Tag: Tactics & Tools

What Companies Want in a Social Media Intern

As well as looking good on your resume and netting you college credit, interning in social media can offer you incredibly valuable experience in the world of work, where social media experience is becoming ever-more important.

However, competition for good placements can be fierce, so it’s good to know what companies look for in a social media intern, so you can focus on improving or highlighting those skills.

From big companies, small businesses, non-profits, educational institutions and commercial ventures, we talked to the people who recruit social media interns to find out just what it is they want in a candidate.

via mashable.com

If you want to know what makes a good social media intern, look no further than Jamy Lyn Johnson of AGCO. In the spirit of full disclosure, Jamy is a client that has fully embraced the ‘e1evation workflow‘, personalized it and made it her own. A few weeks ago, the AGCO blog [which Jamy drives along with her boss Sue Otten] received a huge honor when they earned a spot in the Alltop Agriculture channel — kind of a bloggers ‘hall of fame’ making them the only Farm Equipment manufacturer to achieve that hallowed status…

What make Jamy so successful? Mashable lists 4 qualities that companies want:

  • Good communication skills
  • Solid writing skills
  • Top notch social skills
  • Enthusiasm

Jamy had all four out of the box. As a journalism major at Furman, she gained the solid foundation that many business bloggers are lacking. She was also familiar with social media tools but needed a system and a process for using them in concert to achieve business objectives. That’s where I came alongside her for a brief period of time to connect the tools and give her a logical workflow using Google Reader combined with all the tools on the AGCO blog.

If you’re looking for the real deal in social media interns, look no further than Jamy — she’s a model for success in this space! AGCO better snap her up soon… :-D

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Stop Phoning It In

Image representing MailChimp as depicted in Cr...
Image via CrunchBase

If you’re responsible for your company’s newsletter [‘or blog or any other outward facing communication’ ed. note], stop looking at it as a burden. Ask yourself this question: “What would be MOST useful to the people getting this newsletter?” And then ask yourself this question: “What else besides my company’s pitch can I put into this newsletter?” Then ask yourself this question: “Would I share this with someone in my family or with my friends?” That’s one way to figure out how to fix newsletters.

If you’re looking for new buyers, don’t just lamely ask people. Figure out how to find them. Use social tools. Use old fashioned search tools. Create interesting content that would appeal to the kinds of people you need, and figure out ways to promote that. Look OFFLINE. It’s amazing how few people do that last one, by the way, if they’re getting deep into the online world.

If you’re responsible for improving coverage for your company as a public relations professional, put more time into building your relationships with your network before you have a new story. Connect with them about their own things. Ask them about their own passions. Get to know them outside of the article. Ask them how you can help them, or much better still, just figure out a way to be helpful and do it, gratis.

via chrisbrogan.com
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Blogs Take Test of Faith

Martin Luther by Lucas Cranach. The Protestant...
Image via Wikipedia

A news report that challenges conventional wisdom, especially one about a personal/cultural topic like religion, is often rich fodder for online conversation. This was the case last week as a Pew Research Center survey showing that atheists and agnostics were more knowledgeable about religion than followers of major faiths drew significant attention.

For the week of Sept. 27 to Oct. 1, almost a quarter (23%) of the news links on blogs were to a Los Angeles Times story about the survey, making it the No. 1 subject, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The survey from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that non-believers were able to answer more questions about religion correctly than believers, even when one controlled for educational background. It also showed that people were ill-informed on some of the questions related to their own religion. A majority of Protestants, for example, were unable to identify Martin Luther as the primary figure behind the Protestant Reformation. (The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Project for Excellence in Journalism are both are part of the Pew Research Center.)

via pewresearch.org

You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’d like to dig a little deeper…

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8+ tools for upgrading your Twitter experience

HootSuite Fluid icon
Image by yjsk via Flickr

Admit it: You might love Twitter as a social network, but you probably don’t love it as a service. Twitter is the Yugo of social tools — it can take you wherever to need to go, but there aren’t a whole lot of bells and whistles. Of course, Yugos probably broke down less often.

Twitter’s simplicity is probably a big part of why it has attracted so many new users over the last four years, but once you master the basics, it isn’t long before you find yourself wishing there was an easy way to unfollow inactive users or send private messages to several people at the same time. The good news is that Twitter makes it easy for developers to create tools that can take your Twitter experience from Yugo to Lexus without too much fuss.

Here are eight Web applications that you can use to kick your account into a higher gear. Note: For simplicity’s sake, I won’t get into full Twitter clients, mobile apps or analytics tools today — those weighty topics will have to wait for their own posts.

via smartblogs.com

What’s the + for? HootSuite. If you follow the ‘via’ link, you can read the author’s perspective. For me, however, HootSuite is the one tool that rules them all. Why? As a web based app with great mobile apps for iPhone or Android, it’s always available to be my social media dashboard — not only for Twitter, but for Facebook pages and other social media sites as well. HootSuite — don’t tweet home without it!

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4 must-have social-media dashboards for your business

Image representing Gist as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

While big brands and agencies have the luxury of resources and money, local businesses don’t. What they need is a social-media dashboard — an all-in-one, Web-based monitoring tool for Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites where customers hang out — that can optimize their online presence, engage with users and manage social campaigns. But that tool needs to meet three criteria: cheap, easy to use and automated. With that in mind, here’s a list of the top four that I find particularly well-suited for business use.

via venturebeat.com

I encourage you to follow the ‘via’ link and learn more about these ‘dashboards’. imho, the list is incomplete, however, without Gist and Google Reader. What are your favorite social dashboards?

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How to add more sources to your social newspaper

via holykaw.alltop.com

What do you mean you don’t have a social newspaper? Go to http://paper.li to get one!

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5 Tips to Kick Start Your Link Building via Social Media Monitoring

Image representing Gist as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

Lately there’s been renewed interest in building links via social media monitoring. To build links this way, a link builder creates a monitoring search in their favorite social media tool and waits for it to find news stories, blog posts, tweets, comments, and other social content. Each new post is an opportunity to find a relevant influencer and build a relationship.

Unfortunately, in some niches or with some very narrowly-targeted searches, the amount of new content being posted may be one or two items per week, which wouldn’t exactly fill the link builder’s schedule. It’s important to start your social media link building with a thorough review of the amassed social content that already exists. So here are a few tips to find bloggers faster with highly-targeted, relevant searches.

via searchenginewatch.com

I use Gist + Google Reader for social media monitoring; the first tracks the important Thought Leaders in my world, the second tracks my trusted news sources. Together they help me monitor the important people and sites in my area of expertise and give ample ideas for creating or curating posts for this blog…

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400 posts redux; Lesson #1

Image representing Alexa as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

This is the first post in what I anticipate will be a 7 part series…

11 months ago, I posted this introspective piece on the results I was getting from blogging…

Yesterday, I passed the 400 post mark. 400 posts over 18 months. Wow! Roughly a post a day for a year and a half. Is that a lot? Is that too little? I really don’t know. What I do know is this — when I use my ‘pass or play’ methodology, traffic to my site increases and my ‘pipeline’ fills…

My good friend [and brother in law] Jim Gilligan has a blog that he’s starting for his life coaching business at EffectiveLiving, LLC. Jim asked me how many posts he should create before he goes ‘live’. I told him a dozen or so is enough to get started but recently I did an experiment and I believe the number at which you start to see good results is closer to 100 over a 3 month period. Here’s a real world case study…

I had neglected my business blog for a little over a year — my passion was politics and I was attempting to leverage my social media skills in the political space. My political blog was ranked most influential in Wisconsin a dozen times earlier this year and my Alexa ranking rose to within the top million sites in the world, but it didn’t get me what I wanted. More business. One year ago today, my business blog, however, had only served up 147 page views for the month. The whole month. Two weeks ago, I got 233 pageviews in a single day and my traffic so far this month is 11 times greater than a year ago [and the month’s not even finished yet]. By the way, the Alexa rank on my blog is currently 338,142. [That was in the US at the time — now my rank is 341,593 global. ed.]. All this as a result of 100 posts over a 3 month period. Pretty good return on investment, I think.

Yesterday, I passed 2,400 posts — 2,000 additional posts — in less than 11 months. What do I think I’ve learned? Here are some more or less random observations…

1. Blogging is the best, fastest, least expensive way to establish a thought leadership position. Period.

The key to thought leadership is having a point of view that is ‘searchable, findable, knowable and shareable‘ as I say in my seminars. There is not better way to do that then frequent reiteration of that point of view on the internet. If you use the right set of tools, it’s easy and fun to do as well…You can read my posts on blogging here, but two of the best I posted within the past week; read ‘Why I blog’ and ‘Confessions of a really new blogger‘ for two different perspectives on why blogging rocks. It is helpful, however, if you have a simple, repeatable process so that you don’t burn out…

There are 6 more lessons that I’ll roll out over the course of the next week or so; be sure to collect all 7…

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The Top 3 Tools for Thought Leaders

Here’s a sneak preview of a presentation I’m giving tomorrow as part of a panel discussion at the Business Assistance Center at NWTC. It will be a lot to cram into to 10 minutes…

Top 3 Tools for Thought Leadershttp://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=top3-100922140731-phpapp01&rel=0&stripped_title=top-3-tools-for&userName=toddlohenry

Questions? Feedback?

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5 Tools for Keeping Track of Your Passwords

via mylifescoop.com

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Tumblr Leaves Posterous in the Dust [?!]

Image representing Posterous as depicted in Cr...
Image via CrunchBase

Rising social media rockstar Kelly Neuville of Envano sent me an article from ReadWriteWeb [you can follow the ‘via’ link below the graph to the source and read the rest of the article if you’re interested] that would seem to suggest at first glance that I should abandon my love of the Posterous platform in favor of my first interest in this space, Tumblr. If I apply logic like this at every level in my life, I would learn a lesson from the flies on my farm and favor a steady diet of cow manure — after all, the sheer volume of their vote would indicate that manure is clearly a better food product, right? :-D

Now I’m not saying that Kelly was wrong to send me the article or that Tumblr = cow manure, although it would appear my analogy is heading in that direction. What I am saying is that there will always be a reason why the masses favor one product over another and it may have nothing to do with elegance or technological superiority. I posted the same data from a different perspective yesterday here; the article postulates that ‘The growth in Tumblr’s visitors probably has something to do with its popularity among celebs.’ and says ‘Earlier this week John Mayer made waves this week by shutting down his Twitter account, where he had 3.7 million followers, and switching to Tumblr full time.’ If that’s the case, then Tumblr has an ‘unfair advantage’ — it’s becoming the destination of choice for the MySpace crowd. My response? Meh…

via readwriteweb.com

Laura Ingraham was right — entertainers should shut up and sing. What I want to know is what are the thought leaders using? I was really impressed with Tumblr until I saw that Guy Kawasaki picked Posterous for his Holy Kaw! blog and then I wondered “what did I miss”?! And what about social media rockstar Steve Rubel? And what about me? Seriously, Posterous rocks at the two most important things I could expect any blogging tool to do; ingest almost any content for creation and curation effortlessly and autopost as part of my homebase and outpost strategy. I use Posterous as the foundation of my ‘e1evation workflow‘ and it made me one of the top thought leaders in my industry on the internet rapidly elevating my site to within the top 40k of all websites in the US in 3 months. I will and I have put my humble Posterous blogs up against the best and they’ve held their ground — believe me when I say I have no fear of Katy Perry on Tumblr…

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John Mayer, Katy Perry Agree: Tumblr Crushing Posterous

via observer.com

Hmmm. I’m a massive Posterous fan — it truly has changed my life, my business and my workflow. I do, however, have to do due diligence and revisit Tumblr [which was actually my first bet in this race] to see what they’re up to…

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5 tips for using Priority Inbox

via gmailblog.blogspot.com

Priority inbox has been rocking my world since it first appeared a couple of weeks ago. It helps me focus on the people and tasks that are most important at any given time — something a lot of my compadres from which a lot of my compadres could benefit. Have you tried it? You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’re interested in learning more…

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Tailored communities give Intel a social-media boost

Why has Intel made such a point to engage across various social-media platforms?

You go where your customers are. We have a pretty robust presence on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. On those platforms we are reaching consumers of all varieties (enthusiasts, gamers, media experts, etc.) We have consistent presence on LinkedIn where we are reaching our business audiences. Our forums and communities on Intel.com are where our developers and IT audiences are highly engaged. And we are always monitoring to see where our audiences are using listening tools and monitoring conversations. Listening helps us know where our presence will have the most value-add to our customers and allow for a true two-way dialog. We are also consistently paying close attention to new trends and exploring the potential of other platforms.

via smartblogs.com

You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’re interested…

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What Tools Are You Using for Listening, Engaging, and Social Media Management?

via bethkanter.org

For me, it begins and ends with Google Reader; I use Reader to aggregate feeds from many of the tools above to create a virtual newspaper of trusted sources. How about you?

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Get Company Intelligence from Workstreamer

We’re all being inundated with information. Tools that help us filter that mass of data can be useful, and those that filter well can become indispensable. Workstreamer, an app currently in public beta, is a “social CRM” tool that can help you keep track of significant news and social media mentions of your customers, prospects, suppliers, and vendors, as well as your own company. Unlike Gist, a tool that we’ve blogged about in the past, Workstreamer focuses on providing information about companies, not individuals.

Workstreamer claims over 5 million companies in its database, and it’s adding more every day. You can also add companies you’d like to monitor that aren’t in Workstreamer’s database, and augment or modify details about other companies, including your own.

via gigaom.com

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Five Best Text Recognition Tools

via lifehacker.com

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Comparing Geo-location Tools (Including Facebook Places)

via hivetalkin.com

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Google Realtime Search: a new home with new tools

via googleblog.blogspot.com

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Google Launches Setup Guide for Small Businesses

In its latest move to appeal to small and medium-sized businesses, Google has launched an online guide to getting started with Google Places and Google Sites, both of which are free tools geared toward SMBs.

Google Sites is a hosted service for building out simple, template-based sites on Google’s cloud infrastructure. Business owners can choose from four templates: Restaurant or Cafe, Retail Shop or Boutique, Dentist or Doctor’s Office and Spa or Salon. Site content, color scheme and fonts are customizable, and of course Sites plays nice with other Google tools like Analytics, Webmaster Tools and AdSense.

The second opportunity Google gives small companies to showcase their business online is called Google Places (not to be confused with the recently launched Facebook feature). It enables companies to claim their business on Google Maps and provide basic information like address, contact information, store hours, accepted payment methods, photos and videos. It can also be used to upload menus, publish coupons and for a fee, enhance listings for greater visibility.

via readwriteweb.com

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Top 5 Most Indispensable Twitter Tools for Marketers

via socialmediaexaminer.com

Follow the ‘via’ link to go to the source…

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