesser known companies.

Now don’t panic, social media can be an easy implementation if you plan for it. Here are a few tips and strategies for getting started with social media.

1. Start with the end in mind.

Basically you need to have a plan of attack. Don’t just think that all you need to do is signup, throw up a link to your home page and they will magically show up.

This isn’t field of dreams, this is real life, wake up!

I absolutely love social media, and I believe in social media – but there is a possibility in some industries that social media may not be for you. Certain segments are less likely to use social media, that’s the old generations mostly – people over 70. You need to first decide if social media works for your particular demographic and customer.

Jason Falls, a social media consultant, strategist, and blogger over at SocialMediaExplorer.com recommends that bloggers familiarize themselves with social media tools, look at the target market of each of these different tools, and figure out the best ways to engage these customers.

Social media also must have a clear call to action – you want your followers to do something. Subscribe to your blog, or newsletter. Become a ‘liker’ on facebook. Follow you on twitter, etc.

2. Tredge slowly, with your eye on the goal.

Taking control of your social presence, and building customer loyalty doesn’t happen in one night. Small steps is the recommended course for small businesses, as social media is a vehicle for building lifetime relationships, and not a way to get a ‘quick’ sale.

3. Be willing to Commit some time into social media.

Once your network is setup, don’t be a stranger to your community that you’re building. It’s not necessary to hover all day on Twitter or Facebook, but checking in 2-3 a day can go a long way towards building your loyal fanbase.

The more time you can invest the more beneficial social media will be, it’s also highly recommended that when possible you provide business related content on a frequent basis. More content equals higher ranking in search engines which can drive traffic back to your website and your social networking profiles.

4. Track and Monitor your Social Media Campaign.

It’s always good to be able to view detailed statistics on your daily efforts. Through thorough monitoring, you can easily see trends, make adjustments, and tweak your overall marketing plan to make it more effective.

Here’s a List of common social media metrics to monitor:
- How many visitors you get per day.
- How many visitors come from social media.
- How many visitors converts into a sale?
- How much money are you spending verses return on investment?

If you need a method for easily tracking your links, and clicks some URL shorteners are very good at tracking click-throughs on Twitter and other Social Networks.

Google analytics is a great tool for tracking website traffic, and many social networks also have built in analytics and insight programs. Google also has email alerts that track mentions of your business on the internet.

Monitoring your brand is so important that there are some really awesome programs that easily charge $500-600 a month just to show you what’s being said about your brand. (Don’t worry there’s lots of free tools out there that do similar monitoring as well).

5. Plan on Being Flexible to Change.

Face it social media is a new beast, and it’s always changing. Each social network has it’s own conference once a year, and they always make sure to drop some bombshells on their users, sometimes it’s good sometimes it’s bad. The point is – the only constant in social media is constant change, and adapting. Flexibility can be a huge factor in being successful with social media.

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Social media has graduated from a fad to a mainstream industry. It’s not only recommended, it’s becoming a necessity. If you’re a business, and you’re not actively engaging in a social media outreach program of one form or another, then you will soon lose out to your competition.

Think of it in these terms – how would your business look without a website? If you’re not going social, you might as well not even have a website.

Social media is becoming more and more competitive. Businesses that are starting to realize how important it is, are also jumping in without any guidance, and creating a frenzy. This just leads to frustration, banned accounts on twitter, and confused customers.

You wouldn’t jump into opening your business, instead you create a plan. Even when you setup marketing campaigns you generally devise a plan first. You can’t just jump into social media without a solid strategy.

Social media is almost like air. It’s everywhere online, you can feel it against your skin, watch it move trees and leaves, and you have the choice to breath it in or die. There are conversations happening in every frontier of the web, every internet user has a voice and it only takes one person with a voice to bring down a large corporation, OR one person to bring 1000 new customers or referrals.

For the consumer social media is the answer to the globalization of businesses. In the modern world its hard for one person to be heard in the crowd, social media evens out the playing field a bit. For the brand, social media can and SHOULD scare the hell out of you. You need to be proactive, and handle your social media presence with skill, but you also can’t ignore it.

Many businesses just ignore social media altogether and just hope it goes away. Even facebook ignores social media, and they are the leading social media company! (Read about their failure to allow ownership changes on facebook pages).

It’s not easy to be social, but it’s so worth it. Most businessmen now know that they need to be involved with social media. A social media strategy does not just mean throwing up a twitter profile, and a facebook fan page. There are companies that get social media and those that don’t. Just follow any social media blog long enough and you will see tons of examples of social media embracing companies that get it, and they are killing the competition.

Ironically some of teh world’s largest corporations are the least social savvy. Anyone with half a brain would think that these huge companies with all the money would make it easy for customers to engage with their brands.

The main reason huge fortune 500 companies are so bad at social media strategy is they just don’t understand the term engagement. They are so used to internal segmentation, that this is also their main method of functioning externally. A good example would be sommeone working in the technology department of a publishing company. They know all about social media, and can setup wordpress, and have an iphone, and know all about Twitter, but they don’t know anything about other aspects of the brand. They’re not the marketers, or the salesmen. Without some collaboration between the two internal segments a social media strategy can never be formed.

Currently there is no perfect templates for social media strategy success. What works for one company does not work for all companies. It’s easy to think if you’re in B2B that you don’t need facebook or twitter and can just deal with linked-in, but some B2B can actually gain more from Twitter than a B2C can. It all comes down to what goals you’re trying to reach which you should setup in your social media strategy plan.

Until companies start collaborating and creating a hollistic whole-company approach in creating their social media strategy big businesses are going to fall by the wayside as their small to mid-size competitors who happen to be hungrier, and more social savvy end up taking their customers, and pass them by.

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In fact there are about 50 client apps for each device already. Until now it’s been a level playing field.

Twitter creates the api, and new features inherent in that api, while brilliant app developers design apps for the web, mobile, and desktop environments.

Tonight that all changed when Twitter bought Tweetie. Tweetie is a twitter client for the iphone. The app is being renamed “Twitter for iphone” and being re-released for free, verses the $2.99 price point that it currently has.

My question is this, Twitter’s huge success is due to these tech geeks. 23% of Twitter users keep using twitter of that small percentage a vast majority are developers themselves.

Twitter is truly a geek toy, and I know they are trying furiously to get people to use Twitter, and raise their stickyness. However – alienating the developers that make twitter strong, is not the way to go about this.

Wouldn’t it have been a better idea to have a contest or something to find the best twitter app per phone, then pay the top developers a huge cash sum if they agree to make that application free – but still maintain it’s development?

Sure there’s the risk the developer will decide to slack off on developing it, but right now it’s a huge slap in the face to all the other great talent that has apps that are nearly as good as Tweetie.

Ryan Block formerly of Engadget, and co-founder of gdgt is quoted as saying: “As of today, if your app depends on Twitter for anything other than identity or content syndication, you are officially on notice.” [source]

There’s even a developer union being formed around the hashtag: #unionoftwitterapps, and the google group “Twitter Developer Talk” is lit up with discussion over the issue.Technorati Tags: twitter, twitter apps, social media, twitter developers, twitter development, twitter api, tweetie

Facebook and social media truly can change lives!

Anyone who’s ever been on an organ donation list knows how disheartening it is, and how long it can take to find a donor who matches all the criteria necessary for a successful organ transfer.

If you, or someone you love is on a waiting list, for a kidney donation, or another organ – you might want to give Facebook a try. It worked for Phyllis Frederick of Warren County, Ohio.

Frederick has been under medical care for her failing Kidneys since 1998, and in 2007 her doctor informed her that her medical treatments were no longer working. She was informed that she would have to go on Dialysis. She was told that she’d be put on the waiting list, but that she should try to find a donor on her own. From that point her family and friends tried to reach out and find someone willing to donate their kidney.

At 71, Frederick made another trip to her doctor, and was resigned to living on Dialysis, figuring that she was getting too old to even take an organ transplant. She said a prayer before entering the office, hoping that there was something that would miraculously save her. Frederick inquired about whether her age would be a limiting factor on her receiving a kidney. The doctor informed her that he has performed transplants on patients as old as 82 and have been successful. Giving her hope that the clock hasn’t completely run down.

Still fretting over how she would receive a kidney donation, Frederick’s daughter Carrie posted a call for help on her Facebook page. It wasn’t 20 minutes later till before she had a life-saving response. The original message simply stated: “My mom’s Type O. She needs a kidney, can anybody help?

Twenty minutes later a Warren County resident volunteered. Kirsten Montgomery was already connected to Frederick, as her daughter’s best friend from high school, after being out of contact for many years. The 34-year-old Deerfield Township mother of two, could relate having had a brother saved by a bone-marrow transplant. She called her husband, and gave him the details, and he said “If we can help somebody, we should”, to which she responded “That’s all the permission I need.”

Frederick wasn’t even home from the doctor’s before getting the call from her daughter. When an astonished Frederick questioned the kindness of her daughter’s friend, the daughter said that she had remembered Frederick’s kindness during visits to their home, when they were in highschool.

Her daughter Carrie, and her friend Kirsten both have birthday’s a day apart. Frederick had made them both a cake, and Kirsten remembered the kindness showed, and returned that kindness back.

The surgery took place on February 9th, and Frederick is doing much better. Her energy levels are up, and her blood pressure is lower than it’s been in decades.

You can say that Facebook is just a fad, or just a site that kids play games on. You can laugh or ignore the social networking giant. You can even overlook the fact that Facebook beat Google for traffic, a few weeks back. It’s things like this though that really touch your heart, and make you realize that there’s a lot of good that you can do via social media. This isn’t an isolated event, there have been many many cases of using social media for good.

What are some of your favorite stories about using social media for good?

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For business networking, there is no better site than Linked in.

Linked in has built in measures to cut back on spam, track reputation via recommendations, and make it so only true contacts can friend other contacts.

In other words it’s not a follow buffet like twitter.

Being tailored and targetted at businesses and enterprises it’s amazing that it’s taken them so long to launch a Blackberry app. However today they’ve finally launched their native blackberry application.

It’s pretty sweet too, LinkedIn users can integrate their LinkedIn connections with their devices’ address book, and view the profile of any contact directly on the device. LinkedIn invitations and messages will now show up in the BlackBerry’s inbox. BlackBerry LinkedIn users can also view the LinkedIn profile of any sender of email they receive, as well as the profile of attendees at meetings on your calendar.

It’s a guarantee that the LinkedIn app will be extremely popular, and might even become the top application, considering the amount of professionals using BlackBerry devices.

LinkedIn is also working on a lot of other projects and will have a lot more features to come including integration with Twitter, Microsoft Outlook, and it’s opening of an API to developers will breed a huge influx of applications I’m sure.

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Increased use of Facebook means…what? Sypholis on the rise?

Facebook is all the craze. Everybody’s doing it. Facebook’s more popular than google now.

However, according to British health authorities there may be a link between Facebook and a rise in Syphilis outbreaks according to the daily telegraph.

Apparently Syphilis has increased as much as four times in parts of Northern England where Facebook is most popular. They theorize that it’s due to the social networking ease of meeting new people for one night hook-ups.

I personally think the attack on Facebook as the culprit, is unfounded. My opinion is Facebook is a hot topic, what better way to get some attention than to blame the social networking giant on Syphilis of all things.

I think it’s the economy to blame, I can’t vouce for Britain, I don’t live there. I do know that we’re not only in a USA recession but a global one. Recessions make people depressed.

Depressed people look for ways to fill whatever gap they think they’re missing, or just to have some kind of pleasurable experience. Sex of course being one of the ultimate pleasure experiences – next to chocolate and pizza of course .

While it may be true that Social networking sites can make it easier to meet up for casual sex, online ‘meetup sites’ are nothing new. Whether for dates or sexual encounters online dating sites have been around for ages.

Of course Facebook is a place to connect with old friends, and possible old crushes and flings. Which may of course lead to an increased desire to ‘hook up’ as the kids say.

So be warned: When using Facebook, Please use Protection!

(Next up: Facebook to be blamed for overpopulation, increased teen pregnancy, abortion, global warming, that big asteroid headed toward earth that’s going to wipe out humanity in december of 2012!)

Joking aside, if you do contract Syphilis, whether through Facebook, or other sources – please seek medical attention immediately. It’s easily cured, but can cause serious damage if left untreated.

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Does your Social Skillset end w/ Facebook?

When you really look at facebook, and all it can do – it reminds me in many ways of an online dating site back in the day, before I was married. Facebook has photo albums, chat capabilities, profiles, really it’s a glorified dating site. and I’m sure there’s plenty of cases where facebook has been the cause of hookups in one way or another.

Is our replacement of social media / social network activities replacing face to face interactions? (Answer it in the comments let’s create a dialogue on this subject)

Here are a few ways to bring back face to face interaction in our social media relationships.

What are some ways you keep yourself in check and don’t get too wrapped up being online?

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