Moving to a foreign country is a deep change of life; not only because you’re leaving your relatives and friends (skype and social media are good tools to maintain such relationships) but also because you have planned to set your entire social and professional life in an “unknown” environment where you don’t know people and people don’t know you. As in any situation where you’re going to reinvent yourself, you have to analyze you starting point and, hereby, to develop your “strategy”. When I moved to Turkey, I had no real job opportunity or contracts. Also, in the private sphere, I had just few connections with just a couple of my wife’s friends. Here there are some lessons I learned from my experience Attend a language school To know the language of the country where you live, obviously, It’s the first step to improve the possibility to establish personal and professional relations. Attending a language school (even if you already know the language, it wasn’t my situation :)) is for sure the first step to do. Going to the school language was my first opportunity to start to networking. The main advantage is that many foreign people like you don’t know the language, so if you know at least English (that is the most common language worldwide) you can start to make your connections. During the four months I attended at the school I met a lot of persons, even others Italian that temporary or permanently moved to Turkey. I met my firends “Paolos” (yes, it was the most common name among Italians :)) and German, American, English, and other persons from different nationalities. In the very first month I got a network of 20-30 local connections composed by foreign people living in Izmir. Most of them were married with turkish people so, my “second degree” connection reached about 40-60 people. How to get value from these connections? People moving abroad have almost the same problems: how to get resident permit and how to find a job are the most popular and urgent questions. So, if you are able to help them they will help you. Try to be valuable in giving the information they need. Be open and listen to their problem and always try to help to solve. When you’ll need, they will help you back. Connect with institutions of your Country If you live in a main city, probably there is at least a Consulate. Usually Consulate’s employees are both “diplomatic” (sent to the country from the Foreign Ministry) and “administrative”, usually local people employed. So Consulate has a deep knowledge of the local environment and can help you in understanding how to approach a business or…
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It seems that the new algorithm is penilizing post from Pages, favouring updates from friends instead. According empiric observation from Original Marins Page Manager, the organic reach of pages has been decrased by a 40%. This means that the Organic Visibility of page contents is going to be negatively affected by this new algorithm. Comparing with the previous EdgeRank, the new Facebook system has three improvement: Story Bumping. The content recency will be less important in selecting what to show on newsfeed. According to Facebook this will let to see about 70% of published story against the before 57%. Last actor.Will evaluate the last 50 more recent interaction in order to prioritize contents coming from actors which we interact with in the near past time. Chronological Ordering will order in chronological order the updates written by our closest friends. These improvements favour organic contents coming from personal profile more than the ones published through Pages, that will be pushed to advertise their content in order to appear in the timeline. While many social media marketers are blaming Facebook for forcing them to enter a cicle of advertisment (promoting page -> promoting contents), observing the way the new algorithm works, we can find out some guideline to rethink the Facebook Action Plan. 1. Interaction will be the key The last actor feature prioritizes in timeline posts from users we interact more with. Furthermore, it doesn’t matter if the post is recent or not. The more a content is “actioned” by closest friends, the more It will be highlighted on timeline. Beacuse the Cronological order has a low impact in ranking, if a user share a content and this content gains comments, like or other sharings, in theory it should never expire. 2. Facebook Panda The second attention-point is related to the source. According to the interview to Lars Backtrom – News Feed Manager at Facebook – by AllThingd (“Like This if You Like Pandas! Facebook Says Publishers Shouldn’t Fret About News Feed Changes.“), It seems that Facebook will mix a lot of variables in the news feed selection. Among them the prestige of the source: according to Backtron, given a certain content, if it comes from a trusted source will be better ranked than the same content coming from a non-trusted one. This means that importing feeds from news aggregators, for example, will be less valuable than an original and direct linked content. Another cut will be made on memes and “strategies employed by people who get distribution on Facebook“, like photos with call-to-action builded in order to get actioned by users and distribuited. Read also: News Feed FYI: Showing More High Quality Content (Facebook.com) 3. Conent quality and real engagement So what…
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Among the most fortunate mass communication theories, the Katz & Lazarsfeld’s “Two steps flow of communication” during the 40s described a model where a message broadcasted by a source is captured by an opinion leader who, because his/her reputation among the society, is able to influence the audience’s behavior. Basing on this research, marketing and public relations payed a lot of attention to choose testimonial to be used in above or below the line campaigns. When in the early 2000s came out the “Web 2.0”, it seemed that model was intended to disappear. Observers and researchers welcomed with a great passion this collaborative circumstance, highlighting the direct access to information, the decentralization of content production, the disintermediation between producer and consumer, the possibility to directly engage with the source. All connected people would have been able to access the information, to elaborate them and share the results. The opinion leader’s role appeared to be definitely got discussed. From opinion leader to hub Actually some changes happened, but only on a exterior level. First of all new personalities came to light. They, missing the web, probably wouldn’t ever get visible. Second, we paid more and more attention to conversation generated on-line and contents themselves became often mainstream. The basic communication flow, anyway, has been almost unchanged, but transforming the “two-step flow” into “multi-step flow”. A proof of that is the fast growing development of reputation and influence measurement tools such as Klout and Kred. Supposing that every internet user is potentially an hub of a subnet, composed by its contacts, the communication flows from a source is captured by the “hub” that broadcasts to the subnet. Message’s viral degree, that is the message’s ability to be propagated, depends on hub’s reputation and the ability to influence the subnet. From hub to influencer If initially it seems that the individual centrality in message propagation has been improved, recalling the Katz & Lazarsfeld theory, the only true difference relies more on the number of required steps to reach the influence, than on the social dynamics themselves. In the sociologists’ theory, indeed, an opinion leader’s main characteristics were the most access to media, a more literate understanding of media content, the ability to explain and diffuse the content to others. If the access to media problem appears to be solved, the ability to understand and to broadcast media content is still today the common feature between mass and social media. Katz & Lazardfel, furthermore, concluded their researches highlighting that personal influence (set by interpersonal relationship) is more important than the mass media. Starting from these observations, also today, enterprises plan word-of-mouth marketing, viral marketing campaigns and PR Tatics. Features such as Retweets, Sharing, Comments (that is all the features releated to…
Leave a CommentPer sfruttare al meglio le potenzialità di networking (di creazione della rete di contatti) è importante ricordare che LinkedIN è costruito attorno al principio dei 6 gradi di separazione, secondo cui una persona può collegarsi ad un altra persona attraverso una catena formata da non più di 6 intermediari. Si immagini una serie di cerchi concentrici, al cui centro siamo noi. Il primo anello che ci circonda, rappresenta la nostra rete di contatti. L’anello successivo, i contatti dei nostri contatti, e così via. Ogni anello rappresenta un grado di separazione. La funzione principale di Linkedin come strumento di networking è quello di mappare questi percorsi e le nostre connessioni ad altre persone. In questo modo, se si vuole entrare in contatto con qualcuno che non conosciamo personalmente, Linkedin permette di trovare le persone nella nostra rete di contatti che possono aiutarci a raggiungere quella persona. Partendo dalla nostra rete, Linkedin formalizza la “distanza” che ci separa da una persona classificandola come: contatto di primo livello (1st degree contact), ovvero persona appartenente ai nostri contatti; contatto di secondo livello (2nd degree contact), persona che non conosciamo direttamente, ma è nella rete di uno dei nostri contatti di primo livello contatto di terzo livello (3rd degree contact), persone che sono conosciute dai nostri contatti di secondo livello. La nostra rete è formata dai contatti di primo, secondo e terzo livello. LinkedIN, rispettando il principio dei 6 gradi di separazione (ma anche per una forma di convenienza nella vendita di servizi premium, NdR) spinge l’utilizzo della “introduzione“, ovvero di farsi presentare da qualcuno. Coloro che si trovano oltre il terzo grado sono considerati “fuori dalla rete” e per poterli raggiungere dobbiamo, prima, raggiungere qualcuno presente nel terzo livello. Grazie alle statistiche di rete, LinkedIN offre la possibilità di capire le potenzialità del nostro network indicando per ciascun grado di separazione le persone che potenzialmente possiamo contattare. Informazione questa che torna utile per avere una prima stima di quanto possiamo allargare il nostro business. Ovviamente è un dato completamente asettico, non tenendo conto in alcun modo del tipo di contatto e indicando solamente il numero massimo di persone potenzialmente raggiungibili. Altrettanto chiaramente più ampio è il numero di contatti di primo livello, maggiore sarà quello di secondo e terzo livello. Nel corso degli anni, tuttavia, LinkedIN è diventato più flessibile permettendo di includere nella rete potenziale anche coloro che, pur essendo oltre il terzo grado di separazione, è potenzialmente raggiungibile perché frequenta un Gruppo al quale noi siamo iscritti. Cosa pensi di questo post? Dillo nei commenti e aiutami a migliorare la guida e dai i tuoi suggerimenti nella pagina “Guida a Linkedin“.
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