This is going to be a very short post as I’m also currently working on an Introduction to the Hebrew Bible take home final exam at the same time. But in Canada we are going through a bit of political unrest due to the financial crises. If you know nothing about it read here:

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I’m not entirely happy about a government getting forced into another federal election two months after their previous one. However, I am happy about Canada’s response on social media. I thought twitter was just comprised of people from the “Bay Area”, but today some of the largest topics discussed on Twitter are with regards to the Coalition government.

I literally don’t refresh for thirty seconds and there are over (11) new tweets on the subject.

It’s cool to see all the social media hermits come out of their shanties for this. Nice work Canada, @bensir me.

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I don’t like to touch on American politics. I find that Canadians are too open about forming opinions regarding the American government. In reality, Canadians are very harsh on the American system that they know almost nothing about. Often we find ourselves supporting the more liberal character during the American elections, but we ourselves have elected a conservative leader. It’s sort of hypocritical, I know and as a result I find myself supporting the more right (politically) of the electoral participants. That being said, I also do not take part in sharing my opinions as I truly believe I don’t know enough about current events in the States. I also believe that I probably have more knowledge about American and International politics than 95% of Canada, but I think it’s not our part to play watch dogs.

I supported McCain in the election, but what lost it for him was Obama’s much more superior marketing plan. I don’t even want to talk about McCain’s mistakes - cough plumber and Palin cough. But, Obama’s usage of social media as a marketing tool is what won the election for him and that would have been my first move as well. Obama remains one of the most searched topics on the internet and is (according to QDos) the most popular person on the internet. Recently Change.gov added OpenID to their service allowing users to sign in with their OpenID accounts. See, Obama and I are a lot alike, we both would have similar social media marketing plans and now we both have OpenID integrated into our websites. Last week, I allowed users to comment using their OpenID username and password.

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Children and students have always incorporated some sort of gossip and drama into their social lives. Before the early 90’s this gossip was spread only via word of mouth and extremely expensive touch-tone telephones. With the expansion of social media, WiFi and mobile technology the malicious nature of adolescent socialization has grown massively. University students can gossip about who vomited on who the night previous, high school students can spread rumors about peers that are more sexual active than others and elementary school students can find out who has coodies before the infected even finds out.

It was only a matter of time before a coliseum-like battle ground was constructed where children of all ages could gouge each other’s eyes out. It has been created, the arena being JuicyCampus.com, and the gladiators - university students from all over the world. JuicyCampus is a Twitteresque micro-blogging service that promotes university students to gossip about their friends anonymously. Ruthless huh? Well at least the battles are now sanctioned.

Recently TechCrunch wrote an article about JuicyCampus being banned at Tennessee State University (TSU) - the service’s first university-wide banning. The article doesn’t go into depth about why specifically the program was banned, but it talks about Matt Ivester’s (CEO and President) rebuttal with regards to the whole situation.

I want to start by saying I’m completely behind JuicyCampus, however I’m not completely behind Ivester. He starts by saying in his statement (full version can be found here) that JuicyCampus is “joining the ranks of the Chinese government in internet censorship, and spitting in the faces of everyone who believes in free discourse online”. I’m sorry but… What? I can’t seem to draw a real comparison with the Chinese government blocking sites regarding Tiananmen Square to a university banning a service entirely made for aggressive gossiping on THEIR network. It just seems that Ivester’s response is somewhat immature and probably something you’d actually find on JuicyCampus.com. I really hope that the offensive nature of Ivester’s statement is just a means of gathering publicity, as it’s done a great job in that respect.

On a side note, I’m also going to use this article as a call to Ivester. It seems you don’t have Canadian university networks highlighted on the site. Quite frankly, Canadian university students are surrounded by social media. I don’t have a friend that doesn’t have Facebook and doesn’t use it religiously. So in the next round of college networks to open, open Wilfrid Laurier University and I will open an account. Thanks!

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Whether you are a blogger, a business, an entrepreneur, a politician or the homeless man that scares me outside of 7-11, I can almost guarantee you are trying to leverage yourself via social media. More specifically, Twitter. Twitter’s success is an enigma to all. However, it’s catchy, fun and more importantly has a massive following. I’ve read my fair share of “How to get a larger Twitter following” articles and while some of them offer some redeemable advice, the majority of the articles do not. This is due to people using their own success stories as a means to guarantee success to others. This obviously can’t be true, every business is different, and thus should be treated differently.

I feel I have a fairly firm grasp on social media as I’ve been successful in some of the larger networks. So, allow me, someone who has yet to accumulate a large following on Twitter, offer my advice on how to leverage your personal brand, or business on this anomaly of a social network.

Market via other social networks

To begin just like every other social network, if you are successful on one you are successful on all of them. Start by promoting your Twitter account on the networks you already contribute to. Even if I were to attract 1% of my entire following on MySpace that would mean roughly 130 Twitter followers – and I don’t even use MySpace anymore.

Invite your friends

Twitter is very new and has yet to really hit the mainstream (unless you live in San Francisco). One hundred percent of my friends already belong to social networks. Although, they may be just the mainstream network giants, Twitter was made not just to connect people globally but locally as well.

Make friends

Don’t shamelessly self promote. Give people a reason to follow you and actually offer something redeemable to them. Use Twitter Search to find conversations on topics of expertise to you and contribute to those discussions. For example a lot of people became successful on Twitter as a result of offering customer service help on products.

SEO your posts

Look at Google Search Trends and Twitter Search Trends and write about topics that are popular. This will increase outside network exposure.

Find friends with similar interests & Twitter ratio

I find a lot of the Twitter celebrities don’t even respond to my replies, regardless of how constructive they were. I have found that making friends that have a similar following:follower ratio greatly increases your chance of receiving an @reply. Replies are very key for promoting your name on Twitter.

Update regularly & constructively

Pretty straight forward, don’t spam, reply with information that contributes to the topic of discussion etc. etc.

Use 3^rd party apps and mobile updates

Utilize everything to make your Twitter experience more efficient. Twitter has about two hundred and forty million applications. Here is a really huge list of them: REALLY HUGE LIST OF TWITTER APPLICATIONS. Also, use the mobile features that Twitter offers to update from anywhere. This ensures a consistent stream of updates.

PUT IN THE HOURS!

In actuality, people should treat their Twitter like business. They should act as though there is no easy road to success and they should put in the hours needed to achieve success – and that’s a lot more than you think.

BTW @bensir me!

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Allow me to give you a run through of my usual Friday and Saturday nights. The night normally starts after dinner, at this point in time I will spend two or three hours planning on what my night is going to look like. The majority of this time I spend talking with local friends to gauge where the best place is to end up. I will also often plan during the week as well, to attempt to avoid this issue. I frequently think to myself, it would be fantastic if I were presented with a list of where my friends are and are going to be. In conjunction to that, I would also like to know where the general public is going and who arrives where I am. I probably spend 3-6 hours a week doing this, which roughly means I lose about nine days a year - just because of the planning I spend with regards to being social.

The answer to my problem - BrightKite. BrightKite is a Twitter and Fire.eagle mash up that allows users to know where their friends are, where their friends are going to be and when their friends arrive. Somewhat evasive, I know. However, imagine a situation where you (the user) after a long day at the library and work want to unwind in the quickest way possible with a bunch of your friends. You are then presented with a map, with tags in your immediate area of where your friends are, what they are doing and their thoughts on what they are doing. Or better yet, you are cheating on your girlfriend with her best friend at a local club. You receive an alert from BrightKite explaining that “Your girlfriend just arrived at a location that is 20 meters from you”. Wouldn’t you like that kind of warning? I know I would - haha.

BrightKite is currently in private beta and starting to create an active community. But the problem I have with all of these social startups (cough Twitter cough) is that they aren’t marketing towards the general public. I understand that they may be gauging interest with qualified testers in order to get the most constructive feedback possible. However, why not gauge interest with the people that are most likely going to be using the service? In BrightKite’s case I see this as potentially being a massive roadblock. When they realize that bloggers and other new technology people don’t actually care where their internet friends are because those people are usually half way across the World.

How I would market BrightKite

To begin, I believe marketing to new technology users is only smart in the extreme early going. Normally these people have media involvement and you could see a flux of users just based off of that. However, new tech people use a product for a couple of days to gain knowledge of the product and then they let it lay dormant until they find a use for the service. Case and point - me. I used BrightKite for about three days and stopped. Why? Because none of my friends were on it. It is quite obvious that the most successful services on the web are ones that appeal to everyone - Facebook, Myspace, Ebay, Craigslist etc. Not only do they appeal to everyone, but they embody everyone. Everyone is involved and contributing, and that’s what makes them successful.

So, if I were BrightKite I would market to users that are somewhat intellectual, young, hip and have money. In conjunction to those demographics I would market to large clusters of people. Easy answer - Universities. I’m not going in depth on how to properly market to universities but here’s a couple of ideas:

• Facebook Period. Apps, Groups, Advertising whatever.
• Launch parties where instead of paying a cover to the club, bar or venue the user signups for the service, uses it and provides their username at the door.
• Swag give-a-ways, plant yourself with a box of t-shirts, whiteboards and Nerf balls and start handing them out or even trade for them mobile signups.

University students love technology that applies to their life, but simply don’t know these types of services.

I am very interested to see where BrightKite takes their service. By the way if anyone at BrightKite read this and are looking for marketing services or consultant work, I would have an in depth market strategy report by tomorrow end of day. Haha.

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