Now you have completed the 30 days and you have just started the process now you have to share, share and share. Remember if it is on the web it is not private, so think about what you are sharing and if it is something you do not want the whole world to know do not put it on a social media site. People will get to know you, appreciate what you are willing to share and will in turn build a relationship with you. There are some people that I know just in the digital world but I would consider them no less of a friend and you too will get to that stage as you continue to develop your clout. For me it is my personal learning community, if I am curious about something that is happening or I want to do or have done, I as k my network…I get answers, opinions and smart alec responses but in the end it does help to formalize my thoughts…for me the social network has been invaluable for me to create my vision of where I want to be in 10 years. From a business perspective, you net will carry a lot of power, it is the new way to market, it is a word of mouth type of sharing and is not a slick and polished as the traditional methods of advertising but it has no boundaries of distance and time which makes it very powerful. I am happy you have taken the time to read all the 30 days and I hoped it helped you start your journey.
Today’s activity is a fairly simple one, but will give some hints as to how successful your media campaign is going. The tool we are going to leverage today is called Google alert. http://www.google.ca/alerts
In Google’s own words this is what Google alerts allow you to do:
Monitor the Web for interesting new content
Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your queries.
Enter a search query you wish to monitor. You will see a preview of the type of results you'll receive. Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:
monitoring a developing news story
keeping current on a competitor or industry
getting the latest on a celebrity or event
keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams
The alert allows you to refine your search just like any Google search…
So why not just do a Google search, well you can but like many other aspects of this program we are trying to automate things. These alerts will appear in your email…alerting you to a new instance showing up.
As shown above it is always interesting to search your own name.
You might also want to think about a tag or unique qualify that you will include in all your entries which will allow Google search to separate your entries from all the others that might have the same heading or topic.
This is a simple fast way to keep track of your entries that are posted elsewhere and to find out who else on the web is talking about…
In Project Management terminology:
The Project:
Building a Foundation for a Social Media Network.
Deliverable (is the noun):
Alert
Tasks (is a verb):
Pick a qualifier or topic or search query which will be unique to your entries
Our goal is to increase a person’s or business social media clout.
You should have a minimum of seven different social network sites in your network. The only element tying them together is IFTTT.com and it should connect the five: Blog (sun), and four planets…Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Google+. Hovering around the outside is pinterest and Youtube. These two support your network by giving you a place on the cloud to store your videos, and images which you would then add in your entries in your blog (sun) which in turn would then be fed out to your planets.
Keep straight in your mind the best way for you to feed information into your network is a key point that you will have to keep coming back to in order for you to be aware of what is the best place to put the information that you would like to share. I do post some stuff separately to Facebook so it does not get splashed across my network. Facebook is the most personal of all the sites that I have on my network, so I use it once and a while to share picture of my family with other family members and friends. If I have an entry that I want to splash across the whole network then I always post it in the blog as that is my sun which everything else is built around.
All items:
Top Social Media Sites
Creating our base, sun or main site
Introduce yourself
Check the announcements
Reading Day
Twitter
Google+
Facebook
LinkedIn
Now what...
Building Interest
Do you ever sleep
Another reading day
Supporting Sites
If This Then That
Timing
Define yourself
Feeding the network
Clout
Managing a campaign
Finding a good manager
Expanding your web
Adding sites
Pinterest
Creating Videos
Pictures
Branding
Newspapers
Good Titles
Rest and review
Check up
Conclusion
Did you increase your clout
Final words
Today’s activity is a fairly simple one, but will give some hints as to how successful your media campaign is going. The tool we are going to leverage today is called Google alert. http://www.google.ca/alerts
In Google’s own words this is what Google alerts allow you to do:
Monitor the Web for interesting new content
Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your queries.
Enter a search query you wish to monitor. You will see a preview of the type of results you'll receive. Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:
monitoring a developing news story
keeping current on a competitor or industry
getting the latest on a celebrity or event
keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams
The alert allows you to refine your search just like any Google search…
So why not just do a Google search, well you can but like many other aspects of this program we are trying to automate things. These alerts will appear in your email…alerting you to a new instance showing up.
As shown above it is always interesting to search your own name.
You might also want to think about a tag or unique qualify that you will include in all your entries which will allow Google search to separate your entries from all the others that might have the same heading or topic.
This is a simple fast way to keep track of your entries that are posted elsewhere and to find out who else on the web is talking about…
In Project Management terminology:
The Project:
Building a Foundation for a Social Media Network.
Deliverable (is the noun):
Alert
Tasks (is a verb):
Pick a qualifier or topic or search query which will be unique to your entries
During this month (almost a month) of increasing your social media clout you have heard me say often…”the most important thing”. Here I go again, the most important thing that you need to be aware of when creating your content is your title. It is the first part of your entry and will make a huge difference when it comes to someone clicking on it and reading further and engaging. On some social media sites like Twitter, it may be all they see.
You might now be asking…what makes a good title…do I have some articles for you.
How to attract more clicks to your blog posts: 11 revealing title tests
Today is newspaper day. You know you have made the big leagues when you start to print your daily newspaper with the news of your brand and how you are changing the world. That is a great idea but who can hire a complete editorial staff, writers etc…to pull off a daily paper….
There are short cuts…one of these is called Paper.li. Http://paper.li
This is a great method of using your network to create a daily paper. How to do that…
We need to start to establish a brand, an image which will bring an individual or business to mind when seen. In our society there are brands which will everyone knows…there are many games and apps developed around the concept of guess the brand…
I would bet that most people would be able to very quickly guess the three brands in the image above.
Today we are going to build a brand, for me I have associated myself with my company called TADO
My personal company logo is
My avatar was….
The cyber school I use to work had a logo like this…
The new company that I work for is called XXXXXXX …its logo is…
The goal for today is pick an image, logo or look which you can use and people associate it with you and your business.
The XXXXXXXX Company has four departments they are Solutions, News, Sales and Programming…each of those will use the following as a brand to develop a feel to the company.
The following article is very good and should get you thinking about how to develop an image.
When choosing your brand image, don’t send days and lots of money, try it on, you can always change it later. But when you announce it via your social media , ask if people like it, create a poll, and then change it based on the feedback until you have something you like and the people like…play with it.
In Project Management terminology:
The Project:
Building a Foundation for a Social Media Network.
Deliverable (is the noun):
Creating a brand
Tasks (is a verb):
Determine which image you would like to associate with your brand
Brand can be a person or a business
Use a program like Laughingbird software Logo maker
Use the image often in your posts and announce it via social media
Make it sound like you have sent a lot of time developing the image
I have used a couple of different picture sharing sites, Instagram works great, check flicker, I have used google photos and by now you must know I like all that is google and so that is the one that I have used for the last couple of years.
The google photo I have used to create a facebook page called TADO humor… because I have been send so many great funny images, I decided to put them together for others to enjoy…
If you want to waste a pile of time check out that page but don’t expect to be able to just check in …it will make you giggle… these images I have used to support some of my entries…remember a picture is worth a thousand words…feel free to use some of these image on whatever social media site you decide to use.
Here is an article that might you find of interesting about images
"It has been said throughout time that a picture could be worth a thousand words. As you can imagine though, for each individual that views it, the words can be decidedly different. It has been stated that during the time of Martin Luther only 3-5% of the population could read the written word. In order to send a message or to just simply get one across, the messenger had to be extremely resourceful. When Luther lit the fire of the Protestant Reformation, he fanned the flames using persuasive images disguised as art. Some of these would even be called propaganda in today's thinking. Those for whom the messages were intended had little trouble deciphering the meaning. It is now most ironic that in our present, mostly literate society, we still see the use of images as a major means of influence in TV, movies, Public Service ads, and especially political campaigns. It's not what people are saying that's troublesome, but how it is they are saying it" (Macdonald 2006 ¶ 1). The use of images is nothing new to the author. For seventeen years as an art teacher, images have been front and center in his life. For twenty plus years he has been a professional artist applying the use of color and composition to create a feeling, a message or just an interesting image. These images he has displayed since 1995 on the internet within a virtual art gallery. The creation of this gallery is the catalyst to his position as the creator and administrator of the Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School (SCCS). The virtual gallery forced the learning web design and html. At the same time he was required to learn to manipulate digital images. During this stage he also experimented with digital drawing programs like Corel Draw and Bryce. This gallery is called DDC Art Gallery and can be seen at the following URL:
Teaching art meant that he spent all day thinking about composing images and assisting others to create and compose their own images. The art teacher stage of his life ended in 2000 when he started his role at the SCCS.
"What's imperative is the creation of a style that becomes a culture linking you to the community. You can only do that through good design" (Roddick, 2007 ¶ 2). The first use of images and design would be the Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School website. But even before that was the design of a logo for the school. Creating a simple logo was a challenge and it can be seen at the following URL: http://www.scs.sk.ca/cyber/logo/logo.htm
The development of the cyber school logo was shown in a video which can be seen at:
Once an acceptable logo was established we, being a Cyber School, created the front of the school as a website. Cheong (2007) explains the thought behind the Cyber School website design by stating "Design is essentially problem-solving. Devising a visual solution to communicate an intended message effectively. Why use ten effects to treat a graphic element when you can do it with one "(¶ 3)? This history of the website can be seen at: http://www.scs.sk.ca/cyber/pastsites.htm The popularity of the Cyber School allowed us to use some of the other social networking tools to assist in creating awareness of the school. This was done by creating wallpapers for students to use on their home computers, these can be seen at: http://www.scs.sk.ca/cyber/wallpaper.htm A second system designed was a Google toolbar, which can be seen at: http://toolbar.google.com/T4/error_toolbar.html?url=http://www.scs.sk.ca/cyber/icons/sccs.xml Necessity for student cards made it necessary to design a template. This can be seen at: http://www.scs.sk.ca/cyber/studentcard.htm
As the Cyber School grew so did the number of teacher/developers involved in the programming. It was necessary to design an efficient online tool for communication with the growing group. The system chosen was a Movable type blog. This blog has grown to be a worldwide blog and has gone through many design changes. The designs were done with an understanding that Goodman (2008) explains "No one will visit, let alone bookmark your site if your pages look unprofessional, long-winded or in worst case, having a bad design..."(¶ 1). The last of these designs can be seen at: http://blog.scs.sk.ca/tado/ Along with the growth came more courses and more students taking numerous online courses. It was decided that a common navigation system, icon and reminders for courses was necessary. The steps used to make these changes to the system happen can be seen at:
The color of the courses is changed on a continuous basis. Valentine's Day and the week leading up to it have had a pink and red coloring. October has the Halloween colors of black and orange. Next to our changing the format and icons in the courses, this is commented upon more than any other changes we make in the course. It is interesting how much of an impact a change of color and icons can make on the first impression of a student upon seeing the course. They tend to get accustomed to a color theme and then it is changed. It keeps things fresh.
Being the administrator of the Cyber School for the last eight years has, in my mind, forced me to abandon my interest in images and the graphic sides of my nature. The Visual Literacy in the Digital World course made the author stop and think about the visual aspect of his role in the Cyber School which has been outlined briefly in this paper. In actual fact a large amount of visual work has been done in the last eight years and it is this author's hope that it has made the Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School a strong entity because of this. As an artist and administrator this author will continue to apply, share and use his visual literacy interest and experience in his role because:
"An image can convey thoughts, ideas, or events to which words alone sometimes cannot do justice. Images can thrill us, like the images sent back to Earth from the Mars Rover missions. They can inspire us, like the photo of the American flag raised over the rubble of the World Trade Center by three New York firefighters on September 11, 2001. They can be heartbreaking, like the image of Oklahoma City firefighter Chris Fields carrying tiny Baylee Almon out of the wreckage of the Oklahoma City bombing. They can incite outrage, like the photos of the stacked bodies of Holocaust victims; they can bring us face to face with the worst inhumanities imaginable. They can bring tears to our eyes, lift our spirits, or sink our hearts. Images are powerful, and with such power must come responsibility for their prudent and thoughtful use." (Tagliere, 2007 ¶1)
MacDonald, R. D. (2006, April 13). A picture is worth a thousand words. Retrieved February 10, 2009, from Score History/Social Science: http://score.rims.k12.ca.us/activity/worth/
Today is video day, I am going to talk a little bit about videos and how they can be used to increase your clout. A picture is worth a thousand words so what is 17 pictures a second worth…beats me; I am not very good at math. But I can tell you that my clout increased when I started to leverage videos in my portfolio. At first videos were not very common place but now that everyone’s phone, laptop and many desktops have the ability to produce videos, everyone is doing it. When I first started to make videos I spent a lot of time scripting my message and trying to make sure I have all the words just right. But as I got more comfortable and set myself a challenge of a video a week, I found I got more comfortable and then just shared. My thoughts of the days, a challenge I was trying to overcome or an issue that I actually fixed. All of these short videos became part of the sharing that I did via my social media sites. Short is the key word here, I try to keep my videos below two minutes and then just talk like I am telling a story to my son or a friend, this seems to work for me. At first you will not be very good at it, but the videos will still be of value because of the sharing. If it is a topic which is challenging you in your profession or life, there is someone out there going through the same thing. Share and share and do some more sharing…over time your videos will get better as you become more comfortable and your messages will be of value but like anything else it will take some practice to find your rhythm and to figure out what people want to hear…it is all about the stats but that is a conversation or another day.
The most popular social network site for videos out there is YouTube, it is the one that I use the most.
My most popular video was a challenge video for my teachers at cyber school which was used my child as the actor. It was called “You can’t be my teacher”.
How popular and controversial it became, took me by surprise. I had just bought a new flip video camera and in about 15 minutes, got my son to say a lot of lines that I fed him as I videotaped him. Then I edited the video in about 30 thirty minutes cutting out my voice and stringing the lines together. He at the time had no idea what the video was about as the lines were not in order and he was young. I then posted the videos for the teachers in my cyber school and it started to gain popularity through my social network because I put it on my blog, which then fed it to Twitter, Facebook and so on and so on and in no time at all it had over 100,000 views which for a video about school is just crazy…and the comments started to flow…about how rude this child is and this video is wrong in so many ways…in the end more people liked it than people who disliked it but it did gain a following. It has been shown at conferences and in at schools around the world. Not bad for a video which I had put together for my staff but it does illustrate how powerful video can be in your portfolio.
My second most popular video was a How to…video…called How to increase wifi signal…
How to videos are great to help people learn or figure out a challenge.
The social networking site that we are going to explore today is a unique one that is growing by leaps and bounds. It will take a second to figure out how to best use this to expand your business and your personal clout. This site is called Pinterest. Http://pinterest.com
From a conceptual standpoint this is the digital version of the old digital cork board that you had in your room or office where you pinned articles, images or things that interest you. The description is added to describe what each one of your boards contains.
I have been a hobby artist for years and I created a board which displayed my artwork, and then collects other people’s art. This started the sharing and people began to follow my pins and I followed theirs. http://www.pinterest.com/dcannell/
Pinterest is a very visual social networking site and as you can see by my boards how it might be used.
This social networking site has a different flair to it and has grown into one of the more popular sites. Maybe it is because a picture is worth a thousand words. Caution: you can waste hours looking through all the images pertaining to your interests.
In Project Management terminology:
The Project:
Building a Foundation for a Social Media Network.
Deliverable (is the noun):
Pin your interests
Tasks (is a verb):
Create an account on pinterest.
Pick a board
Add a collection of ten or more pins to this board
Today we expand the web. We have been working with main four social networking sites and a blog system. But there are so many other social networking sites and tools out there which could help raise you online digital presence for you or your business. Just as a way of illustrating that I pulled the 83 channels from IFTTT.com site. For today we are just going to take a look at some of these options. Remember that the social network landscape is a fluid one and changes from day to day. Today the main four might be the ones listed but 6 months from now it could be a completely different four. Well, maybe not that quickly but you get the idea.
Here are the 83 channels.
In Project Management terminology:
The Project:
Building a Foundation for a Social Media Network.
Deliverable (is the noun):
Explore the possibilities
Tasks (is a verb):
Create an account a couple other social networking sites that interest you.
Read about some of the sites
Make a plan to build a bigger and bigger network.
When I first started my network, I made a plan to add one new social network site per day for about 3 weeks…it was an interesting growth idea and most of them are still displaying my blog feeds to this day and I have different set of follows are all those different sites…very cool…all being fed from my blog.
So the first thing we must recognize is that each of these authors had a different number of traits needed to be a good Social Media Manager…knowing this might mean this a very scientific approach with proper validity and reliability built right into the approach. An approach which by the way was done by going into a Google search and asked the question…Traits of Social Media Manager and then took the top seven most recent articles…again following rigorous research protocol.
Article one
The 7 personalities Every Successful Social Media Manager has.
An Analytical Brain That Understands the Big Picture
A Capacity and Eagerness to Learn.
As you can see by the traits listed by each of these articles a great Social Media Manager has to be a Super Person with a wicked set of skills good luck finding all of those in one person. In the end like most things in business a team of people will be able to hit most of these traits but a single such person most of us could not afford to pay…as they could probably write their own ticket.
In Project Management terminology:
The Project:
Building a Foundation for a Social Media Network.
Deliverable (is the noun):
The Social Media Manager
Tasks (is a verb):
Read the content of the day’s activities
Each of the six articles has a slightly different slant.
Do you have some of the traits listed
Search for a Social Media Manager there must be two maybe three with all those traits.
Business Social Media Campaigns to be successful will require a key person who will need to be the front line for the campaign. This person should be fairly computer literate and should have some personal social clout as proof to their understanding of the process. It is possible to develop the skills necessary to spearhead the business social media campaign but a business would be further ahead to identify the necessary skills for a future hire. A full-time online marketing agent might be a way to go if the business has identified online as the key method of marketing. Social Media Campaign has no boundary which is one of the major strengths of the process, it is as easy to use this marketing plan for people in your city as it is to target another area of the country or world in which you do business. My goal of any modern day business plan is to plan for growth as you will never know where your next market might spring up and it would be a shame to have to redevelop because you never planned big enough.
The following article although targeted at Google+ has a four main points which can be applied to a complete marketing plan and not just Google+.
1. Be platform agnostic and focus on compelling visual content.
His advice for other non-profits is to use visuals and other engaging content to drive interactions with your audiences to eventually take advantages of the larger Google+ ecosystem.
Lastly, he recommends that in order to find success with a platform like Google+ make sure your organization has the manpower or infrastructure in place to continually maintain the social network. Without this infrastructure, your organization will have hard time updating and tending to your Google+ page enough to find the success you’re looking for.
“Our social engagement team takes great effort to make sure we are cultivating communities, not necessarily networks,” said Midkiff.
2. Know your customer’s preferences and follow trends
Topman has also seen great success live streaming its past fashion shows on Google+, but what other businesses can more easily emulate is the brand’s approach to customer service using Google+ Hangouts. To help customers build an outfit or find what they’re looking for, Topman’s personal shoppers will join you on a Google+ Hangout to discuss how it can help perfect your wardrobe with its expert suggestions and advice.
Brocart suggests their presence on Google+ is all about one thing, “giving them a reason to come back, not just for offers but also for great content,”
3. Listen before speaking and build communities
Many businesses get it wrong on social media since they insist on talking as opposed to consistently listening to what their audience has to say to inform the company’s future messaging. Cadbury is one of the most successful businesses on Google+ today, one reason being that it really listens to its audience from the very beginning.
I am going to end today’s activities with interesting articles about the use of messaging in different social media sites and how it can drive interest.
After reading all this information do not just run right out there and hire a new social media campaign manager…wait until tomorrow’s entry into the campaign as we will identify the traits you should look for in a good social media campaign officer.
In Project Management terminology:
The Project:
Building a Foundation for a Social Media Network.
Deliverable (is the noun):
The three main points
Tasks (is a verb):
Read the content of the day’s activities
Take some time and think about the three steps fun
Try to figure out how you would do each in something other than Google+
Check out the supporting articles added to the bottom.
Every blog publishes what is called an feed which can be read by many other different websites… As Google explains…
What are feeds?
I see "RSS", "XML", and "Atom" out there, but I don't know how I might use these links when I find them.
Feeds are a way for websites large and small to distribute their content well beyond just visitors using browsers. Feeds permit subscription to regular updates, delivered automatically via a web portal, news reader, or in some cases good old email. Feeds also make it possible for site content to be packaged into "widgets," "gadgets," mobile devices, and other bite-sized technologies that make it possible to display blogs, podcasts, and major news/sports/weather/whatever headlines just about anywhere.
Here is a 5 minute video which explains What is Feedburner and What are RSS feeds?
The question you should be asking yourself is “why would I want to use Feedburner when my blog system already creates a feed? I can allow others to just post my feed into their reader of choice or widget or mobile device or whatever. The reason is that Feedburner does this for almost every type of reader etc with a single click of a button and so much more. This is the reason I decided to use Feedburner rather than my original feed.
Feedburner’s tagline is FeedBurner delivers the world's subscriptions wherever they need to go. Publish a feed for text or podcasting?
This video will explain step by step the process of using Feedburner
Feedburner will increase your traffic and you will find this process to be useful if you are using a blog as your main social media “sun”
Now that you have started to use bufferapp.com you will need to connect it to your network by using IFTTT.com to tie it all together. I use the blog as my main social network and then I add all the interesting articles that I like, and the entries that I write into the blog. This is really good if people follow my blog, subscribe to it but currently all my entries are posted to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+ by IFTTT.com. This is a good thing to do but if you post five or six articles at a time to will flood your social network sites which is ok, but it does tend to bother people when they see so many entries from a single person so by using bufferapp.com you can space them out during the day.
So here are the steps I use, I read ZITE app on my tablet in the morning…remember ZITE learns what I like and collects the latest articles, blog entries and news on the topics that I am interest in…as I read these I have a choice of what I would like to do if I like the articles, you can send them to facebook, twitter, linkedin, google+, the blog or to bufferapp.com. I have recently decided to send them to bufferapp.com and then added them to my blog but he best way is to add them to your blog and then use IFTTT to take your blog rss feed and send it to bufferapp.com which will then space them out and send them to all the other four social networking sites.
The tools to use are IFTTT and bufferapp.com and you will need to use both of these tools and figure out how they fit into your plans as a social networking person
As you are working through these thoughts …ask yourself these 13 questions taken from this article…
These questions will help you decide what your brand stands for…
39 Blogging Tips from the Pros
"Are you looking for the latest blogging tactics?
Do you want to know what the blogging pros are doing today?
Keeping up with the latest social media changes is not always easy, and your blogging tactics may need to be refreshed.
We asked 39 blogging pros to share the best blogging tips and tactics worth doing today.
Here’s what they have to say."
"If there is one subject that most bloggers have written about, it is probably the act of blogging. I know for me, as well as many of my blogging friends, it is nothing like we imagined before we were immersed in the “blogosphere”. Bloggers start their blogs for many different and personal reasons. One step common to all however, is that it does take an act of courage to publish that first blog post.
When I first started, I thought that I would do apiece here and there for a little while, but that I would eventually run out of things to say. Three years later, after 237 posts, I am still waiting for that time to arrive. My areas of interest include education and social media. I guess as long as each of those areas continue to evolve, I will always have something to write about."
