Social media Archives - Woolf Media & Marketing

February 4, 2014

The New PR Is about Producing Relevance Using Quality Content

Public relations professionals have always been storytellers. Our job has traditionally been to identify the interesting storyline in the client’s company or product and articulate that story to reporters, editors, and analysts, who in turn will report it to their audiences.

The rules of professional storytelling have changed.

Now, instead of pitching stories to the media, we are more often telling stories to help clients attract customers. More magazines are abandoning print in favor web publishing. And with this transition, we are seeing more B2B and consumer media sites that are hungry for fresh content, and fewer journalists and staffers producing articles. The void is being filled by contributors from all areas, especially PR and business. As Christopher Penn, Vice President of Marketing Technology at Shift Communications, writes:

“As traditional media either evolves or dies, the traditional media relations-only model of PR will evolve or die with it. Public relations work will transform more into earned, owned, and paid media generation, and PR professionals will find themselves increasingly doing work that transcends the traditionally rigid boundaries of earned, owned, or paid media.”

As professional storytellers, trained PR professionals are in a better position to create quality content that is more relevant to our client’s market audience. With the explosion of online content designed to drive SEO, our job today is to help the client tell their story in a compelling way to build audience loyalty, not just create link bait. Effective storytelling builds market audience and promotes audience loyalty by delivering relevant and valuable information.

Effective PR can drive brand messaging. If your client has a strong value story, it will influence your storyline and permeate all aspects of the client’s content strategy, from the web site to social media to white papers. Smart marketers often start with the PR strategy to develop market messages that can then be applied to the rest of the marketing program.

Once you have a strong storyline, you can tell the story again and again in different formats. Repurposing content using well-thought-out messages across different media will promote a consistent brand identity and, if you do it right, engage your target market on multiple levels. What starts out as a press release or press pitch should become a blog post, white paper, social media post, or take whatever form makes sense to reinforce the message and reengage the audience.

Producing relevant content should create a customer feedback loop. As you disseminate new content through various channels you can measure customer engagement by monitoring which channels drive different kinds of traffic. The more you uncover about how your audience engages with the content, the more relevant you can make that content.

It’s a brave new world for PR and that means developing new skillsets to help keep your clients’ stories relevant and engaging. Think beyond the old media relations strategy and embrace audience engagement. Learn more about SEO, paid placement, new content applications and formats, and how to apply new tools to drive market awareness. Those who can adapt and shape the inbound marketing strategy will be able to demonstrate real client value in measurable ways.

April 1, 2013

5 Easy Steps to Building a Successful Social Media Campaign

When you start to build a social media marketing campaign, you don’t just charge off and start posting comments and sharing random videos on Facebook. You need to consider your objectives and what you want to gain from social media engagement. You should have a strategy in mind and then use the right tactics to ensure your social media success.

Here are five easy steps to help you succeed with your social media marketing strategy:

1. Understand your objectives. Do you have clearly defined goals in mind for your social media program? What are you trying to accomplish? Increase brand recognition? Build an online following? Expand your mailing list? Whatever the objective, be clear about what you hope to achieve so you know success when you see it. (And remember, selling through social media is not acceptable so don’t link social media objectives to sales goals.)

2. Know your social media channels. Understand how to engage with followers on each social media channel. Facebook, for example, is good to sharing brand information and engaging with customers and prospects. Twitter is good for distributing instant information (it’s been great for those looking for their favorite food truck), and for trending data. LinkedIn is great for business-to-business interaction, especially through the forums. Pinterest is useful for sharing goods and success stories, those “favorite things” that build business. Understanding how your audience uses each channel is the first step to understanding how to engage.

3. Listen first… The biggest mistake most social media newcomers make is diving in before they test the waters. Take time to listen to what is being said before joining the conversation. You want to go with the flow and attract attention rather than act like a party crasher.

4. …then engage. Once you understand the nature of the conversation, you can engage appropriately. For example, you can use blog content to promote conversation with contacts on Facebook, or you can post other people’s content. On LinkedIn, however, you can use the same blog but turn it into a question for use in the forums: “Is this your experience?” “How would you handle this situation?”

5. Measure the results. Set milestones and measure the results. Are you looking for more likes? More followers? More comments? How many new contacts can you now engage with directly, and perhaps promote a separate sales call? Choose metrics that are meaningful to your business and measurable.

Now assess your progress, and your process. Are you getting the kind of quality social media engagement you want to build your business? Are you getting enough social media exposure, in the right places? Identify the weaknesses in your program, make the necessary adjustments and then rinse and repeat. Part of the secret to social media success is consistency and frequency, so continue to engage as often as you can with quality comments and content.

December 22, 2011

Cracking the Social Media Code–Where, Oh Where Do I Post?

I just set up a new Google+ destination page for a client this week. Now I am assisting with posting content to their blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and now Google+. Does this really help with brand visibility? Of course it does, assuming you can build the appropriate following in each channel. The trick is knowing what sorts of content work in the different social media channels. I find Facebook, for example, gives me a strong general following, but LinkedIn is more valuable for professional peer-to-peer contact. The jury is still out on Google+, and Twitter has some value, although I think most participants just like to hear themselves tweet.

If you are confused about where to post your social media content, it’s not rocket science. Consider the context for the message and who is watching where. This illustration although quite funny is also instructive. It’s important to be seen online, and you need to lay a trail of virtual breadcrumbs that lead back to branded content that helps you tell your story. However, if your followers are on a low-carb diet and want something other than breadcrumbs, be prepared to feed them something more appealing or lose them. That’s why the content you post to Facebook should be different from what you post to LinkedIn, or even Twitter.

I hope this gives you a chuckle. Enjoy.

November 29, 2011

Where is the Internet Going? Roger McNamee Says the Future is in Engagement

TED always has something interesting to share. Here is a new presentation from Roger McNamee, a follower and investor in disruptive technology. Here are some interesting insights posted on TED earlier this month, with six big “aha” ideas he predicts will shape Internet business. McNamee’s prediction is that the future will be all about engagement, with Apple leading the charge. Here is a synopsis:

1. Windows is dying. (Okay, you can stop cheering now). McNamee’s point is that workstations and enterprise software are become dinosaurs that will be made extinct by the meteoric rise of handhelds and other devices that can access the Internet.

2. Google and Indexed Search is on its way out. The index has become full of garbage because the web is full of garbage. Now search is becoming specialized with destinations like Wikipedia, Yelp, Twitter, Tripadvisor, etc. The point is that Google’s dominance in search will be eclipsed by specialty resources that don’t serve up garbage with the index. Google commoditized content, but users are looking for more than commodities. Index search doesn’t work well on smart phones.

3. Open source, i.e. the Web, has migrated to branded, value-added content. Apps rule over freeware. Apple will ship 100 million Internet-enabled devices, and those device users will be hungry for copyrighted apps.

4. HTML 5 is coming,and it promotes engagement. With this new programming language you can construct a web page with embedded interactivity and video and audio without Flash and other clunky bolt-ons. Now you can create a differentiated and complete experience in one native language that works on various browser platforms.This is the key to total engagement, and you don’t need the commoditized providers.

5. Tablets are dominant. McNamee predicts that the Apple will sell more iPads than they sold iPods and it will become the dominant engagement platform. The iPad revolution is another reason Windows is dead.

6. Social is a sideshow. Facebook has won the social media race and the rest of the social starters have to follow Facebook to pick up the crumbs, like Zynga which has built its market on Facebook’s dominance. But McNamee sees social as a feature, not a platform. What’s coming is a new means of engagement.

So we are looking toward a world where everything is an app, and every advertisement becomes a store. You can create and satisfy demand in the same place, through immersive engagement.

McNamee may be totally wrong. I believe enterprise technology will continue to prosper as long as there is a need for closed network systems. Everyone has been talking about the cloud recently but it’s value and security has yet to be truly proven. And will handhelds really replace laptops or computers? They certainly will pick up market share, but who knows if they will become dominant anytime soon. I don’t feel qualified to talk about HTML 5, but I know that before there was Blu-ray the television industry had been talking about HDTV since I started writing about it in 1978.

It will be interesting to see how accurate McNamee’s predictions are. Share and enjoy!

November 21, 2011

“Turn in Your LinkedIn Contacts with Your Key Card on Your Way Out…” Who Owns Social Media Content?

There are probably still a few skeptics out there who question the value of social media. For those naysayers, I will point you to recent news reports that companies are demanding to retain social media contact from fired employees. Clearly some companies see real value in social media intellectual property.

I recently rand across a post by Cynthia Boris, who blogs under The Marketing Pilgrim, that poses the question, “Are Twitter followers a company asset?” Are social media contacts considered proprietary information, like a customer list or competitive information? Apparently that premise is being tested in the U.S. courts, as Boris explains:

But what about your Twitter account? In the case of an employee whose job it is to update the company Twitter, it’s an easy call. It’s not so easy when you’re talking about journalists or other Tweeters who blur the line between business and personal.

Such a case is currently being tested in court, but it’s not going so well for either side. The case in question is between PhoneDog and Noah Kravitz, who used to work for them as a reporter. The object of desire is a Twitter account with 17,000 followers formerly known as @PhoneDog_Noah.

According to the original news report, “a federal judge in San Francisco refused to dismiss news site PhoneDog’s complaint which argued that a Twitter password and the identity of followers was a trade secret.” Apparently Kravitz merely changed the name of his account from PhoneDog_Noah and kept tweeting. So who owns those contacts? Is it the same as a journalist’s sources, which go with him when he leaves a job?

There is a similar case for LinkedIn contacts being tested in the U.K. for the first time, a British court is reported to have ordered an employee to turn over his LinkedIn contacts to an employer. According to the report in the Telegraph, this case “highlights the tension between businesses encouraging employees to use social networking websites for work but then claiming that the contacts remain confidential information at the end of their employment.”

Now it’s one thing if you were hired to promote the company using social media as one of your forums. I can understand where it becomes part of your job description and the content, including the contacts, would revert to the company. But what if you are using your own contacts and your own network as an extension of your job? Does that mean you have to surrender your contact information for Aunt Millie or the High School Class of 1985 because you got fired?

Commenting on the UK case for Forbes, guest columnist David Coursey notes:

Meanwhile, more and more companies are issuing policies, and asking employees to sign contracts and agreements, that spell out who owns social media contacts. According to a recent study by DLA Piper, a third of employers have disciplined employees for something posted on a social media site. The research also found that 21% of employers had to give their employees a warning for posting something derogatory about a colleague or about the business itself.

One thing is clear, it’s time to start updating your contracts, whether you are working as a full-time employee or as an agency or consultant. Intellectual property is becoming increasingly valuable, and they could be an increasingly valuable asset that should follow you as you build your personal network to further your own career or advance your business. If you are going to use social media as part of your job, be sure you understand who owns the social media content and the contacts. If there is a doubt, duplicate – create a professional social media persona and a personal persona and keep them separate (although you might enlist the same followers to track both accounts). But whatever you do, be sure you know where you stand with your clients or employers. If you aren’t sure, ask! It’s better to come to an understanding now rather than getting into a tussle later.

November 13, 2011

Engage! Social Media Works for You When You “Keep it Real”

Social networking is more art than science. I try to instruct my clients in social networking techniques,and some have a natural affinity for it while others are, shall we say, socially awkward. Using Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter effectively requires a certain knack; a natural affinity for communicating online and keeping your followers engaged while staying on message. Here’s an example of one lady who has that affinity.

I had the privilege of meeting Kathleen Flinn at a book signing a few weeks. Kathleen is the author of two books, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry about her adventure studying at the Cordon Bleu, and her new book, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School, where she takes a step outside the “food bubble” to help nine homemakers become fearless cooks in their own kitchens. My wife had served as Kathleen’s Bay Area escort on her previous book tour and Kathleen not only remembered her but was genuinely excited to see us at her new book signing, which is what makes her so good at social networking. She is genuinely interested in people and it comes across online.

I have been following Kathleen online for some time and am very impressed with her social media approach. She is not pushy or obnoxious, but maintains a real dialogue with her followers that is sincere, interesting, and always on message. She is interested in all aspects of food, but not as a “foodie” or a food snob, but as good cooking and everyday foods can be transformed into great cuisine by any cook willing to wield a knife. She uses her blog effectively, finding topics that are interesting, personal, and always worth reading. And she uses her blog to feed her Facebook page and other social media to build her following. I, for one, started looking forward to seeing her new book long before it’s release because Kathleen was very good at sharing little insights here and there. She never overly flogs her books, but you always know where she is and what she’s up to, and following her online promotes a level of interest and intimacy I don’t get from many so-called social media experts.

So how do you promote your own social media following? Be genuine, but also avoid being the online boor. Here are some of the basics that everyone needs to remembers about being genuine through social media, with thanks to Aliza Sherman, who originally compiled a variation of this list for GigaOm:

1. Respect the medium. Remember that the Internet is an information tool that was not originally created as a collaboration tool, not a marketing medium. Successful use of the Web requires that you respect the spirit of the Web; it’s about collaboration not hard-sell advertising.

2. Listen. The biggest mistake people make when they use social media is they assume it is a broadcast medium. It’s not. It’s about collaboration and conversation, that that means listening first. Listen to the conversation threads. Determine what is appropriate and what is not. Get a better sense of what people are saying and what the tone of the conversation feels like before you barge in with new information or an expert opinion.

3. Add to the conversation. Don’t just appear, post your piece, and log off. Engage! Add value! Promote conversation within the community. Remember, in most circles, hyping your product or service doesn’t help anyone but you.

4. Be responsive. Remember conversation is continuous. Answer questions. Respond to comments. Be timely in your response. In other words, respect your visitors and followers by actually listening and talking to them.

5. Share with others. The Web is a global medium that allows everyone access to valuable information. Share your information, time, and inspiration to fuel conversation.

6. Credit where credit is due. Share other people’s ideas but give them credit. Repost and retweet to add to the conversation (not to promote spam) and be sure to give credit to the source.

7. Don’t be a spammer. Spam will inevitably isolate you from the conversation. It’s impolite, and it’s dumb. Don’t just hype your wares, but talk about what you know, politely and in the context of the conversation.

8. Be authentic. Authenticity is the key to social media success. If you represent a brand, you can still be authentic in your conversation without violating the integrity of the brand. Just be real. Admit your fears and flaws as well as your successes. Be interesting by being authentic.

9. Collaborate, don’t compete. The idea is to add to the conversation, not to outshout the other guy. Try to find ways to get together to expand the reach of the conversation so everyone benefits. There’s room for everybody.

10. Practice social responsibility. If you do good, you will get good in return. Embrace the authenticity that the web has to offer to not only expand the conversation, but to help others seeking insight and information. Don’t just sell your stuff. Find ways to give back to the greater community by doing good. You can help spread the word and make your corner of the Web a little better.

If you remember these simple guidelines as you engage online, your social media conversations will be more satisfying, and ultimately more profitable. Don’t shout. Engage.

September 21, 2011

Promoting Facebook Traffic–Keep ‘Em Coming Back for More

With this week’s changes to Facebook, there has been a rebellion among Facebook users. Facebook fans have turned in their rock concert lighters for torches are marching upon Mark Zuckerberg’s castle. However, despite the hoopla and gnashing of teeth, I don’t think there will be a mass exodus from Facebook any time soon. Facebook fans will continue to complain to their friends about what’s wrong with the new Facebook interface, and they inevitably will use Facebook to lodge their complaints.

Do you see the logic here? Facebook is popular, extremely popular with a current populace of 750 million active users spending over 700 billion minutes per month on the service. People are not going to abandon Facebook, which is why it continues to be one of the most important online locations for your personal brand.

How do you turn traffic into repeat visitors? That’s the big question. The short answer is, “be interesting.” However, that’s not as easy as it sounds. It’s one thing to post baby pictures for your friends or the latest stupid video from YouTube. But it’s something completely different if you are a company trying to build a brand following. You need to keep the content interesting and relevant.

The problem with social media is that it’s voracious and requires a steady diet of interesting material. So how do you keep it fresh?

Here are a few ideas I spotted earlier today in a post from HubSpot on Facebook Page Ideas You Haven’t Tried Yet. I plan to try some of these for my own corporate fan page to see if going to experiment with these and see how they work. Rather than posting all 25, I want to share some of my favorites. I’d love to hear what works for you?

Don’t link to your Twitter feed. As the article notes, Twitter and Facebook are very different, and a Twitter feed will clutter your wall with junk that will cost you followers.
Use comments and “like” buttons to promote interest. Show that you are following others, and they will follow you in turn.
Ask for ideas. What should be your next topic, or product, or book, or whatever. Open the floor to outsiders to share.
Pose an open-ended question. Let followers fill in the blank or answer an open-ended question that has universal appeal.
Post teasers. Post partial entries or interesting insights from your blog or corporate news to promote traffic.\
Tag real people in your photos. It will call attention to those photographed and all their friends.
Post a mystery photo. Ask for identifiers or captions or guess a location or something about the photo – think Where’s Waldo?
Share photos from a local meet up or meeting. People like to see themselves online, and this will tie the photos to your brand.
Post pictures of interviewees and industry experts. If you are talking to industry pundits, use their photos to drive traffic to an interview or insights posted on your blog or web site.
Use infographics. More infographics are being used to explain ideas (like the map above showing Facebook traffic). The right infographic can be eye-catching and compelling and tell an interesting story.

These are just a few of the ways to keep your Facebook content fresh and drive traffic. Be sure to keep your content relevant as well as interesting, and use whatever you post to promote your brand. Your followers or audience should know what to expect from your brand experience, and that extends to their social media interaction with your brand as well.

September 11, 2011

Making the Most of Your Social Media Sound Bites

An interesting discovery came to light this week that may give all those self-proclaimed social media gurus pause. According to new research conducted by URL-shortening service bitly, the average shelf life of a social media post is about about three hours. I originally spotted this tidbit in a repost from HubSpot, which offered its own insights:

By calculating what bitly is calling the link’s ‘half life’ (the time it takes a link to receive half the clicks it will ever receive after it’s reached its peak), bitly evaluated the persistence of 1,000 popular bitly links, and found some strikingly similar results.

Half Life Research Results

The mean half life of a link on Twitter is 2.8 hours.

The mean half life of a link on Facebook is 3.2 hours.

The mean half life of a link via ‘direct’ sources such as email or instant messaging clients is 3.4 hours.

The mean half life of a link on YouTube is 7.4 hours….

From this, bitly concludes that when it comes to the lifespan of a link (if you exclude YouTube from the equation), it’s not where the link is shared that matters; instead, it’s more important what the link shares (the content) that has the potential to attract more clicks and engagement.

So what does this mean for marketers? HubSpot’s conclusion is that you need better quality content to promote engagement. That’s only part of the equation.

I think of successful social media engagement as encompassing the three C’s: Content, Conversion, Community. The quality of the content drives conversion to build a following. It’s no surprise that social media content is short-lived. That’s the idea, and I often counsel my clients that social media content is highly perishable, so while it is important to think before you post, agonizing over the perfect tweet or a Pulitzer-worthy blog post can run counter to the purpose of social media – to provide easily digestible sound bites that add to the online conversation while promoting your perspective, i.e. your brand. The trick is to give those sound bites enough impact to promote resonance.

So with this new revelation from the bitly research, marketers need to rethink their online activity in light of the three C’s:

1. Content – The quality of the material does promote interest and engagement, so be sure you post quality information in order to gain the trust of your audience and give them something they can share with their own social media followers.

2. Conversion – Whenever possible, give followers an ongoing reason to engage. If your material is consistently informative or entertaining, or particularly poignant about a specific topic, you will be able to convert readers into followers. Which leads to the third “C.”

3. Community – If you can build an audience then they will share the wealth, and as a byproduct promote your brand. You want to build a loyal following who is willing to engage with you and spread the word.

So even though your specific social media efforts have a relatively short half-life, the lasting impact should be felt through resonance. Whatever stone you choose to throw into the social media pond should produce ripples that will be felt long after the original post has been archived.

And, of course, there are more tangible benefits, such as searchability. Everything posted on the web is discoverable, and even when the immediate echoes of a social media post fade away, that original content is still there to be rediscovered either by search or happenstance. The Internet has a long memory, and social media just feeds the discoverable archive, so even if the shelf-life of a post is an average of a few hours, that post still becomes part of the discoverable web, so you never know when some Internet archaeologist will uncover you post for some future purpose.

August 24, 2011

Recapture the Art of Listening

Are you suffering from information overload? I certainly am. The amount of noise in my life seems to be increasing exponentially. My definition of listening goes beyond just hearing the sounds around you. It also encompasses the amount of digital noise that we have to deal with on a daily basis, including SPAM, Twitter feeds, text messages, and Facebook updates.

To combat the increasing level of noise in our lives, I see a number of people working on refining their multitasking skills. Unfortunately, the human brain is not really wired to multitask, so instead of handling multiple feats simultaneously, we end up doing two or more things poorly. If you doubt it, but try to hold a phone conversation with someone checking their email at the other end of the line. Or try talking to your teenager while their thumbs are busily texting their friends. You not only don’t have their attention, but they are actually actively ignoring what you have to say.

We need to recapture the art of listening. We need to rediscover ways to cut through the noise and re-engage with those around us. Especially in the age of social media, we have all become “skimmers,” sifting through the cacophony of incoming noise and taking away the sound bites we want without applying critical thought to the context or the bigger picture. In fact, we are all starting to communicate in sound bites since we know our listeners won’t take the time to hear a longer statement. One of the prime criteria for bloggers is keep it short so you don’t lose your audience. (I recall the Jeff Goldblum character in the film “The Big Chill” stating that the editorial criteria for People magazine is “I don’t write anything longer than the average person can read during the average crap,” which seems to apply to most communications these days.)

To quote Julian Treasure from a recent TED presentation, “Conversation is being replaced by personal broadcasting.” This particularly true with social media where we are all shouting at each other for online attention, and have to ask ourselves if anyone is listening. Sure, we each can count the number of Twitter followers or LinkedIn contacts, but how many of them are paying attention to you?

As Treasure states, listening is our access to understanding. It’s time to renew our commitment to conscious listening.

In his TED presentation, Treasure offers five exercises to improve your listening skills, which I will present here for your consideration. We all need to reassess our listening skills and stop shouting at one another, so take a moment to consider these exercises:

Practice Silence – Take three minutes each day to recalibrate your consciousness. Get yourself back in tune with the world around you.
The Mixer – How many individual channels can you hear in your environment? If you are at Starbucks or waiting for a BART train, or just sitting in your backyard, sharpen your listening skills by trying to tune into to as many simultaneous sounds of “channels” as you can.
Savoring – Enjoy mundane sounds. Tune to something that generates sound in your life and pay attention to its sound and how you can deconstruct that sound to make it more meaningful.
Listening Positions – Work with the filters to get conscious about the sounds around you and work with the ways we listen. Is your listening active or passive? Reductive or expansive? Critical or empathetic?
RASA – This is the Sanskrit word for “essence” and can be applied to the acronym Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, and Ask. This is the process of listening in its most active form. If you are going to engage with your audience or as a member of someone else’s audience, then you need to listen carefully and critically, which means you need to apply RASA.

Listening is a critical component of any communications campaign. If you can’t engage with your audience in a manner that promotes critical listening, you are just adding to the noise. Let’s all think more about listening and less about trying to get our own message across.

August 3, 2011

What If You Launched a Social Network and Nobody Came???

I am sure you have heard the old adage from the peacenik sixties, “What if you held a war and no one showed up?” My mind came up with a variation on that theme over the past few weeks as I have been watching Google+ take off, and as I have been getting notifications from a myriad of other social networks.

It seems that the Google empire has successfully expanded into the social media realm, or at least the initial foray has been a success. According to Reuters, Google+ is attracting more than one million users a day and is the fastest social media site with more than 25 million visitors to date. But is this a flash in the pan or does Google+ really have legs?

Some of the early critics of Google+ note that since this is Google’s social network, everyone will give it a try but who knows how many people will stick with it. As noted by Cynthia Boris in a guest blog on Marketing Pilgrim posted today:

What’s interesting about this monumental number [25 million visitors] is that I don’t see any difference in the site than I did when I joined. Actually, it’s worse. As of today, my entire Google+ stream, all the way to the bottom of the page is nothing but posts from the very informative and fun Darren Rowse of ProBlogger. Yes, he’s a talkative guy, and granted I don’t have a lot of people attached to my account, but I have to go back several weeks to see a range of posts from people.

So maybe Google+ will be a flash in the pan; yet another online destination that has been abandoned by users.

I also received email this week with invitations for other social networking opportunities. A few of the invitation are to forums on Facebook where experts gather to discuss topics I actually am interested in. I have been following a new thread on web content curation with some interest. And apparently my Facebook friends have been busy on Branch Out, which is the latest entry into the online career management space alongside LinkedIn, Jobster, eCademy, Spoke, and countless others. Just as Google+ has the power of Google behind it, Branch Out is making the most of its affiliation with Facebook so we will have to see if it has legs moving forward. (For my money, LinkedIn continues to be the “go to” resource for people really looking for professional connections, and it will be hard to unseat, at least in the foreseeable future.)

And I received another invitation last week from a social network I never heard of, Elixio. Taking a page from the Google+ launch strategy, Elixio is an exclusive, “invitation only” social network; a private online club. Call me a skeptic but I can’t see any value in a network I haven’t heard of, especially if they send me a blind invitation to join an exclusive club. It’s akin to any number of Who’s Who directory invitations I receive where I can be included in a directory of influential personages for only a small gratuity. My ego doesn’t need that kind of stroke.

So how many social networks can you realistically use effectively? If you are doing nothing but networking all day, I suppose you can stay on top of quite a few. I find my social networking time pretty much consumed with LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. I also browse a few vertical networks that serve niche client markets, like BankInnovation.net. But can the market really sustain all these new social networks? After all, isn’t the idea of social networking to connect as many like-minded people as possible? If you fragment your markets too much, you can’t attract a large body of followers. At the same time, the market can only sustain one or two social networks with the reach of Facebook or LinkedIn. So it will continue to be a marathon race, with different candidates entering and dropping out. Since I value my time, I don’t tend to be an early adopter for new social networks (although I will dabble; I confess to being one of the first 25 million to check out Google+), but I will sign up and use something that delivers real value.

So let me leave you with a recent blog post from satirist Andy Borowitz’s column, The Borowitz Report, which inspired this post. The headline reads, “No New Social Network Launched Today – Silicon Valley Stunned”:

Across this tech-heavy hub, Internet-savvy insiders were checking their Blackberries, Droids and iPhones for an announcement of the next Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare or Google+ — an announcement that, to everyone’s astonishment, never came.

“We’ve been averaging between 500 and 1000 new social networks a day,” said Carol Foyler, head of the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce. “So this is definitely a little weird.”

While there was no shortage of finger-pointing as tech-watchers across the Valley bemoaned the absence of a new launch, many blamed Tracy Klugian, 24, a website incubator who has created over 1800 social networks and was expected to launch his latest, MeetCircle, today.

“MeetCircle will totally change the way people meet, interact, shop, stream movies, buy cars and have sex,” Mr. Klugian said in a TEDTalk earlier this year. “It will be the biggest game-changer since the fall of Communism or the birth of Jesus.”

Somebody please wake me in time for the next social media revolution.