Presidential Google+ Hangout

This isn’t the first Social Media takeover from politics; last summer, Obama held a “Twitter Town Hall Meeting” that didn’t go so well since the questions were preselected.

This time, there will be a few preselected questions, but most will be directly from Google + users who were invited into the chat.  Lucky…

The chat will be live today at 5:30 est on Barack Obama’s Google+ Page

Questions this arises:

We know that Obama is going to use Social Media in an unprecedented way for this 2012 election.

If you were a Social Media Manager in the Obama camp, what sort of strategies would you use going forward into the 2012 election?

How could you better integrate Facebook?

Other Fun Questions:

Some other fun questions this made me think about:

What other President in history would you most want to meet in a Google+ hangout?

If Social Media is changing the way we “interact” with our candidates, do you feel that rightfully so, the internet should also change the way we actually participate?  By participate, I mean vote!

If you made it into the Google+ hangout tonight, what would you ask?

Social Media for Business

Social media for business did not just grow slowly over time, it literally burst on the Internet with a huge following and undertaking. Today, if your business, especially an online business is not using social media and networking, you are missing out on tons of traffic that could be sent to your site. This extra traffic ultimately means more sales! The question is why would you not want to use social media to boost your business?

If you have an online business, then you need all the exposure you can get to attract more customers. Go to Facebook, and search for any online business you can think of, you will find a presence there. One of the largest online retailers, Amazon.com has a Facebook page, with over 140,000 people who like their page. Why does such a large business need social networking? HELLO, they are smart and use every avenue available to them.  Another reason they stay on top!

Do yourself a favor and check out some of the businesses in your field that are on the social media sites. Look at how they structure their pages. Of course they have a link to their main website. Someone from the company posts updates, such as sales, special promos, and adds a bit of fun in with it. The important thing to remember about any of the social media sites is it is an avenue to get people back to your website to buy products. However, you can’t just have a sales page because this would no doubt turn people off. You want to get your advertising across in a fun way, but still post comments that are purely entertaining or informational and have nothing to do with selling.

Leave a Positive Footprint!

Finally, always keep everything you write on any of the social media websites positive.  Never knock your competitors because this leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths. Check your social media sites daily or hand the task to someone else so you can always address personal responses. Never post gloomy messages and stay clear of politics or religion (unless your business deals with one or the other) because this will surely begin online arguing.

Social media is here to stay, use it to your advantage to boost your online business!

Over the past several days, Twitter has rolled out a new feature that will allow you to search for other Twitter users in your immediate area. This is huge news for schools and other such local business entities because it allows you to narrow down your communication efforts and specifically target the individuals in your immediate area.

While attaching locations to tweets has been possible for several months now through multiple third-party applications, Twitter.com itself has done little in regards to “geo-location” until very recently. As far as I can tell, it was on March 11th, 2010, that Twitter first started to roll out these new geo-location options.

You should note, however, that turning the geo-location feature on is entirely optional and many Twitter users will simply opt out of using this specific feature for whatever reason. That said, many Twitter users will activate this new feature… and this is good news for you and your school!

The following is a screen shot showing the check box that you are required to select in order to activate the new geo-location options.

You should also note that if you do decide to activate the “Tweet Location” option and then later decide to opt out of this specific feature, you can go back and delete all location data from your previous tweets if so desired.

Once this feature is activated, the geo-location data is easily and automatically included with your tweets. Any tweet that has a location attached to it will appear with a small location icon located at the end of the byline of that tweet. Clicking on the icon will bring up a Google Map showing the location where that tweet was sent.

The reason this feature is such big news is because up until now it was a somewhat difficult process to find active Twitter users in your immediate area. Up until this time, Twitter was a global phenomenon and unless you had a global business, connecting with the people in your local vicinity was difficult, if not impossible.

But now, with these new features enabled, it is easier than ever to find the parents, teachers, students, and community members that are both active in and around your school.

To find Twitter users in your immediate area, there are several ways to search them out.

Twitter Search

One of the best ways to find local Twitter users is simply to search for them on Twitter Search. Using the search box on this page, you can simply enter the name of your town or city and get a real-time stream of all the people tweeting from your location (or near it). The results here are based on the location field of people’s Twitter bios and this new geo-location date.

To search for Twitter users in you area, you can simply enter the name of the town you happen to be in or you can use a search code like this to find Twitter users within a specific range of your postal zip code:

near:93001 within:5mi

You will need to change the zipcode in the search above to your local code. Also, you might try searching for people in a 10 mile, 20 mile, or even 30+ mile radius (depending on the size of the city your school happens to be situated in).

Twellowhood

Another easy way to find local Twitter users is to search for your city on Twellow.com.

Twellow is a sort of like a yellow pages directory for Twitter. It allows you to search for Twitter users by topic, name or location.

In order to navigate the site and find local Twitter users in your area, simply visit the site, click on the map to zoom into your area, and browse the list of local tweeters. The site even lets you view recent tweets and follow new users directly from their Twellow listing page.