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Earlier, we talked about if Social Networking is right for your company. Now we’re going to talk about the use of these Social Networking sites and how they affect the productivity of your company’s workflow.

The Commitment.
Social Media takes just that – a commitment and a pretty big one. If you dive into this arena, you need to make sure that you are prepared and ready to give steady updates. And various media types take a different level of commitment. Before starting up any of these, make sure you’ve got the time you can set aside to dedicate to update regularly. Twitter takes a pretty low level of commitment, while Facebook requires a much higher level (especially if you created a Page vs. a Group). And once setup, if the account’s active, you better commit to posting and using it, and use it often.

Pace Yourself.
On the heels of use, is how often you use it. Find a schedule for updates that works for you. And that can take some time to figure out as you’re trying to add this into your day-to-day workflow. You don’t have to post just to post and look active. Better to find a pace that allows you to post meaningful content, so you are active and appear intelligent in your market.

Stay Efficient.
This is the biggie. Once you’ve committed and have social media in your workflow, you have to make sure that it doesn’t take away from your actual job. It’s very easy to get wrapped up in these technologies, that the last thing you or you company wants, is for actual work to not get done. Real work cannot suffer just to get your name out there. Unless your job is to maintain the social sites of your company (and that’s becoming more popular), you should not be (what I call) NET-working all day. That’s when you spend all day on the net, working to keep up, while the work starts to pile up and quality starts to suffer.

Instead, make your social media work for you. Twitter is fantastic for this. There are more and more Twitter desktop applications popping up, that let you stay focused on your work. You don’t have to visit the site to post, just quick hit up your Twitter client of choice – make your tweet, and get back to it. I don’t about you, but the Internet has a way of sucking me in if I visit it. I go there for one site, and then I’m hitting up a few of my favorites, and now I’m not getting work done. A native application helps keep that urge under control.

Beyond the applications, and more importantly, you can use your tweets to update your Facebook status, and even add them to your own website. Twitter offers an easy way to make “widgets” (Flash or HTML or site specific) that allow you to post your tweets on any site. Follow a few steps, they even write you the code, and simply copy-paste the code into the part of the site you choose. Then you can use it to share links on the front of your website, or announce when you’ve blogged – and help drive traffic to that aspect of your site.

Adding the Twitter App to Facebook, allows the integration of the tweets as status updates. What I think is very nice about Twitter for Facebook, is that it only posts original tweets and no replies to your Facebook status (anything tweet with @username is considered a reply – fyi).

So check this out – if you download a application and post a tweet, you’ve just updated your Twitter page, your website, and your Facebook status. You never had to repeat, or visit any websites either. In and out. That’s efficient, and that’s a good way to keep you looking active without having to NET-work so hard.

Now, Twitter is limited to 140 characters, so if you have something more you’d like to say, you’ll have to blog it. But, you can also work that to your favor. You can import your blog to your Facebook Notes, so when you blog, it also will become a Note on your Facebook page. Simple import your blog (either by URL or RSS feed domain) and you’re done. Now couple that with a desktop blog editor, and you can do the same thing as with Twitter, but for longer articles or things you’d like to share.

Work Smart.
That’s all this boils down to. Work smart, not hard. Use technology to your advantage. You’re not just sitting in front of a machine that “just” does email, word processing and internet. It’s more and you should use that, and the web technologies to make life easier, especially as fast paced as most companies operate. It sounds counterproductive, but take a step back, and take the time to setup your accounts and equipment up right in the beginning, and you’ll save yourself time (and probably some stress) in the long run. And being more productive and a better company is something you can tweet about, and do so happily.

The Interweb (see also “A Series of Tubes”) is aflutter with Social Networking. It’s everywhere, and it’s changing the way we interact with people on a personal level and, more importantly, business level. ORANGEHAT’s facing the same decisions as your business, so I, Paul (Owner of the HAT), thought I’d share with your our thoughts on this whole new way to reach people in a new series of entries focusing on Business Social Networking.

On today’s menu: Be Who You Are.

Having a social web presence allows for a dual-level of advertising. And in this post, we’re only focusing on setting up and choosing the right place for you. Getting a proper “ePersona” (as I like to call it) is the first step, and needs to be done before any real advertising can begin.

First thing’s first – Social Networking was designed for people, individuals, to interact with each other in new, compelling ways. You can find your old classmates, follow bands, share news stories, have video streams, share photos, heck even share your screengrabs. The rub here is that these technologies were designed for people, not really businesses. Does that mean we should ignore these as venues to broadcast and advertise – Not at all. ORANGEHAT is out there. It does however make us, as companies, take a step back and think about ourselves and our brand. The two questions we should think about are: Who are we targeting? How do you want to communicate to your audience?

Who are we targeting?
The main thing to figure out is if you’re targeting business, people or both. Then it’s the decision on how you want your audience to perceive you through these new medias. Finally, it’s choosing the right sites, and finding your “butter zone” of content maintenance and tone.

For business, being apart of LinkedIn is a no brainer. You’re probably on there already, but if you’re not, go over there and join (after you finish reading this of course). It’s a great place to work business-to-business networking, and a must-have for any person and company.

Onto people. MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are the big guns in this arena, and you need to decide if your company has a need for these sites (ie: do you need YouTube for video), and then setup your accounts accordingly. A younger demographic will probably lean towards MySpace, while a more mature audience will hang reside over at Facebook. Then there’s Twitter, which is an entirely different beast, and should be used if possible, but within reason (more below). And this is just scratching the surface of all the various media you sign up! But these are the one’s I think most people are focused on right now.

Of course there’s intermingling, so you will get some member overlap no matter what, and that’s not a bad thing. Helps intertwine you ePersonas together along with your company. In the word’s of Martha Stewart “That’s a good thing.”

How do you want to communicate?
Here’s my biggest pet peeve with business and social networking: A company pretending to be a person. If your business is not in any sort of entertainment field, or if your brand marketing would work in this fasion, then you shouldn’t be doing this. Unless you can find some sort of rationalization to act as a person online, you shouldn’t. You’re a business, so be that. Make social networking work for you, not change who you are just to accommodate this new technology. Be Who/What You Are. Period.

Where’s a good place to start? Facebook is a fan of ours, and what I like about it is there are Pages and Groups. Our basic perception of these are: Pages are for companies that want to talk like people. Groups are for companies that talk like companies. Similarly, MySpace Pages are just like Facebook Pages. The level of commitment to social media also plays into this decision. A page on Facebook/MySpace offers a ton of extra features and is more like a full personal profile. That means you’ll have to populate and maintain more content, more often to stay engaging. Groups are not as complex, and an easier way to get your name out there, with not as much heavy lifting. With a proper amount of time dedicated to social networking, and proper tone in your entries, you can make a Page appear more like a business and that’s great. But it’s a fine line. You don’t want to post just for the sake of posting, and then waste your time, and bore your audience and any potential new users. That’s why I prefer Groups. It’s not as much to worry about, because it’s not nearly as robust. Less is more.

The above is for nothing if you plan on marketing yourself more as a person on these sites. And if that’s the case, you should be doing something similar in the rest of your marketing as well. Remember, your tactics shouldn’t change your business model just because you’re online.

Twitter. Twitter is a great way to get short little “tweets” of what your business is up to. @replies are also a great way to help bring other business (or people) into the communication too. Very handy for company’s that just can’t dedicate the time to constantly blog. Short and simple tweets can be more effective and engaging to your followers than a blog.

Final Thoughts.
On all of these sites, tone is key. If you’re portraying yourself as a business, you should post and tweet like a business. Don’t let the more casual and fast-paced Twitter cause you to change your tone and how your business sounds. And don’t feel compelled to have to post something, if it’s not worthy of mentioning.

Picking your audience, and then following your company’s brand should make social networking a easy and fun way to extend your business into virtual world. Your business’ brand is more important than any social networking site. If it doesn’t fit – it doesn’t fit. If your business doesn’t fit any social site, then you may have to rethink your business identity and strategy. Marketing through social networking is part of advertising’s future, so adjustments now will help your future.

ORANGEHAT’s Strategy.
Currently, we’re on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. We’ve setup Facebook as a Group, since we don’t have much to really discuss, nor a very large user-base on the site. It’s a great starting point for us. Twitter we keep to short, generic bits of information: “Out to meetings.” “Deep in logo development.” Enough to show that we’re busy, but not enough to make it look like we’re Tweeting and not working. Flickr is a place where we plan to share our upcoming webapps, along with photography and possible fun stuff like desktop wallpapers.

Additioanlly, I have a personal LinkedIn account, and we plan to expand to a Company Page there in the near future.

Next Time: Working or NETworking?

Yes, we have a portfolio page to show off all of our work, but we think larger projects should get a mention here in the blog too. Plus there’s no rules that say we can’t do that (it is our site, so we can make the rules). About two weeks ago, we wrapped up our latest website design & development project for a Condo Association in Ocean City, MD.

For The Island at Hidden Harbour, ORANGEHAT coordinated transferring the domain, setting up the new sever, along with our a complete site redesign and development. The new site now sports a custom blog system, photo gallery and classifieds. But the main highlight of the site, is something you’ll never see – a custom Admin section. The Association wanted to be able to update their content on their own, and ORANGEHAT was happy to oblige. 95% of the content is available for them to update and customize. We created the look and design, along with all code – from scratch, because, well, that’s what we do.

They also got an early release of File’s Up! Which we plan on having more info on that project in the near future. More on that later.

Very happy with our latest project, and we look forward to the next!

A few weeks ago, we hinted about a new web-application that we were working on, and we’re to a point where we’re ready to share…. well share details at least….

The software is called File’s Up! and is an FTP site web-interface. No more need for FTP clients (even though there some nice FTP clients), or using third-party sites to share files. You login, browse, download, and even upload, through a simple web interface.

Our need was for a nice way to deliver completed projects to our clients and vendors, as well as coming up with a way for them to share files with us. We have used other sites, but we wanted a better solution, and one that matched the look of ORANGEHAT. We’re a design shop, so what we do, and what we use, should be ours, shouldn’t it?! So we’re in a private beta testing phase right now while we finish ironing out the bugs.

As we were developing this system, we found that other agencies, companies, designers, or anyone hosting their own PHP-based website may be interested in using this kind of software. So we’ll be offering this system for a small fee that anyone can install on their own site.

So what’s next? Well, we’re in our closed private beta, while we continue to test and iron out the bugs. Then we’ll create some generic themes, a demo site, and then put it up for sale in the upcoming month or so.

We’re all really excited (and anxious) to finish up the site, and to be able to share it with the entire internet. Look for more updates in the upcoming weeks!

… and it smells tasty. It’s the smell of a small, yet delicious little web-app that ORANGEHAT is currently putting together. It’s our first one (that will be sold at least) and I’m really excited about it.

I don’t want to give away too much just yet (we’re big fans of keeping up suspense), but it’s something that I think most small business or even people could use to help share content with non-techy users. We’re still in development and design, but just like a good Thanksgiving feast, you have to get your hands dirty and prep the turkey for a good while before everyone can sit down and enjoy the meal.