Tag: Twitter

Some straightforward thoughts on social media…

…from Wisconsin social media guru [no, that’s not an oxymoron!] Dana VanDen Heuvel…

“Social media is an umbrella term for online technologies that connect people through networking, according to Dana VanDen Heuvel, founder and president of the Marketing Savant Group, Green Bay.” Source: Social media connects organizations, customers | greenbaypressgazette.com | Green Bay Press-Gazette

He goes on to say…

“”The value of social media is that it connects customers to us or to each other. It’s not just a list of Web sites or things to download,” VanDen Heuvel said. “It’s about meeting people in their medium. That is really what social media is designed to help you do.”

Businesses should care about social media, because it has changed people’s expectations of what organizations do online as compared with five years ago, he said. Also, three out of four Americans use some form of social technology: blogging, micro-blogging (Twitter), social networking (Facebook), sharing videos and others.” Source: Social media connects organizations, customers | greenbaypressgazette.com | Green Bay Press-Gazette

He goes on to talk about offering unique value through your social media outposts and such practical things as how often your should update Facebook pages, etc. Follow the link to read the rest of article — it’s really good stuff…

btw, Dana’s a great speaker and I owe a lot to him in terms of my growth and development in social media over the past year. Do take the opportunity to see him speak if you ever get the chance — you can see his schedule here. When you want to talk tactics and tools for IMPLEMENTING Dana’s strategies, however, comment, call or contact me! I’ll help you put Dana’s strategies into practice…

;-)

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Ponder this 2/20/2010

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

Here are a couple of things to think about this weekend in the social media space…

“Whom do we increasingly trust less? Us.

It’s a finding that strikes at the foundation of many a social-media marketing philosophy: Tapping into peer-to-peer networks is a way for marketers to tell authentic, credible stories to consumers whose confidence in corporate CEOs, news outlets, government officials and industry analysts has taken a beating. But according to Edelman’s latest Trust Barometer, the number of people who view their friends and peers as credible sources of information about a company dropped by almost half, from 45% to 25%, since 2008. ” Source: Social Media: Consumers Trust Their Friends Less – Advertising Age – News

Some things to avoid…

“Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of social media, and I’m reminded of where we were in the mid-90s with the advent of the web. I lived and worked through Web 1.0, and am feeling a sense of déjà vu as we play out the same routines with Web 2.0 and beyond: social media is getting the same basic adoption patterns, the same reactions and overreactions. It’s just different tools and terminology. We have a long way to go before everyone and their cousin uses social networks more than they email, or tweets more than they call, but nobody can deny the way we communicate has once again been changed forever.” Source: 10 Things to Avoid In Social Media – WebWorkerDaily

If those two didn’t discourage you, here are some thoughts on getting social…

“Nowadays everyone wants social in their sites and applications. It’s become a basic requirement in consumer web software and is slowly infiltrating the enterprise as well. So what’s a designer to do when confronted with the requirements to “add social”? Designing social interfaces is more than just slapping on Twitter-like or Facebook-like features onto your site. Not all features are created equal and sometimes a little bit can go a long way. It’s important to consider your audience, your product—what your users will be rallying around and why they would want to become engaged with it and each other, and that you can approach this in a systematic way, a little bit at a time.” Source: 5 Steps to Building Social Experiences – Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design

Finally, some thoughts on Google Buzz…

“If you still haven’t made up your mind yet about Buzz, here are some useful tips for customizing and automating the service so that it can work with your other social networks. We’ll also look at some ways to share messages and links via Buzz with specific groups, which could make it a useful tool for the workplace.” Source: Google Buzz Tips and Tricks – WebWorkerDaily

My jury on Buzz is still out. You?

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7 social media tools for the news media

If I were a news media journalist what social media tools would I use to make my job easier? I attended a social media panel this morning hosted by news media journalists moving into the social media space and it made me think a lot about what tools I would use if I were in their shoes. Here’s what comes to mind…

First of all, I’d act like an editor and treat the millions of content creators on the internet as my personal little cub reporters. I’d harvest their content and build my stories using the following tools:

When it came to sharing the stuff I’d found, I’d use Shareaholic and some combination of the following tools to promote my reporting:

btw, I cheated on the first line — there are really nine tools in this post, but Google Reader + Google Alerts + Feedly all act as one unit to deliver a ‘virtual newspaper’ or magazine jam packed with valuable source content. Socialmention and Tweetmeme are good for ‘taking the pulse’ of a topic. The other tools depend on what type of tools are use for promoting content that’s been posted online. It kind of assumes the media outlet has a YouTube channel, etc., but that may be a pretty big assumption. Personally, I think the combination of Shareaholic + Posterous is the killer combination for promotion. Learn these two tools and you’ll be able to grab content FROM anywhere and post it TO anywhere so easily that you’ll be able add all those additional posting responsibilities without breaking a sweat!

If this list seems daunting or the post has you scratching your head, comment, call or contact and I’ll break it down for you. Happy deadlines!

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TGIM 2/8/2010

I love Mondays! I get to go back to work at my quiet office with a supercomputer and a fast internet connection! Can’t wait…

In the meantime, Lifehacker is rating the five best Podcast managers…

“Podcasts offer a fantastic way to catch up news, listen to radio shows, and get great media delivered right to your computer (they’re like newsreaders for media). Check out these five popular podcast managers and let the entertainment come to you.

Last week we asked you to share your favorite tool for managing your podcast subscriptions. (The term for downloading a podcast is actually podcatching, and a podcast manager is a podcatcher—the more you know!) We rounded up the top five nominations, and now we’re back for you to review them and cast your vote for your favorite podcast manager.” Source: Five Best Podcast Managers – Podcasting – Lifehacker

Continue reading “TGIM 2/8/2010” →

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Teens break up with blogging…

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase


…and start flirting with Twitter!

“A new study published today by Pew Internet finds that teens and young adults are blogging less and using social networking sites more, with the prominent exception of Twitter.

Pew’s Report surveyed 2,253 American adults and 800 U.S. teens to get a reading of how they use the internet, which gadgets they own, and which social media tools they use the most.” Source: Teens Just Don’t Blog or Tweet [STATS]

Go to the source for the rest of the article. Some of the data will surprise you…

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7 tools for the mobile journalist

The e1evation/Envano team has done a great deal of work over the past six months on building the ‘near perfect’ toolkit for the mobile journalist. It comes from our award-winning work covering trade shows for AGCO. Here’s an interesting post on tools for the mobile journalist. Read the author’s take and then you can have my list of tools…

“The multi-function playground that is the smartphone has shrunk the capabilities of a van-sized 1970’s news team into the pocket of a single reporter. Today, front-page news can stream from any individual with a cell phone camera and a Twitter account, as it did during Iran’s election protests last summer. Today, major news outlets, such as CNN, have crowdsourced parts of their newsroom to locally-savvy citizen journalists, often armed with little more than a camcorder.

In addition to the standard smartphone equipment, such as a camera and social networking applications, we’ve compiled a list of five additional tools that can help a single journalist rival a fully-functional news team. With these tools, a mobile journalist can record data, edit clips, and broadcast polished stories as events unfold.” Source: 5 Essential Tools for the Mobile Journalist

Personally? I must be cranky today because I think this list is lame! My list?

  • Apple iPhone [too bad the ATT network sucks so bad! We need a Sprint MyFi as backup…]
  • Kodax Zi8 HD Video camera
  • Posterous
  • uStream
  • Picasa
  • A notebook computer
  • And a Humvee Combat Vest to put all the equipment in!

Our key to mobile journalism is to assign the right duties to the right assets, be they people or products. Comment, call or contact me to discuss how this applies to your business…

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Tactic #9: Leverage the ‘homebases and outposts’ strategy

It has been awhile since I wrote about tactic #8; using branded mail…

Today I’m going to talk about the third pillar of the e1evation system; promoting your online brand and reputation through the leveraging of homebases and outposts. Pillars 1 and 2 are ‘finding your passion’ and ‘publishing’. Once you’re publishing and you’ve found your voice, it’s time to promote your content through the use of social media outposts. Chris Brogan starts us off here…

“Social networks are great places to meet new people, to build new business relationships, and to learn about information from non-traditional sources. But another great way to use social networking sites is as an outpost. What do I mean by this? It turns out that people getting to know you on social networks might also find your content for the first time, and/or something you post to those networks might bring you an opportunity that wouldn’t immediately come to you in other ways. ” Source: Using Outposts in Your Media Strategy

I first noticed the power of leveraging social media outposts during my ‘reign’ as one of the top political bloggers in Wisconsin. I noticed during that time that if I would cross-post to Facebook or some other social media tool, that the post would get more traffic. Although this idea seemed original to me, I found that other great minds like Chris Brogan and Darren Rowse were already heading down this path… Continue reading “Tactic #9: Leverage the ‘homebases and outposts’ strategy” →

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Slate vs. State

Jobs vs. Obama in the ultimate ‘reality distortion field’ knockdown. Who won? The results may surprise you…

“Two events dominated discussion last week: the unveiling of Apple’s iPad and President Obama’s State of the Union address. Leading up to last Wednesday, many wondered if Apple’s event would overshadow Obama’s. On social media, that was certainly the case.

Monitoring Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, blogs and the rest, social media analysts at Viralheat found over half a million mentions of the two happenings. Those mentions were overwhelmingly related to Apple’s new tablet computer.

As the infographic explains, however, even if Apple had the buzz, Obama brought the honey. Generally, 42% of Apple’s mentions were positive and 46% were indifferent, whereas 65% of his mentions approved of Obama’s address and only 19% were indifferent.” Source: The Slate Walloped the State in Social Media – apple ipad – Gizmodo

Go to the source to read the analysis…

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Websites and social media

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase

I’m fond of saying “the answer is rarely either/or but frequently both/and”. Mitch Joel talks about the roles and relationships of websites and social media and how the answer may be both/and…

“There are two schools of thought when it comes to marketing brands online and the presence they need.

1. Build a website that houses everything – all of your text, images, audio and video – in one, centralized, location.
2. Use the existing platforms and build your presence within their community (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc…).

Both have merit, and you can also do a little bit of both. For example you can house all of your branded content in your own website, and use the existing online communities to set-up outposts (as Chris Brogan calls them) – a specific Facebook Fan Page or a YouTube Channel – to further promote what you’re about with strong links back to your mothership (or website). You can also use a Facebook Page as your home base and direct people to a microsite for more information or to gather more data from them than Facebook might allow based on their terms of service. Personally, I advocate for owning your own space, building it and nurturing it and using those other/existing platforms to promote or extend the brand. Brands should own their content, community and type of conversation and not be beholden to the terms of service or whims of someone else.” Source: What A Website Will Be… And Never Be | Six Pixels of Separation – Marketing and Communications Blog – By Mitch Joel at Twist Image

This blog is a great example [in my humble opinion] of both/and. Both/and, however, does not have to take a lot of extra time. It’s easy to connect your social media outposts to your website for maximum effectiveness and traffic. Call, comment or contact — I’d love to connect with you around ‘how’…

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Moms and smartphones…

They’re not just for CEO’s anymore…

“Smartphones may have started as productivity tools for top executives, but they’re quickly finding their way into the hands and purses of “power moms,” a.k.a. the CEO of the household.

As smartphones become easier to use and in many ways more useful, more women, including busy moms, are buying them to leverage all kinds of digital applications to stay organized and to connect with their families, friends, and social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter. They’re also using these Internet-enabled devices to get things done like paying the bills, ordering groceries, downloading coupons, and hunting for ideas for the next family vacation.

And like their corporate counterparts, these women are hooked.” Source: Modern power moms flock to smartphones | Wireless – CNET News

Go to the source to read the rest of the article…

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Social web involvement around the world…

Hmmm. Interesting…

http://viewer.docstoc.com/v2/

Global Map of Social Media – December 2009 –

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The intangible benefits of blogging

“Search for the term benefits of blogging and you’ll probably find hundreds and thousands of blog posts and pages waxing eloquent about the great benefits of blogging and I totally believe in most of the stuff. Blogging has so many benefits that it is simply outrageous not to have a blog, especially if you run an online business…

Blogging has both tangible and intangible benefits. Since you’ll find tangible benefits of blogging almost everywhere, in this post I’m going to talk about the intangible benefits of blogging: benefits that are there but you cannot see them, you cannot measure them, and they may not even manifest an effect that you can observe.” Click the here to read more…

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Every once in awhile…

…I stumble upon something that I had used once and had forgotten and can’t remember why I stopped. This morning I fell in love with Shareaholic all over again…

“Shareaholic makes it easy for you to submit the web page you’re on to your favorite sharing or bookmarking service, including: digg, del.icio.us, facebook, friendfeed, bit.ly, connotea, google bookmarks, google reader notes, gmail, kaboodle, magnolia, meneame, mixx, myspace, plurk, reddit, soup.io, stumbleupon, tipjoy, tumblr, twine, twitter, weheartit, yahoo buzz, and ycombinator. You can also e-mail the web page directly to a friend.” Source: Shareaholic – The browser add-on extension to share, bookmark and e-mail web pages quickly

Why is this important? Let me try to net it out quickly…

Finding a great website may help you advance your knowledge but what if you had a way to share it with others that required little or no additional effort? Wouldn’t that be worth it? Sure, there are some websites that I keep for my own private use, but for the sites that contain good information for my ‘followers’, I can post those sites to my ‘rooms’ in FriendFeed and they show up as featured articles in the right hand column of my blog. That way, these bookmarks benefits me as well as the rest of the world and make my site more of a destination because of the valuable resources that are there! If you want to drive people to your website or blog, give me a call at (920) 486-4798 or drop me a note using the contact form above. I can help!

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Strategy vs. tactics in social media…

:en:Seth Godin
Image via Wikipedia

Seth Godin on strategy vs. tactics…

New media creates a blizzard of tactical opportunities for marketers, and many of them cost nothing but time, which means you don’t need as much approval and support to launch them.

As a result, marketers are like kids at Rita‘s candy shoppe, gazing at all the pretty opportunities.

Most of us are afraid of strategy, because we don’t feel confident outlining one unless we’re sure it’s going to work. And the ‘work’ part is all tactical, so we focus on that. (Tactics are easy to outline, because we say, “I’m going to post this.” If we post it, we succeed. Strategy is scary to outline, because we describe results, not actions, and that means opportunity for failure.)

“Building a permission asset so we can grow our influence with our best customers over time” is a strategy. Using email, twitter or RSS along with newsletters, contests and a human voice are all tactics. In my experience, people get obsessed about tactical detail before they embrace a strategy… and as a result, when a tactic fails, they begin to question the strategy that they never really embraced in the first place. Source: Seth’s Blog: When tactics drown out strategy

Go to the source to read more…

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Google privacy

Oxymoron or? Digg users voted on the top ten questions to ask Marissa Mayer, Google VP of Search and User Experience. Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, has the interview. Long, but worthwhile — especially if you’re a fan of Google…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6bFyVGvg28&feature=player_embedded
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Hmmm. I think I may need to rethink Posterous…

I’ve been a fan of tumblr for a long time, but the fact that Guy Kawasaki chose Posterous for his ‘Holy Kaw‘ blog got me thinking and testing this morning. My jury’s still out, but I’m curious. Here’s a video tour from the ‘digitalchiropractor’ on YouTube — forget the doctor content and follow along. I think you’ll see why I’m intrigued — Posterous may just be the perfect social media front-end…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxeFOD5lZ4k
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15x

What is 15x you say? 15X is the multiple by which the traffic to the blog increased over 3 months. In July I was serving up a paltry 4 pageviews per day. Then I got serious. In October that number increased to 63. I have no reason to believe that it will stop growing either, unless I get lazy and stop working at it… ;-)

How did I do it? Through an easy, repeatable process that begins with Google Reader, continues with this WordPress blog, and ends with social media integration. Question? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page…

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Tactic #3: Blogging. The ‘why’ and the ‘how’…

WordPress
Image via Wikipedia

Tactic #3 in the series ‘tactics and tools for tightening your tribe using social media’ is blogging and I’ll be covering not only the why but the how. Admittedly, though, the more obvious something is to me, the harder it is to write about it and blogging falls into the ‘duh’ category as in “Do you blog?” “Duh!” The benefits are that obvious! Let me back off a little though and see if I can make my case…

In the olden days — the days when my boys tell me I grew up — freedom of the press belonged to those with a printing press. Now, anyone who can fill out a form on a website can have a blog. Seriously, it’s that easy — why do you think there are so many bad blogs out there? ;-)

A good blog, however, is a powerful tool for establishing thought leadership in an area. My good friend Dana VanDen Heuvel @ MarketingSavant describes it this way — the difference between a thinker and a thought LEADER is that the thought leader has a public point of view. That public point of view leads to share of voice, which leads to share of mind, which leads to share of market and that improves your bottom line! Personally, I know of know better way to make your point of view known than using a blog. Continue reading “Tactic #3: Blogging. The ‘why’ and the ‘how’…” →

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“If I started today”…

Connecting (Chris Brogan)
Image by petermello via Flickr

…is an insanely great post by Chris Brogan on the topic of where I would start today if I wanted to use the internet and social media to promote my thought leadership position — NOW I understand why people like Darren Rowse of ProBlogger rave about him!

I came across it looking for the killer article for a prospective client that I really want to land and I couldn’t have picked a better one to help him make the right decision…

“Okay, so you’ve heard from someone that this social media and social networking stuff is great and you should get involved, and it’s really going to help you out. Maybe it will help you in the economic downturn. Maybe you have heard how you can use Twitter for business. But there’s a lot to it all.

Where would you start? What would come first? How might you think about getting out there and joining in on the experience?” Source: If I Started Today

You’ll have to go to the source to get the answers but it’s well worth the trip — and let’s hope that client ‘gets it’ whatever it is… ;-)

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5 ways social media is changing our daily lives…

This one’s a keeper…

“It is hard to know sometimes how our life has changed until we stop for a moment and look at how different it is from ten or even five years ago. In recent years social media, likely more than anything else, has significantly impacted most of our daily lives. Envisioning the global conversation that has developed over the past few years because of tools like Facebook (Facebook) and Twitter (Twitter) might have been unimaginable for most people at the beginning of this decade.” Source: 5 Ways Social Media is Changing Our Daily Lives

Please go to the source for the rest of Soren Gordhamer’s excellent post…

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Facebook for Fun and Profit…

Over the past 10 days I’ve had the opportunity to speak twice on the topic of ‘Facebook for Fun and Profit’ to LinkedIn groups Link Greater Green Bay and Link Appleton [thanks again, Mark and Stacie]. Here’s a post I wish I had in my aresenal before I did the preso — it includes some great tactical and practical advice I would have liked to include…

“Facebook’s not just for keeping tabs on friends and filling out quizzes — it can also be used as a highly effective business tool. It’s great for marketing your products, landing gigs and connecting with your customers.” Source: 32 Ways to Use Facebook for Business

Click the link to go to the source. For those of you from the group who requested it [Rich? ;-)], here’s a copy of my preso with a hat tip to Dana VanDen Heuvel of MarketingSavant.com and David Sauter of Envano who contributed thoughts and slides…

Happy Facebooking!

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