Interesting, I watch (more than just follow!) A couple of college students and see how they use twitter as their sms platform. Why send txt msgs to eachother (privately) when the whole world can see how “hot the girl in chem 203″ is.

Goes to show, we’re the same offline and online eh? just in a new “Mall”

I’ve just finished coaching my second season of Science Olympiad at at small, local, parochial elementary school. That means I spent 45 minutes one night a week and an occasional two hour Saturday (pizza!) with Junior High kids, mostly girls. Instant research pool for social networking, I thought. Come to find out, few are involved in MySpace or Facebook – parental control. They’re not all that interested, as they all have sleek keyboard phones and text at speed, constantly. Their call on the two sites? They’ll be on Facebook in high school, where it’s easily #1. MySpace? Trash, they said. Not a representative sampling of American middle school kids, I suppose. None of them knew a thing about Twitter, although they were intrigued, seeing it as a cross between FB and texting. One of my seventh graders found her way there though, and is following me – early trial kid.

Bob, is it a digital white board? Do I get to see it?

I’ve been white boarding the role of one or two blogs and how they might help influence web site visits, and then looking at the role of at least two dedicated Twitter accounts (1 brand only, one person-behind-the-brand) that would help keep the blogs warm.

The associated Facebook page is growing, slowly, but the lack of activity at the moment makes it seem island-like.

I HAVE found two national sites, search and clearinghouse type sites, which will be co-linked with the web page (they’ll profile us, drive searches our way, and I’ve been posting there actively) and I believe I can extract some good content from them for the blogs.

The white board looks like an accident scene right now, but it’s getting better.

Over the past two weeks I have tweeted regarding the demographics of Twitter yet despite following and being followed by several SM gurus, could raise nothing. Twitter itself balked. I posted the same query to the group on LinkedIn and had a response – and a good one – in 8 hours.

I can forward any and all of this info to you via regular email.

I don’t know that I’d say twitter/facebook is the perfect eft hook right hook. I’d go so far as to say you are not realizing the full potential of twitter if you don’t have a blog to drive traffic to.

I’d be interested if you care to share what linkedin groups are active and that you were able to glean good info from. Send me an email or respond publicly here.

I’m gonna spend some time with backtype… it might have potential, thanks for pointing that one out. (You could at least add a profile picture and link to your comments here!)

Dan,
I imagine you have a depth of real networking skills in real life. How do they apply to these tools?

Still a relative newbie, I haven’t lost my objectivity and I agree that the Twitter-Facebook combo appears to be today’s perfect left-hook/right-jab. As I explore my options for my non-profit educational client (small, private school with static growth and rising costs), I’m also pushing to add a blog or two to the mix, for the very reason you mentioned – the opportunity to apply SEO and drive more traffic to the school’s website. While I have established a partial relationship with StumbleUpon, I still haven’t felt any real power from it.

LinkedIn is a great business tool but it’s virtually an island, although I have recently been linking from it into Twitter and Facebook. There are active social influence marketing groups on LinkedIn and I’ve picked up valuable information there that I’ve been unable to find while trolling Twitter – social media demographics data, for example. Then again, LinkedIn’s sense of isolation from the rest of my SM touchpoints is good – it’s a place where I can be all business, all the time.

One of the questions I’ve posed to SM pros concerns the value of another tool, BackType. I’d like my non-profit to feel good about any buzz it generates with its sweat equity in social media/social influence marketing, and I believe that BackType may be a good tool for tracking it. Any thoughts?