New York SBDC Research Network

A recent article in The Albany Business Review quoted a "serial entrepreneur and social media guru" stating that "businesses have 2.6 seconds to get an audience’s attention". In the article, Promoting your biz 140 characters @ a time , Peter Shankman states that "a 140-character tweet translates to 2.6 seconds, the new collective attention span". So how can your business use a mere 140 characters, or 2.6 seconds, to grab and retain a client's attention span? Below are some articles and tips to do just that. Twitter 101 for Business - A Special Guide The Ultimate Video Guide to Twitter for Business An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Using Twitter for Business 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business 5 Unique Ways to Use Twitter for Business

From our friends a J.J. Hill Library: Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, Plurk - online communities are as plentiful as they are nonsensically named. And they're coming into the mainstream. Might your business benefit by joining the conversation? A white paper from Rubicon Consulting called Online Communities and Their Impact on Business can help you decide. The study identifies how information about businesses is spread online and how businesses can best interact in that conversation. Access the full report in PDF here . No so incidentally, the title of this post is the subtitle of the white paper.

What’s a ning you ask? It is an online platform that allows users to create and participate in their own social networks. Librarians love these sorts of things, and nings have been a recent topic of discussion on our favorite BusLib listserve. Like a listserve, a ning can facilitate communication between individuals with shared interests, and provide a forum for notices and discussion. Unlike a listerve, you have the opportunity to post a picture, and perhaps carry on a more casual discussion than you would want to post to a list of thousands. You can create your own, or participate in an existing ning. And librarians aren’t the only ones with nings. These are all related to business . Read more about Ning here.