A guide to Sharing Thoughts, Messaging and Blogging on the MarketHive Social media and Marketing Tools Site

Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something. Plato

Communicating with fellow members of MarketHive is an important consideration, after all MarketHive is a social network with the emphasis on business, unlike Facebook where anything goes. This article is written as a guide to help both new and existing members be able to communicate with one another in a businesslike manner by making the best use of the various tools as each tool has a specific function.

When you add anything to MarketHive you have full control on both who can see your work and who can comment on your posts, by making use of the icons you will find below the text entry boxes allowing you to select:-

• Public - anyone visiting the page


• Members - Members of MarketHive


• Friends - People on your Friends List


• Only Me - Private to you only

Every person who joins MarketHive has a profile page which includes an activity feed "Share Your Thoughts" section It is very tempting to add random thoughts here but it is best to remember the quote from Plato, because everything you write here will appear on the home page of your friends, which might not be what you want or what they want to see.

There is a news feed on the home page of the system and this is designed to provide each member with items of interest posted by their friends or on the activity pages of groups they belong to. The news feed allows you to quickly find out what your business associates are up to on the system. The news feed In addition to gathering information the news feed has two other functions:-

• It allows members to add additional newsworthy items directly into the the feed.
• You can comment on news items appearing in your feed and any comments you make will instantly update the original source document without requiring you to go to the page or group concerned.

One feature of the news feed,is that you will not see your own posts that you make to your profile page. This has caused a little bit of confusion for many people when they first start as they did not see their post on the news feed, they often often post a duplicate version.

You need to think carefully on how and where you "Share Your Thoughts" I personally allow everyone to view my profile, and for that reason I like to control what "thoughts"of mine they see. Visitors to my page can however quickly see all my blogs, videos and my list of friends. This concise information allows people to quickly discover where my business focus lies, and they can then decide if they want to become my friend and or do business with me. Setting my profile up so that only I can post to it, stops people posting unnecessary items, which I might not want them to see.

If you decide to follow my example please be aware that your friends can still post comments to any post you make on your profile when it appears in their news feed.

So how can my fellow marketers and fellow members of MarketHive contact me.

MarketHive has an in built message system which allows you to communicate with your friends privately and provides a visual message alert on every page. you can additionally set up email alerts for incoming messages under the notifications setting on your profile menu. The message system is the best way to contact new sign ups from your profile page as they are automatically added as a friend if you are an Alpha founder. What better way to contact them to get hold of their phone number and find out what they are about!

The message system is quite sophisticated and will allow you to send out messages to any groups you have set up as well as being able to store messages in folders for future reference.

Use the message system to congratulate people for birthdays and success as well as messages of encouragement or to ask people specific questions.

Your message system can also be activated on your news feed, profile page or group feed wherever you "share your thoughts" by using the share button at the bottom of each post. The share button will open a popup that offers a number of options and the default is to "share on your profile page", if you move you cursor over the wording a further sub menu selection is revealed and you need to take the bottom option "In a private message" see image to right

Taking this selection opens up a new box where you can type in the name of any friends you wish to send a message to, a copy of the original post. plus space to add additional text

The advantage of replying this way, is this reply is private and if you are reply to a post they will be alerted my the message system, the drawback is other people will not see your text message.

The message system is more powerful than most people realise and should be used as a replacement to Skype for person to person messages

You Profile page like most networks is important as this is where most people will land

There is a menu on the left hand side directing people to your blogs and videos, Its your personal showcase, this is where you share with the public what it is you do.

It is no coincidence that both blogs and video lie at the centre of inbound marketing campaigns for your business and MarketHive as the first social neural network uses them to improve its members search engine optimisation results.

Whatever your personal thoughts it is essential to use the blogging tools on MarketHive because that is what this marketing tool is specifically designed around.

• You might have Wordpress blogs running elsewhere but these can be automatically updated by using wordpress plugins so they display your content from your blog on MarketHive which should become the centre of your blogging activity, when you fully understand how to use the blogging feeds and tools, that allow you to share you posts automatically with other members.
• Search engines spiders are always searching blogs for new information and will start visiting your site(s) on a regular basis if you supply good content.
• If you write a particular interesting blog post you can share it on your news feed, write a short introduction with a link to the actual blog post,

I hope you like this short guide and if you find it useful please share it with others.