Ban social media?!

There are hundreds of articles this morning about banning social media - or monitoring certain accounts and shutting them down as a result of the riots throughout London this week.


The London riots have been a news item all week. On social media, people (or *looters) are posting photos of the goods they have stolen and being arrested for it.


And on Twitter by following the #Londonriots hashtag, it has been streaming up to date information while police men and journalists have been confirming or denying rumours and keeping locals informed. Twitter is a site where all information is shared publicly and the information can be used both positively and negatively.


While people were Tweeting about the riots and asking questions, others were embracing #Londoncleanup #OperationCupofTea and #riotcleanup to assist with the clean up and to show the world that people use social media for good  and that Twitter and Facebook were a way of reaching locals and encouraging them to clean up the streets and aid and assist people who had been affected by the riots.

Want to be a better Blogger?

Last Saturday, Nuffnang held the Nuffnang Blogopolis 2011 in Melbourne, which enabled Bloggers to meet each other and attend 7 masterclasses.
During the Blogopolis, Bree from The Blog Stylist was live Tweeting and live Blogging the day.

Bree managed to keep both attendees and non attendees well informed throughout the day and rounded up each presentation. Thanks to Bree blogging about each class and tools mentioned during the day to enabled everyone to access content and keep up to date.

This list will certainly help anyone who wants to blog, to use and interact with others, to insert content into their blogs, to provide excellent pictures and to make use of  the tools that have been used and are highly recommended:

• Google Reader - to subscribe to and follow blog RSS subscriptions
• Feedburner – Google tool to manage your blog’s RSS subscriptions
• WordPress – Powerful blogging platform and CMS (content management system)
• RSS Footer – WordPress plugin that allows you to add a line of content to the beginning or end of your post so that it appears in its feed
• Mail Chimp – A newsletter service tool
• Aweber – Another newsletter service tool
• How To Launch the #*@& Out Of Your Ebook – Recommended ebook on marketing your ebook
• Blogger – Popular blogging Platform
• Google Analytics – Google tool that provides blog stats such as visitors and page views
• W3 Total Cache – WordPress plugin to speed up how fast your blog loads
• Cloud Flare – A CDN (content delivery network)
• Smush.It - An image optimizer from Yahoo!
• Wise Stamp – Extension for Firefox, Chrome and Safari to add a signature to your email
• Windows Live Writer – Helps you prepare and publish your posts
• Click Bump SEO Plugin – A WordPress SEO plugin
• Twitter, Facebook & Google Plus – popular social-networking sites
• StumbleUpon – Social bookmarking tool
• All-In-One SEO Pack – WordPress plugin that helps you optimise your WordPress blog for search engines
• Tissue – Use as a cheap diffuser when taking photos with your iPhone!
• Instagram – Photosharing service
• Flickr – Photo management and sharing website
• Canon PowerShot G10 – Digital Canon Camera
• Nikkon D700 – Nikkon camera suggestion
• Lightroom – Adobe Photoshop product
• Photoshop – Software for editing and manipulating photos
• Google Images- Comprehensive image search engine
• DPReview – Digital Photography Review website
• Styling You – Best Australian Blog 2011
• Note book – Good old fashion way of recording your thoughts!
• WP Editorial Calendar Plugin – For planning and scheduling posts
• Google Page Rank – Web-page ranking system, part of Google search algorithm
• Google Webmaster Tools – Google website with various tools for website owners
• Amazon Web Services - Delivers a set of services that together form a reliable, scalable, and inexpensive computing platform “in the cloud
• YARPP – Yet Another Related Posts Plugin for WordPress
• Where’s My Glow – Blog to check out for its recommened media kit
• ODesk, Elance and Freelancer – Outsourcing websites for design, technical support etc
• Creative Commons – Conditions under which your content can be used by others and vice versa
• News Maker, Get2Press, PR Web and Seeking Media – News syndication and press-release services
• 31 Days To Build A Better Blog – Popular ebook by Darren Rowse. Started as a series of posts
• Digital Photography School – Blog by Darren Rowse for digital photography tips
• Ning – DIY social-networking site/forums
• Ustream – Service for live streaming videos
• Pinterest – Image bookmarking website

Read each of Bree's blog posts with information about the 7 masterclasses of the day - her involvement shows that is you are having an event or a conference - live blogging and Tweeting of the day assists the attendees yet also helps you connect with non attendees who find the information, Tweets and roundups of each session very helpful.

By Tweeting, posting information and content live, you are providing a helpful resource. People love to share, to comment, to respond to each other.

By using social media tools, it showed that actively using social media, makes the best use of social media - engaging.

Follow Bree from The Blog Stylist on The Blog Stylist  and thanks to the Nuffnang Roundup, here are people to follow so you can use social media wisely and blog, blog, blog!

1. Tools of the Trade – Key Points

Nicole Avery – @planningqueenMichael Aulia – @michaelaulia + Blogopolis blog post
Arnold Aranez – @mr_gadget

2. Blog Photography – Key Points

Danielle Melnyczenko – @danimezza
Minh Giang – @minhg

3. Improving Blog Content – Key Points

Christie Burnett – @childhood101Susan Thye – @chocolatesuzeNikki Parkinson – @stylingyou

4. Working with Brands – Key Points

Andrew Hughes – @y0z2a
Jaclyn Ely – @jaciely

5. Editorial vs. Advertorial – Key Points

Nikki Parkinson – @stylingyouPhoebe Montague – @ladymelbourneDavid Krupp – @davekruppArnold Aranez – @mr_gadget
Jeff Tan – @jeff_iprospect

6. Blog Branding & Marketing – Key Points

Darren Rowse – @problogger

7. The Australian Blogosphere – Key Points

Candice Deville – @superkawaiimama
Darren Rowse – @problogger
Eden Riley – @edenland
Helen Yee – @grabyourfork
Nicole Avery – @planningqueen

Let's Talk About Twitter

I love Social Rabbit, whose very helpful post will provide you (and beginners) with 5 essential Twitter tips, to help you get to know and use Twitter effectively.

Have a look around the Social Rabbit site, Lara Solomon is an excellent business women, who provides very valuable tips and information about social media (and training) she is very interactive on social media, follow her example and you will learn how to use social media wisely!

Twitter is an excellent business tool, it will help you find people in your industry, find you like minded people and help you market and promote your products and services.

One advantage with Twitter is the ability to know your competitors and you will find that a lot of companies are followed by or do follow companies who have similar products and services. I feel that places your business or organisations amongst peers who have different ways of getting their messages across. It helps to see what similar organisations are saying and you can ReTweet their links and get inspired to write Facebook updates and blog posts from regular updated information which you can source on Twitter.

Following competitors at the beginning of your Twitter journeys means you can get a feel of the content, links and blog posts you can add. It also gives competitors a feel of your company and as far as I know, this method of sharing, ReTweeting, being inspired by content to write your own will not be harmful to your business.

I recommend that you find and follow people who have your interests in common and such as charities/authors or anything really where you get your inspiration and motivation from. Being human on Twitter, communicating with others, responding, answering questions, going off topic ( just a little bit) will help. This means that you will be truly connecting, think of it as being at a professional networking function, sure you talk mainly about work and work issues but you end up talking about other things - on Twitter many people have benefited by the authenticity of their accounts and by being connected and receptive.

Please note a link at the bottom of Lara's Post refers to Google + please have a look, this is Google's social media platform , which will be open to the public soon. Google+ is going to be another form of social media, another way to get your message across, a site  to find and to reach your clients and certainly will be another tool which will be useful for marketing your products and services.

Let's get real with social media - how to find content - so you can update often!

We don't always have the time to find information and spend hours writing and editing our own content.

Social Media needs at least an hour a day of work.

Whether it's checking/ monitoring accounts, checking feeds, responding to comments or queries, social media is becoming a part of the other work you need to do daily.

So here is a link which helps you find ways ways to stay updated, to find and use content, to share relevant links via Twitter, the blog and the Facebook page and a way for you to find any info, to update, to link, to respond to, to share, and keep your accounts active.

While writing unique content is important on social media, so is sharing, linking to and acknowledging other relevant content as well as building a like minded community.

You can write/ schedule a unique blog post every few weeks or so ( I will be blogging about why you should blog often, some people blog daily some blog once a week- it depends on content and business practices), but find resources and have information at hand, so you can share/ update ( on Facebook or Twitter) every few days to keep your accounts active and build a community and engagement online.

Don't forget to read updates on your timeline on Twitter and Facebook and comment and respond to people as wel l- this will make you sound like an interested person and depending on what you say or answer, you may find yourself building a very interesting community of followers.

Take 15 minutes a day to find and put aside content, links, blog posts, pictures, that you can use when you have a bit of downtime- save all of it in a folder on your desktops or on a dropbox free app (download on computer, link to your smartphone) and use that saved content to share, comment upon, and use ( for an inspirational blog post perhaps or a marketing idea)

http://www.momeomagazine.com/business-101-feeding-the-content-monster-10-ways-to-stay-active-in-social-media-without-rewriting-the-yellow-pages/ - thanks to Iggy Pintado on Twitter - who shared this, this morning:

Feeding the Content Monster - 10 Ways to Stay Active in Social Media by @AndreaVahl - http://ow.ly/5Pcft RT @CarlaYoung

Social Media is an active part of marketing, it will only work and benefit by your doing, by your engagement and incentive to drive the accounts.
Set aside time each day and if you need help with planning and using techniques wisely, please just contact me.

Looking for a Guru?

I Tweet and I am on Facebook and I have a blog while assisting with and advising clients and helping them wade through social media.
I say wade through because for someone who is starting on social media, the reality is that it can and does add an hour more of work a day and that is if you are doing social media properly.

For me, properly means the same as how you use and access your emails. In the mornings (I am assuming) you check your emails to deal with anything that is needed to do for the day as well as enquiries, priorities, plans, meetings and you respond accordingly.

On average, business and companies (from CEO to any level of staff) access their emails at least every 20 - 25 minutes. I am assuming that the busier you are at work, the bigger your business is, the more products and services you provide and they way you service your clients, probably means that you email and receive emails all day long.

So soon, social media (new media) will become just as important and vital for those people who are providing their business with social media services.

As well as checking emails, I recommend checking whichever social media sites you are active on, to respond to any comments, or queries or messages or even likes on Facebook, Twitter, your blog and LinkedIn.

In a company which offers a service (such as mine) you are responsible for providing services. In my case it's tips, suggestions, helpful hints and references to apps which can help you business and my Twitter account, has proved an invaluable tool for finding, sharing and using information to benefit my clients.

There are always recommendations regarding social media and one is knowing where your audience is.

I have a Facebook business page where I link this blog and my Tweets (links, updates, shared content) but the reality is I use Facebook as a search tool to find and drive content regarding social media practices so I can ensure that I am knowledgeable and essentially helping my clients by providing a better service.

Jess Nichols who wrote a blog post about knowing your product and that if people search for you (if you are calling yourself a social media expert/guru), they need to see that you are using social media actively.

Jess responded to on Twitter when we were discussing this post " I try not to put too much pressure on my blogging; I'd rather now do quality > quantity. Once a month is ok for me" She also emphasises that she thinks "It comes back to being authentic and legitimate in the industry"

If you sell products and have daily weekly or monthly events, you will have to be active on the social media accounts where your audience, your buyers are coming from. By active I mean anything that needs to responded to (whether positive/negative) needs to be actioned within 24 hours.

Over the past few months, I have to agree with Jess's post. It is about quality and being human and authentic when you are providing a social media service. Sure some people (or people who are doing their social media) schedule their blog posts and activate their links via platforms which help them drive their links over a certain period of time. If your buyers are in the UK and USA and are reading your blogs and buying your products, while you are asleep, there certainly needs to be an awareness and implementation of best practices for your business.

I realise that people who are at work doing the work that they do, always say that they have no time for social media.

My recommendation is to hire someone who will act as a marketing person and/or community manager who deals with monitoring and analysing your social media, responds to fans and followers by providing an additional and much needed customer service role, while reading, researching, building a brand and engaging with your business and community (no matter what type of business you are in, you can build a community who will benefit you online)

I am not honestly a fan of people who call themselves social media gurus/experts. Social Media is still new media there are hundreds and thousands of people still who have not embraced Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, YouTube, LinkedIn and hundreds of other tools and platforms that can drive their message, their business online.

So Google your company/business. What comes up?

More importantly what doesn't come up? A charity event you put together and advertised everywhere on print? A new line? A list of events/courses. A recent interview? A podcast or video that you spent time and money on?

The answer is that social media will ensure that all of this, comes up - links, sharing, events lists, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, SMO, SEO, labels, tags will provide you with ways to further market and drive your business alongside traditional marketing techniques.

I recommend being active on social media and driving traffic. Yet I also recommend being part of a community, providing valuable content and getting to know your audience and what people get and want from your business. I work alongside businesses to ensure that we put practices into place which are suitable for their needs and I concentrate on one important aspect  - community.

I am not a marketing manager. I am not a guru. I need to put my recommendations into practice more and ensuring I do and represent what I teach. I discovered that I love this industry, this ability to reach people globally and I saw the benefits of this new media and how we can all put this into our practices at work.


But like Jess points out in her blog post, are they active, or lurking or aggregating? Are they embracing tools and social media sites themselves? When was their last Facebook, Twitter update and their latest blog post?

Regardless of whether you are a small business or a giant corporation who has a social media team, I recommend doing. I don't recommend feeling pressure to do and adding additional work to your already jam packed work day. I do not recommend doing at the cost of other things which are a priority at work.

If you can hire someone to manage your social media holistically by embracing and sharing and engaging, try that for a few months and then Google your business again.

And if you cannot, (don't have the time) or if you feel that you should hire someone with the knowledge to do so, check how and what they are doing first online, Google the person, read what they link to, blog about, tweet about and share - and look closely at when and how they do so.

And then by all means Google me and Google the word guru.

Picture below belongs to and is thanks to Ryan Jones's blogpost Having 1000 Twitter followers doesn't make you a social media guru. Thank you Ryan

Benefits of Social Media

With social media you can find information from anywhere about anything you are interested in.

I love finding information and reading other blog posts and sharing information with people who are using social media or are just learning how beneficial social media is as a business tool, for people who work at home and for anyone who wants to learn and explore.

I regularly update the Social Status Facebook Page to share with you the benefits of social media. People are writing blog posts, opening social media accounts and sharing information 24 hours a day.

If you want to find out something, whether it's an idea to promote and market your business, or how to use a certain tool or program, you can find your answers by searching on YouTube for how to videos, and by following realtime search on Google, find the realtime tab on the left hand side of the Google home page by clicking the more button. This will keep you up to date on whatever is happening in the world.

Use Facebook and Twitter search to find and follow great business pages, read blog posts, watch videos ... information is constant and changes in the blink of an eye, so a great way to make sure you don't miss something of interest to you; is to add links, pages and blogs to your favorites or if you want the information to come to you as soon as it's put on the Internet then subscribe to RSS feeds.

We are certainly learning to search and find information. And then we are sharing across Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other software programs to reach other people.

I love Read It Later, you can save any link from Twitter or the Internet and then read it later when you have some down time. I use Read It Later to track information and find references and get ideas for blog posts. I find it is also great to track information to send to clients to assist them with their marketing and promoting and to help them with their social media.

The greatest benefit is that social media is so accessible to use as a learning tool.
Social Media gives you a chance to learn, to connect with people all over the world, to find tips and info and to share, therefore helping other people with a how to, or a tip or a blog post on their journeys.

And remember learning never exhausts the mind - Leonardo Da Vinci.

Connect

Social media is not just about marketing, promoting, business, feeds, ROI and all the other marketing terms I am sure you have heard of, read and used yourself.



Social media is about connecting and this has been especially apparent on Twitter and Facebook. People use social media to reach out to each other and connect with each other.


There is an incredible amount of sharing on social media sites. People write about everything and share so much about their lives and themselves. It truly helps us to connect, to embrace, to have empathy, to show compassion and you can see this by how many people reply or comment on updates or blog posts or statuses and send or share links with others.


It shows me, that people in the world can learn from each other and mourn for other peoples' losses, deaths and tragedies and support each other and communicate with each other in a way we never could before.


We can also celebrate with people, congratulate people on their accomplishments and achievements and be happy for someone who has witnessed, seen or done something.


On the 3 May 2011, Derek K Miller died of cancer at 41 and wrote a last post to say goodbye to his family. His post reached hundreds of his followers and his friends, who said goodbye to him in their own way and cried tears for him. It also reached out to hundreds of strangers, to people who have or have had cancer and did what I believe social media does best, makes us closer to each other, helps us learn about others and really reaches us, wherever we are in the world, no matter our own individual circumstances.


In the same way, Jenny writes a diary for her son Cooper who has leukaemia and shares her love for her son and again, blogs like these teach us about Jenny, her love for Cooper and both their experiences of cancer.


And a 5 year old boy, whose sister sold his artwork which paid off his cancer treatment, again shows us how we can connect, can reach out to each other, can reach out somehow in ways we never could.


I cannot express how beneficial social media is. Not only for business, for marketing, from building a brand, from putting a business online, from a making money point of view, from building a community - which are some of the reasons that individuals, businesses and corporations are using social media for.


Businesses, entrepreneurs, small businesses and corporations have seen how they can benefit, how we can all benefit by communicating with each other, by connecting with each other in a number of ways.


We no longer just look at websites. We watch YouTube videos, we use Facebook, we communicate on Twitter, we read blogs, use discussion forums, click on likes, share links, we make business connections on LinkedIn. We use email marketing, surveys - we are truly being more socially active online.


And the benefits are astounding. We can connect and make contact with people who love the same things we do. We can find people in our industries. We can find jobs, resources and ideas. We are truly sharing.


We can respond to queries, clients and customers in a hundred different ways. The work we do is different. We look for, find, research and use information which is immediate on the Internet and we can benefit by reading, observing and listening to each other.


But the essential most crucial part of all the social media, is that I as a stranger can mourn the loss of a man who loved his children, I can learn, read about and understand about illness and family life.


We can teach each other and learn from each other. And we get a glimpse of love. We see empathy and compassion. We can wish each other well, help each other, give and receive advice.


I truly love social media but it goes further than that for me. I love learning from people. I love the way I can get information, any kind of advice, assistance, tips, hints which helps me with my business, with marketing and deciding how to teach my clients. I love the way I can find information and news and stay so up to date about anything that is happening in the world.


But when social media shows us that we simply can connect with each other and get a glimpse of love -  then we watch and see how people respond, full of empathy and compassion for each other; that's when I truly get a glimpse that we all just really want to hear each other and be heard. (It's quick, people make thousands of Tweets a minute and hundreds of Facebook updates - so you cannot possibly read everything)


Sure, we want immediacy, we want businesses to respond quickly when there is an issue or a crisis. We want to have our say, have the freedom to express (whatever, TV shows, cooking skills, business meetings, funny things that happened through the day, complaints, news, and opinions)


But social media really is about communicating. Not just communicating, but learning about each other. And being very, very grateful that we can.