On May 9, 2013, IPWatchdog’s very own Gene Quinn will be attending and presenting at the Business Development Institute’s Social Media Marketing Summit for Law Firms in NY.  When they first reached out to IPWatchdog to ask Gene to present at this event, I offered to speak as the Social Media Diva, but given that the program specifically targets Law Firms, they declined my offer expressing their desire to have an attorney who not only knows and understand the importance of social media but one who also utilizes social media on a regular basis as part of the work he does each day!   So Gene is definitely their guy!

The summit was put together as a result of increased awareness of social media by law firms and how these platforms can be used to attract new clients and to expand business with existing clients.  According to the Summit’s Event Summary, “Most lawyers use social media networking tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter and most firms have at least one blog.   Many firms now recognize that blogging and social networking have helped produce new client leads.” Gene himself gets all of his client work as a result of his blogging and other social media efforts.  So BDI recognized that he is the perfect person to present at the Summit.

By now you are probably aware that on March 19, 2013, the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued U.S. Patent No. 8,401,009 to Twitter, and more specifically to Jack Dorsey and Christopher Isaac Stone. The Twitter patent is titled: Device Independent Message Distribution Platform. In other words, Twitter was awarded a patent on “Tweeting”!

Now those of you who know me and have read my posts in the past, know that I am not a patent attorney myself (although I am married to one who is rather well known).  Rather, I am a social media strategist — sometimes called The Social Media Diva™ — who uses Twitter and other social media platforms to assist my clients in their online marketing strategies. Quite frequently we will feature posts that analyze the technologies of an issued patent from the IP attorney perspective.  We thought it would be fun for me to analyze this patent from a non-attorney standpoint as it pertains to social media platforms as a whole.

For the patent professionals who are reading you may find it interesting to see the complete file history for the Twitter patent.

For decades, the Nielsen Rating has measured audience size for television programming. Since 2006, Twitter allowed users to provide real-time comments, or tweets, on just about anything they wish. Twitter users often use Twitter to discuss television shows as they are being aired. Because of this, Nielsen and Twitter and joining their powerful forces to create the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating.

Starting in the fall of 2013, the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating will chart the conversations that take place on Twitter about television shows. It will measure the total audience for each show’s social activity. According to a representative at Nielsen, this new rating system will provide the “precise size of the audience and effect of social TV to TV programming.”

Nielsen, is a global company that measures television and other media forms such as online, mobile and trade shows. They have a strong presence in about 100 countries and have headquarters in New York and the Netherlands.

Whether you are just getting your feet wet in the wild world of inventions and patents, or you already have your business up and running, social media can help expand your business. Everywhere you look, there are Facebook “Like” buttons, LinkedIn “Share” buttons and Twitter “Tweet” buttons. Even Google has entered the social sharing game with Google+ allowing you to “+1” content. Social media can help catapult your business into overdrive – if you know how to use it effectively.

Here are some tips to using social media to expand business.

1. Choose which social platforms you want to use

There are many social networks out there – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, the list seems to be constantly growing. You want to channel your hard work into a select amount of platforms, and make sure that they are the right ones for your business. But with so many choices, how can you be sure which is right for you? Well that depends on what your goal is. Twitter is very up-to-the-minute, a place that provides short blurbs about news, insights and just about anything else. Facebook will allow you to post pictures, talk about events and what’s new with your business. LinkedIn caters to the professional crowd and will allow you to highlight your business credentials, but there is a social side to it that is beneficial for businesses.

No matter where we go these days, social media surrounds us. It seems everyone is saying, “Follow us on Twitter.” “Like us on Facebook.”  “For More Information Scan Our QR Code.”  Just this week alone, I have seen at least a dozen places in my everyday life where social media has come into the real world —  at church, on my drive home from the airport I saw signs on the back of hotel shuttle vans and at my local coffee shop, to name a few.  Social media is here to stay and businesses of all sizes know it.  But what many smaller businesses do not know or care to realize is that there are several bad habits that still need to be broken in order to make the most out of their social media strategies.  Following is a list of these common bad habits and what small business can do to break away from these same old mistakes.

Social Media Hard Sales

Social Media is not the place for hard selling.  You may recall in a previous article, Top 10 Mistakes Businesses Make with Social Media, I listed hard selling as #5 on the list.  But it seems that so many businesses cannot seem to break this very bad habit.  I am not saying do not promote your businesses, but people do not want to be “sold to” anymore.  With the Internet and social media making it so easy for consumers to go somewhere else, there are other, far more productive ways to promote your business than with the hard sell.

Social Media is not a fad.  It is not something that is going to go away nor is it going to be replaced by something bigger and better.  Most businesses have embraced social media and all that it has to offer.  Perhaps you, yourself have taken a ride on the social media bandwagon.  But, even if you have a well-established social media presence, are you really getting the most out of your online relationships?  Are you missing opportunities to truly leverage your business relationships online in order to reap bigger rewards and sales in the real world?  Following are 5 easy ways that you can take to utilize your online business and real-world relationships to increase your overall social media ROI.

1.  Give and Receive On-Line Introductions

Don’t just wait for others to approach you through social media. Until you have established your online brand, telling others who you are, what you do and what you have to offer, you cannot expect others to find you.  You are always your own best advertiser.  You need to reach out to everyone you know and want to know to get the word out. With social media, as well as in the real world, you do not necessarily have to approach people blindly.  Rather start utilizing the business relationships you have developed both off line and on over the years to meet those you would potentially like to work with.

It seems like everyone is online these days, male, female, young and old.  And tapping into this vast audience is a low-cost, highly effective way to launch a small-business brand into the global marketplace. Building your brand through social media allows you to cultivate new relationships, increase brand awareness, develop customer loyalty and make word-of-mouth marketing go viral.  Although social media seems relatively easy to get started with, it takes strategy and consistency to build your brand online.  The most important thing to keep in mind while doing so is no matter how big the company you work for is, whether you work for yourself or for someone else, you still have your own personal brand.

But what exactly does it mean to have a personal brand?  How can one use social media to represent a larger company or firm yet still maintain a personal brand?  Well if you have read my article With Social Media, YOU are Your Own Brand published in June of 2011, I explained that although you may be using social media to promote the offerings of the company or firm you work for, large or small, you are doing so as an individual.  Building upon this previous article, below are 5 simple steps you can take to build your own personal brand using social media.

When it comes to social media and business these days it seems that, “Everyone is doing it.”  In fact, you may have already dabbled in social media a bit yourself.  The question is are you really doing all you can do to make the most out of your social media strategy?  Are you taking advantage of the various available platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media sites? Are you ready to take control and tap into the power of social media?

One of the best things about social media is that you don’t need to have a big marketing budget to benefit from the different ways that social media can propel your business.  But you do need to be committed and have a strategy. If you are not going to hire a consultant to assist you, then you will need to invest the time to do things yourself, which is fine so long as you actually do it!

Since we are nearing the end of 2011, in order to get you motivated moving into 2012, I thought I would share with you a list of “Social Media Resolutions” that you should consider implementing in your 2012 marketing and brand building social media campaigns.

The Federal Trade Commission is seeking public comments on the issues raised at a recent FTC workshop exploring facial recognition technology and the privacy and security implications raised by its increasing use. The December 8, 2011, public workshop, “Face Facts: A Forum on Facial Recognition Technology,” focused on the current and future commercial applications of facial detection and recognition technologies, and discussed current uses of these technologies, possible future uses and benefits. Now the focus shifts to the potential harms, namely the numerous potential privacy and security concerns.

Facial detection and recognition technologies have been adopted in a variety of new contexts, ranging from  online social networks to automobiles to Automatic Teller Machines and must more. Indeed, there are a variety of facial recognition innovations already patented and many with patent pending status.  A search of the United States Patent and Trademark Office database for the term “facial recognition” within the Abstract of an issued patent or published patent application returns 181 results.

Having a brand is not just for big corporations and well-known products. Big businesses, small businesses, law firms, entrepreneurs and anyone else wanting to make a name for themselves can do so by building a brand. The way you portray your business, your products and yourself; in other words your image, is your brand.

Thanks to social media everyone has the ability to connect with like-minded individuals all over the world. But if you want to exploit social media you need to have an effective strategy. It does not take an enormous amount of time each day. In fact with only 15 minutes per day, you can really make quite an impact.  Like everything you hope to succeed with in life, it does take planning and forethought.

Here are suggestions on how you might be able to use social media to develop your brand, monitor quality, engage customers, expand upon ideas and connect with others within your industry.

There’s only one thing more disheartening to an online retailer than knowing that a lot of customers are going to abandon their shopping carts before completing a purchase. And that’s the discovery that a whopping three out of four of them will actually turn around and leave the website rather than endure the hassle of registering a new account.

A new technology called “social login,” however, can alleviate both problems. Offered by multiple vendors  (including Facebook) or custom built in-house, social login allows website visitors to log in using their Facebook, Twitter, or other social media identity and avoid registration and password hassles entirely.

This is no small matter. A friend of mine was in a Cost Plus World Market retail location recently and spotted a coffee table he liked. A salesman noted that if he signed up for their online World Explorer rewards program, he could get the table for 25 percent off. So he tried signing up via his iPhone while in the store, but found it too frustrating to awkwardly thumb-type all his personal data — let alone create a unique 10 digit reward program ID — on the iPhone’s tiny virtual keyboard. So he left the store without completing the purchase.

When I speak at events, one of the most common questions I get from professionals is, “What is the purpose of Twitter.” Those of us who use Twitter know what the purpose of Twitter is and how to use it though. But for many, the concept of micro-blogging is still quite a mystery. Once you understand what to tweet, how to tweet and how much to tweet, you are quickly able to make excellent connections, increase your website statistics and search engine ranking, find some of your best brand advocates, and benefit quickly and efficiently from word of mouth marketing. In fact, next to YouTube, micro-blogging on Twitter is one of the quickest ways for information about you, your brand, your business, your products and your services to go viral.

Before one can feel comfortable on Twitter, they must first understand the purpose of Twitter, realize the potential of Twitter and learn how they can use Twitter to meet their overall marketing objectives.  Following, I will discuss and demystify 5 of the top myths about Twitter use for business and give you pointers on how you can get the most out of your Twitter account.