Twitter has become the new thing.  Before that, Facebook, and even before that, Myspace. And those 3 along with many other social media websites are still going strong and being used more and more as places to network and build brand awareness.

All of these social media spaces have two things in common:

1. They are being used to leverage awareness of a brand or product.
2. They are most often being used in the wrong way.

The Wrong Way To Use Social Media

With the overwhelming growth of social media, major corporations like McDonald’s, BestBuy, and Dell are creating accounts to interface with potential and already existing customers.

The sad part is that most companies using social media just don’t get it.  They are promoting their products but not taking the time to engage in conversation with their customers.

Social Media is a place to build and foster relationships for so much more than forcing your product on everyone with whom you come in contact.

The real reason companies are getting it wrong is because they are bundling social media with their marketing department.

Social Media is so much more than marketing, and the two should never be paired together as one group in a company.

If companies want to be successful with social media, their best bet is to create a social media position or even team, and hire those of us with experience in creating and maintaining those relationships.

Look at Crocs.  They are a company that understands social media enough to know that they didn’t understand social media.  And hired someone for the sole purpose of running the social media side of the house.

The Right Way To Use Social Media

If you really want to use social media correctly, hire an expert and let them run the show.  But if you can’t afford and expert, here are some simple guidelines to follow that will help you tremendously, at least until you figure it out.

1. Never forget that social media is about person-to-person connections. You are not speaking as “the company”, but as an individual within that company. Many companies don’t know how to do this, and it takes a lot of practice to find that voice and feel comfortable with it.
2. Be a good listener. All companies say they listen to their customers, but do they really LISTEN and let people know that they are listening by responding?
3. Be patient. This takes a long time because you are going to be transforming your company, one person at a time.
4. Be opportunistic. Start small with the people who are most passionate about building relationships with customers.
5. Be flexible. You never know what’s going to happen so you have to constantly adjust your thinking and learn.
6. Be collaborative. You need people from up and down the management chain to buy-in.
7. Be humble. Remember that you are not as influential as your community. If you forget this, they will let you know.

Are You Social Networking or Social Notworking?

If you aren’t sure which it is you’re doing, it’s as simple as asking your community.  People are very opinionated and they will not hold back in telling you whether you’re doing it right or wrong.

This goes back to the step on listening.  If you can keep your mouth closed for a moment and truly listen, you’ll hear things you’ve never heard before.

I was lucky enough to get an invitation to Google Wave from a friend of mine, and in the last couple of days, I’ve been exploring the features it contains.

While I’m not extremely impressed with it yet, I can foresee some big uses for Google Wave coming about.

1. Forum Integration

With Google Wave’s ability to imbed Waves into existing websites and allow for comments within each embedded wave, this could be a very awesome change for forums.

Currently, in order to reply to a thread in a forum, you have to register for that forum, type your reply then wait for the page to refresh in order to see it posted.  And if others are posting comments at the same time, you could miss conversation posted while posting your own.

Google Wave allows you to reply to each individual sentence and see all comments and threads as they are typed, in real time.  It will also allow you to read the forum and make comments via your Google Wave account, so you can participate in many different forums from one location.

Forum participation has declined since the creation of blogs, but I think forums will make a huge comeback with the implementation of Google Wave.

2. Blog Integration

Much like forum integration, using Google Wave to imbed your posts onto your blog will allow other Wave users to add to the content (much like a wiki), and hold a conversation dynamically with other blog readers.

This integration could help increase your blog community by allowing you to interact with your readers as they visit your new posts.

The only downside I see to using Google Wave for your blog posts is those who try to add to your content that don’t know anything about the topic. And it could cause less visitors to your actual blog, meaning those advertisements you have will not be seen.

Sponsored Conversation, much like that created through Izea’s new Sponzai, will be the future of making money through your blog when Google Wave starts being implemented.

3. Education Integration

Google Wave will make a huge impact on education.

The ability to collaborate as a team will help promote a better learning environment and a place for students to work together to solve problems whether at school or at home.

Students will also have the chance to continue asking the teacher questions and receive help after school hours, through shared waves.

I think education will have the biggest opportunity for change using Google Wave!

4. Conference & Team Integration

Because Google Wave allows for real time communication between individuals, it will make amazing headway for company teams working together on a single project as well as conferencing.

Virtual businesses will be able to communicate with each other on projects much easier and give them a better chance of surviving against brick and mortar businesses.

This will also allow companies to save money by converting their employees to a telecommute position and decreasing electric, water, and so many other costs involved in operating a physcial business.

5. Email Marketing

Email marketing has been around for a long time, but with the popularity of social media websites and blogging, it has become something few do anymore.

In the past couple of years it has started making a comeback.  But it’s difficult for those new to email marketing to really get involved because they aren’t sure of how to create amazing content for those email lists that are being created.

With Google Wave, email marketers will be able to send out truly dynamic emails and respond to questions and comments as they are asked. This will also allow everyone in the email list to see and questions and answers based on the material and could possibly persuade them into performing a desired action based on an issue they may have had but was cleared up by someone else.

If the product is good enough, it could also help to build trust between the email marketer and the client by allowing them to see real-time testimonies and compliments.

There are probably many other ways Google Wave will make an impact, but I see these as the biggest uses for Google Wave.

What uses to you envision for Google Wave?

I talk to a lot of people, both individuals and companies who still don’t really understand Twitter and how it’s supposed to be used.  And simply telling them that it’s for conversation rather than blasting your stuff out to everybody who can read doesn’t seem to ever work in getting my point across.

So I’ve come up with a real world analogy to better understand how Twitter can only work if used correctly… through real conversation.

3 Major Uses Of Twitter

There are 3 ways you can use twitter.  Each producing a much different outcome than the other.  But only one of these 3 uses of twitter will produce the outcome you desire, unless you’re some kind of psycho stalker.

Here’s the scenario:

“You just got off work and you’re on your way to the local sports bar for a drink and to check out the local hotties.  As you’re enjoying your beer at the bar, you spot the most amazing girl you’ve ever seen.  You’ve got 3 things you can do…”

1. Observe & Leave Alone

You prop yourself up against the bar and whisper quietly to yourself, “Damn, she is fine!” Then you continue to watch her all night, never making a move to go speak to her.  Eventually she leaves with another guy, and you go home to spend more time with no one but yourself.

In this scenario, you are observing.  The relation to twitter is simply watching others have a conversation.  You don’t choose to follow anyone, or participate in a real conversation, you scan others profiles and read about what they have to say to each other.

2. Make A Feeble Attempt At Being Social

You prop yourself up against the bar, whisper quietly to yourself, “Damn, she is fine,” and take a shot of whiskey.  Then you scribble your number down on a scrap piece of paper, non-chalantly make your way over to her, and without a single word, slip your number into her back pocket.  She doesn’t even notice, and again, you go home to spend time with yourself.

In this scenario, you make an attempt at being social, but in the wrong way. The relation to twitter is following others, never saying a word to those you follow, and blasting out your latest product or offering every chance you get.

3. Engage In Real Conversation

You prop yourself up against the bar, whisper quietly to yourself, “Damn she is fine,” take a shot of whiskey, and walk boldy up to her.  As she makes eye contact you say, “Your eyes are as blue as window cleaner.”  It’s probably not the best thing you could have said, but you’re trying, and she giggles.

You spend the rest of the night talking about both of your likes, dislikes, your careers, and anything else that comes to mind.  You being a relationship and she’ll remember you the rest of her life.

In this scenario, your akward attempt at making a real attempt at connecting work.  And this time it may have been akward, but as you do it more and more, it will become second nature, and you’ll find yourself becoming more and more successful each time.

The relation to twitter is following others, but making an attempt at engaging in conversation with each and every person you follow.

When you truly care about what others have to say and join in the conversation, you’ll notice that others will come from all over because they want to be a part of that conversation.

Being real, causes others to realize that there is more behind a company, product, or service than the cold corporate exterior.  They soon will realize that you are just as real as they are.  You laugh, hurt, sing, and cry just like they do.

Twitter is exactly like a sports bar.  What you make of it, will determine what it makes of you! Rather than asking others to follow us on Twitter, shouldn’t we be asking them to join us in conversation?

So how do you use Twitter?  Are you engaging in conversation and listening to what others have to say, or using it as another tool to talk about yourself?

With Twitter becoming more and more popular and a key tool for many business models, it’s always nice to be able to see all your replies as soon as possible.  While Twitter does allow an option to get text messages when you get a reply, the truth is, many people don’t have text messaging, while they do have email on their phones.

So here is a way to get your Twitter Replies sent directly to your email, so you can still be a part of the conversation even at event conferences and when you’re on the road.

1. Find Your Twitter Reply Feed

When you look at your Twitter Replies page, you’ll notice there isn’t a link to your RSS feed.  But with a little searching, I found the link.  Actually I hit view page source and copy and pasted the url.

But when you do this, a popup asks you for a username and password. Don’t worry about entering it, you don’t need to do this.

Here’s the url, it’s the same for everyone, so this should work for you:

http://twitter.com/statuses/replies.rss

2. Put Your Twitter Reply Feed Into Notify.Me

Go to notify.me, make sure you’re signed in (if you don’t have an account, then you need to register), and paste the above url into the url box under the sources tab.

Before hitting “Add Site” you need to modify the Reply Feed url.

Because you replies are password protected, you have to add your username and password to the url. Here’s the format you need to use (make sure you include the colon between the username and password:

http://username:password@twitter.com/statuses/replies.css

When your feed has been aquired by notify.me, you’ll see it listed below the url textbox.  Click the Email icon to the right of the Feed title.

You’re All Done

That is all there is to receiving your Twitter replies via email.  This saves my butt so much when an important tweet is sent to me and I’m not anywhere near my computer.

I also plan on using this to keep in the conversation at IzeaFest this year.

There are also other ways to do this using FriendFeed, Yahoo Pipes, and others.

What tool do you use to get your Twitter replies via email?