SXSWi bound – no need to unfollow, but mute if you must!

As you may have heard the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas is kicking off later this week.

This is my second year going, and I’m excited. So excited, that I anticipate to be tweeting about it… A lot. In fact, if you follow many people who are going, I can guarantee you’re going to get sick of hearing about it. (I remember the feeling in ‘08)

Good news for you, there are now a handful of tools available that will let you temporarily mute followers or keywords. Here’s a list from Oneforty…

However, if you *do* want to follow what’s going on at SXSW. Leave a comment and let me know what you want to hear about! I’ll do my best to accommodate.

Tags: conferences, SXSW, sxswi, tools, twitter
Posted in social media, tools of the trade | 1 Comment »

Foursquare: Is it really a game changer?

As 2009 ended, like usual, we saw tons of blog posts and speculation about what’s in store for 2010. One common theme (that had even been hinted upon long before the end of the year) was “geo-location based apps” such as Foursquare, and now contender Gowalla.

While I definitely see a huge untapped potential for local businesses to take advantage of. At this point I don’t think Foursquare will be the next Twitter. From my perspective, there are a few growing problems with the tool.

• Scalability – I think I was one of the first 50 or so users in Ottawa when Foursquare was launched here. I *loved* it! I used the handy web tools to find all my Twitter and Facebook friends and I already knew many of the other users. However, as it grows, the happy community feel is diminishing. Also unless you’re checking in over 200 times a week (which, even as a highly social person, I find that completely ludicrous) you don’t even have a chance at making the top 10 anymore. The competitor in me has lost interest.

  Also, a recent Tech Crunch article claims that appealing to a mass audience means compromising quirky features that appealed to the original geeks who embraced it. Douchebag badge anyone?

• The annoyance factor – As I mentioned above, Foursquare allows you to import your Twitter followers and add them as friends in Foursquare. So that begs the question, why do so many feel the need to tweet their every Foursquare activity?

  This seems to be creating a counter-Foursquare movement by Twitter users who are fed up with the “spammy” foursquare updates. (With very smart people like Judy Gombita leading the way, see her passionate interview on one of my favourite blogs – MediaStyle)

• And now what? – The reason tools like Twitter and Facebook have been so successful is the sense of empowerment they provide to users. Facebook allowed us all to re-connect and better stay connected to old friends and past acquaintances. Twitter taught us a new and powerful way to communicate and network in 140 characters or less.

  But Foursquare does what? Enables stalkers to function more efficiently? Yes, it’s really cool when you check in at an event and find other people there as well, but Twitter already does that via hashtags, and has a much larger user-base. Foursquare has a lot of ‘hey that’s really cool’ elements to it, but nothing that is going to set of bells in our heads and make us feel like we couldn’t live without it.

For the record–I am an avid user of Foursquare. It’s fun and I definitely see staying power potential, I just don’t envision it as the next big thing anymore. What do you think?

Tags: apps, Facebook, foursquare, geo-location, twitter
Posted in tools of the trade | 3 Comments »

A much needed re-design… What do you think?

If you’re reading in an RSS reader, please click through and have a look…

Seriously, I’m feeling a huge sense of relief. When I chose my previous theme (Bella) over a year ago, I loved the look of it, but had issues from the start. Most notably it was difficult to customize and often loaded painfully slow. I only found out a couple weeks ago from a tip from a reader that my titles were flash-based, which can not only crash your browser, but sucks for my SEO.

To be honest, I hate choosing a new Wordpress theme. It usually takes me hours upon hours, as I’m really picky, but indecisive. Also I like to customize my themes and make them really feel like ‘mine’. But my HTML/CSS skills are getting a little rusty, so I at least need a theme that’s well organized and easy to figure out, which my previous one was definitely not.

Also, I discovered this time around that not all themes will work. A few months ago I installed the Mainstream theme by Woo Themes. Very modern, clean and customizable… However when I activated it, it was a mangled mess. I was discouraged. Yesterday I found a similar theme I loved, called Charade, by HTML Rockstars. Again though, I activated and it was a mangled mess. After tweeting my frustrations, I was told it’s likely because the theme was developed for a previous version of Wordpress and may not work on newer ones.

Ready to give up and just shut my blog down (seriously, I get really worked up over this!), I continued to search through recommendations of sites from my Twitter followers, and eventually found this theme–Producer. I love it because it’s elegant, clean and attractive right ‘out of the box’, however it also has tons of configurable options, and easy to work with CSS files.

So hopefully, I’m sticking with this one for a while, and over time I hope to customize it and really make it mine. I’d love to know what you think and I’m open to any suggestions you may have. After all the look of my blog is really for your benefit.

Also, here’s a list of sites to find Wordpress themes, courtesy of my awesome followers:

• Top WP Themes – Thanks to @Jkozuch
• A list of where to find WP themes – Thanks to @meshwerk
• Smashing Magazine – (Lots of great design info in general, love this site!) Thanks to @christaggart
• Blog Oh blog – Thanks @statikpulse
• Best WP themes – Thanks @markmaloney
• Woo themes & Studiopress – Thanks @FrancescoCerv

So please, leave a comment with any feedback. And I’m certainly not looking for an ego-stroke here. I’m wondering if you think the text is too small, or if the archives are too difficult to find, or if the red makes you feel angry and want to leave, whatever pops into your head. I’m going to maintain a wish list of tweaks for me to make whenever I have the time (which is not often enough!) So I appreciate any feedback you may have.

Tags: Add new tag, Cascading Style Sheets, HTML, RSS, Search engine optimization, Templates, twitter, wordpress
Posted in tools of the trade | 3 Comments »

New Twitter tool, Nambu, manages multiple accounts, groups, searches & more

So just when I finally decide that Tweetdeck is the best Twitter app out there and tell everyone about it…. I find one that I love even more!

Nambu is hot off the press and still in beta, but has already won me over. Apologies to my PC friends, but it’s only available for Mac (you can, however, still use Tweetdeck, which is a great tool).

One thing I didn’t like about Tweetdeck, was that while you could create and manage groups and searches, if you closed those windows, they were gone forever. With Nambu, each subsection you create lives in a convenient sidebar for future use. Also, this is the first tool I’ve seen that is great for managing multiple Twitter accounts (I have three) which is a huge timesaver.

Here’s what my Nambu looks like:

When you first start up Nambu, it will ask if you want install the Growl notifier–this will allow notifications to pop up on your screen for new tweets (You can also edit in preferences whether you want to have notifications for all tweets, or just private messages). This I find convenient on my big iMac screen because I can glance over and see if anything interested is going on without opening Nambu, however on my Macbook, I find it takes up too much of the screen and is far to distracting.

It is in Beta, so don’t expect everything to run perfectly–however I haven’t had any problems yet, so I’m happy. Another thing I will come oto love about Nambu is after it’s out of Beta it will allow you to integrate other services, (identi.ca, Friendfeed and ping.fm) but right now those features are disabled in beta. If you’re a social media fanatic without the time to manage all these services (like me) Nambu might prove to be a life saver.

Have you tried it yet? What do you think?

Tags: friendfeed, identi.ca, Nambu, Ping.fm, social media, TweetDeck, Twhirl, twitter
Posted in tools of the trade | 9 Comments »

Building your personal brand with Twitter and Linkedin

This is a continuation of a class I did with the Algonquin College first-year PR students (The aptly named “Twitter party”). If you are one of the students–thanks for attending and I hope you’re able to continue to build your brand as well as understand the tools for practical PR application. Also, feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you thought of the presentation, or if you have any questions.  If you weren’t there, well my hope is you’ll get value out of these resources anyway. Also, I’d love my readers to drop a comment and add any more resources that will help them excel with Twitter & LinkedIn.

Twitter

First here are my slides on Twitter:

(note: I have to give credit to my friend Sean Power… I originally created this Powerpoint for the Project Management View webinar I did a couple weeks ago, but last week I found his awesome post “Twitter new user survival guide” and revised a few points. Thanks Sean!)

And to recap, here are the 11 things you need to remember to succeed with Twitter.

11. Build a profile
The more information you can put in your profile the better. Try to load up your bio with keywords that will help potential followers identify what you’re all about and what you’ll be tweeting about. Do not worry about having complete sentences–it’s often better not to, so that you can get more info in. Also–put up a photo. It doesn’t have to be a photo of you if you’re camera shy, but at least find an icon or something that represents you.

10. Find people to follow
Once you’ve set up your profile and posted a  few tweets, you’re ready to find people to follow, here are some sites to help you out:

• Twellow is the Twitter yellow pages. Search for people based on info in their profile (user name, bio, location)
• Twitter’s search function can be used to find people who are tweeting about a certain subject or keyword that may be of interest to you. Also you can use the search to follow a hash tag (#) that interests you and follow those people who are tweeting about it.
• Mr. Tweet is your personal twitter assistant who will make recommendations on who to follow. All you have to do to get your personalized report is follow @MrTweet

9. Get used to 140 characters
That’s the limit twitter gives you, so you may find yourself editing to get your message across clearly and succinctly. Remember if you want people to retweet you, you may want to keep it even shorter (110 is a good guideline)

Also, if you want to tweet links you may want to use a URL shortening services,

• http://idek.net is my favourite because it provides stats about who clicked on your link
• http://bit.ly if you’re really serious about tracking and stats, bit.ly lets you create an account and track all your URLs.
• http://is.gd creates the shortest links, so if you’re pressed for space it’s a good choice.

There are tons of these services out there, and you can drag them onto your browser bar for easy one-click URL shortening. Also if you do decide to use Tweetdeck, it has URL shorteners built in, so it’s even easier!

8. Listening vs. Tweeting
I recommend you spend 80% of your twitter time listening to what your followers have to say, and 20% tweeting. This will help you get more benefit from those you follow and help you avoid over-tweeting.

7. Ask yourself “Who cares?”
If you are looking to build followers, ask yourself “who cares?” before you post. You want to provide value to your audience with each post. This doesn’t mean you can’t inject a little personality, but make sure you’re providing valuable information.

6. Put yourself out there!
If you want to build followers, don’t protect your updates–if someone doesn’t know you, they will not likely request to follow your updates.

5. Promote cool stuff –and not just your own.
It’s perfectly OK to post links to your blogs, or maybe a cool project you’re working on (so long as it’s of value to your followers) but don’t *only* promote your cool stuff. If someone else tweets something you like, retweet it by putting RT @[their_username] and copying and pasting the original tweet. Also if you happen across a cool web site in your daily life, tweet it!

4. Join the conversation
To reply to another user: type @ before the user name. It will automatically link to his/her profile and show up in the side bar even if he/she is not following you.

If you want to join in a hash tagged conversation, just stick # in front of an established keyword or acronym. If you want to start your own, just stick # in front of a keyword of your choosing. To follow hash tag conversations, go to search.twitter.com and search the tag (note you can search inside Tweetdeck too)

One example of a regular hash tagged discussion is #journchat it happens live on Twitter every Monday from 8 to 11 p.m. EST. You can follow the conversation here–by typing in #journchat into search.twitter.com

3. Learn three ways to tweet
Stuck on what to say? Try these common types of tweets:

• Ask a question: Twitter is great for asking question. Ask anything from “What Twitter apps would you recommend?” to “Where’s a good place for lunch in downtown Ottawa?” The larger your twitter network the more answers you’re likely to get.
• Share a resource or wisdom – Post interesting facts, tips and quotes, people love them! Also, if you find a great website, share it with your twitter network. These types of posts can really add value for your followers, so go crazy.
• Report on news and/or events – If you happen to hear/see something before it hits mainstream media, tweet about it! Some great examples of news stories broken on Twitter include the Mumbai bombings a few months back as well as the plane crash in the Hudson river.

2. Try some Twitter Apps
First and foremost, try Tweetdeck. Tweetdeck allows you to create groups of followers to track separately from your entire stream. For example, you may want to create a PR group that includes your classmates, profs and other PR grads on Twitter.Tweetdeck also allows you to search,
Also you can use Twitscoop to see trending topics via a ‘tweet cloud” (i.e. a cluster of words of various sizes that shows you what’s popular on Twitter)

Also, for a ridiculously exhaustive list of Twitter apps, check out the Twitter Fan Wiki. At least take a few minutes to read through what’s out there. There’s an app to do just about anything with Twitter.

1. Be yourself & have fun!
Self explanatory…

Tips for using LinkedIn

I totally agree with Andrea and strongly recommend you also join LinkedIn. Please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, and here are some tips to get the most out of using LinkedIn–which unlike Twitter, does not require a lot of time commitment–at the very least sign up, create your profile and just leave it at that, but you can do much more with it if you choose.

• Think keywords when building a profile. Like Twitter, before filling out your profile think of keywords that will describe you professionally. For example, don’t just say you’re a public relations student. Say you’re a public relations student interested in media relations, corporate communications and social media looking for work in the nonprofit or private sector. (Or whatever it is you’re interested in)
• As a general rule, only invite/connect with people you’ve met/interacted with in real life. Unlike other networks, people like to keep their LinkedIn profiles with real life contacts. Some may allow “virtual” connections, but unless you’ve heard them say it, avoid adding someone you haven’t met.
• Give–and ask–for recommendations. Personal recommendations not only help you look better, they help your profile turn up in search results. Also some LinkedIn jobs require you to have recommendations to even apply so it’s not a bad idea to ask for recommendations from former/current employers and colleagues. If you’re too shy/timid to ask, than recommend some people yourself, they just may return the favour.
• When sending an invitation to connect, write a personalized message. Unless it’s someone you know really well, take a minute to write a personalized message in the invitation. This is especially key if you’ve met someone at a networking event where they might have also met many other people, if possible mention something you spoke about. (e.g. “Hi Fred, We met recently at the Night of the Roundtables event at Algonquin College. We had a great chat about doing PR in the nonprofit industry. I’d love to connect with you & stay in touch.”)
• After collecting someone’s business card, add them on LinkedIn. Personally, I’m famous for collecting business cards and never following up (unless we discussed something to be followed up). However, now I treat LinkedIn as my personal contact database – I add someone after I meet them (with a personalized message) and then instead of digging through business cards if I need to get a hold of someone, I just look them up on LinkedIn. And *yes* almost everyone is on LinkedIn these days.

As we also discussed in class, both these tools are fabulous for promoting events and/or campaigns. However, if you start using them now–and not just when you want to promote something–you’ll be able to build a solid network of influence so that when you do want to promote something, you’ll have genuinely interested people who’ll listen and want to help you out!

Social media events in Ottawa

As great as online communication can be, it still doesn’t beat face-to-face communication. If you’re interested in social media and want to learn more, here are a few local events I’d suggest attending.

• Social Media Breakfast happens about monthly and always features an awesome speaker. Costs $10, but well worth it!
• Third Tuesday Ottawa – is a PR/social media event put on by Thornley Fallis. It’s free and always a great time. Don’t be fooled by the name though, it rarely *actually* happens on the third Tuesday. Sign up for the meetup group to get alerts when it’s happening.
• Social Media Book Club – is put on by me and Scott Lake. About every 2 months we read a book and get together in a bar to chat about it. The good news is you don’t actually have to read the book, but it helps!

Good luck with the last few weeks of your first year!

Tags: personal branding, Social network, TweetDeck, twitter
Posted in Uncategorized, public relations, social media, tools of the trade | 3 Comments »

Facebook’s new Terms of Service: Are they out to get us?

This is a follow up to my recent post: Concerned about privacy on the social web? Particularly because of the recent news of Facebook changing its Terms of Service. The story broke on Consumerist, and there’s still a lot of buzz going around.

There’s a lot of talk about how ’scary’ it is that Facebook and other sites get access to all of our personal information and tell us they will use it however they wish. Personally, I don’t worry too much. The first thing you’ve got to remember is ANYTHING you post online pretty much becomes public domain. And it’s there permanently. Even if you delete your profile or a web page it still exists online in cache files and chances are someone can find a way to access it. Don’t believe me? Check out the Wayback Machine an internet archive site that shows you past versions of any web site. (tip: it’s a lot of fun to look up big brands like Pepsi and see what its website looked like in 1996).

One thing you have to remember about Facebook is it’s not a big company formed by fat cat executives. It was a couple of college students who created a site to keep in touch with friends. Yes, it’s exploded and Mark Zuckerberg is now a millionaire–and yes Facebook is now a *real* company with shareholders and executives and the likes, but it’s also already very profitable and doesn’t show any signs of struggling. So why would it want to ostracize it’s gigantic user base and screw us all over? I don’t think that’s a feasible explanation. And really–what’s the worst they can do with your information? Sell it? Tons of companies are doing that anyway. I don’t like it either, but it’s certainly nothing new. In fact, my guess is this move was more to protect themselves BECAUSE all your information is cached and they still have access whether you delete your account or not.

Who knows, maybe Facebook will prove me wrong. Whether you are concerned about this issue or not, the important lesson to remember is DO NOT post anything online that you don’t feel comfortable sharing with the world.

**UPDATE**
So Facebook reverted its terms of service, posted a message to users AND created a group looking for user feedback. I can’t help but feel I was a little bit right about this…

Tags: Consumerist, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, Privacy, Social network, Terms of service, Website
Posted in social media, tools of the trade | No Comments »

Social Media Monitoring Review: Techrigy SM2

OK, so it’s been a while, but SM2 is one of the tools I’ve been enthusiastic about reviewing since I started. (To recap, you can check out my review of Social Radar as well as Radian6). One thing I particularly loved about Techrigy SM2 is it has a ‘freenium’ option! Which is really handy if you do not have a big brand and lots of keywords to manage and no budget for social media monitoring–such as I do.

But on to the good stuff. There’s two things that really stood out about SM2, for starters I was impressed with what they offered in a free account and secondly it looks very similar to Google Analytics. This is great because if you’re already a GA user, you’ll have no trouble finding your way around.

One thing about SM2 is it says it’s created specifically for PR/Marketing agencies. However, I would argue that it’s a perfect tool for small companies that have a big presence online. Not to say it’s not good for agencies as well, as you can create separate profiles per client, but it’s easy to use and again, looking like Google Analytics makes it easy for anyone already familiar with the layout.

Here’s a few screenshots of the product (from the site as they’re much more interesting than the ones I tried to make:

Demographics--breaking down your audience (click for larger)

Trends - keyword mentions by day

So to re-cap, here’s what I like about SM2:

• Familiarity in design (similar to Google Analytics)
• Great data about your audience. Gives you gender and age of authors writing about you, which is great if you are sending pitches to bloggers.
• Author tags give you an idea of what other topics sites that mention you are talking about. Again great for crafting pitches, as well as to give you context to what people are writing about.
• Collection from a variety of sources, includes microblogs
• Sends you a daily email of search results on your keywords. Love this, don’t need to log in everyday, get a quick summary and I can go in for more details when needed.

The only downside I saw to SM2 is it doesn’t have the build-your-own dashboard that the other tools I’ve seen had, it’s definitely a solid tool that will definitely ease your analytic mind. And I am definitely going to continue using it for my own work at SmartHippo.

Tags: google analytics, Radian6, SmartHippo, social media, Techrigy
Posted in social media, tools of the trade | 4 Comments »

5 Tactics land a job using social media (plus tips to do it right)

Times are tough right now and only getting tougher. This means finding a job right now amidst mass layoffs and a tanking economy is definitely not easy. But I’m saying fret not, and use the power of social media to land a new gig.

Whether you’re looking for a job *in* social media or a traditional communications role that probably involves social media, you can definitely use it to your advantage in your job search. In fact, I’ve had great luck with job opportunities through social media and I’ve done the traditional job searching and it’s never worked to my advantage.

Here are some tactics you can start right now which can help you find job opportunities and also to put yourself out there and let the opportunities find you:

Get on Twitter

Image by via CrunchBase

This is the first thing I tell anyone who’s looking for a job. Actually I pretty much tell everyone to join Twitter for any reason really. I’m sure you already know networking is the best way to land a job and I consider Twitter to be the ultimate networking tool. If you aren’t sure what to post about (You don’t have to take “What are you doing?” so literally) start by posting articles, blog posts and web sites that you find interesting.  Build a profile that includes a real photo (doesn’t have to be a photo of you, but something personal yet professional will work best). Include a brief bio that includes what you are interested and what you like to tweet about. When you’ve got a few posts up, head over to Twitter Search and start searching topics that interest you and find interesting people tweeting about them and follow them. When you start to follow people, reply to their tweets (by starting yours with @[username]) to start a conversation. Once you get going it’s a lot of fun and you’ll meet lots of interesting people. Once you join, follow me and let me know you read my post and I’ll send some interesting tweeters your way. (Oh, and if you’re in Ottawa looking for a job you may want to follow @ottawatweetjobs – my other Twitter account.)

Join relevant social networks

Image by via CrunchBase

There are literally thousands of active social networks these days and chances are there’s a handful that touch upon your interests or that can help you in your job search. First of all, if you aren’t on LinkedIn, get on and start finding all your past colleagues and acquaintences. Complete your profile and consider asking for recommendations from former bosses and co-workers as recruiters do regularly use the sites to find candidates. I can recommend a handful of others depending on what you’re looking for, so feel free to contact me if you’re having problems finding ones to join.

Build an online portfolio

Showcase your work so it’s not only easy to send to potential employers, but it will come up in Google searches and also allow for others to pass along. If you’re worried about your technical abilities, worry not–just head over to Blogger.com and start a blog as a hosting place for your online portfolio. Put links to social networks you’re a part of (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, if it’s not too personal) and include a link to your resume. For an example, you can see an online portfolio I put together a while back on blogger…

Once you’ve built the portfolio (and tested all your links!) be sure you reference it in cover letters to potential employers and even include the link in your email signature. You never know when a potential opportunity may be hiding in a regular email communication.

Read and comment on blogs that interest you

If this is all new to you, you may want to start with iGoogle. It is a personalized Google homepage that displays RSS subscriptions as widgets (and you can get other handy widgets like the weather, your gmail account etc.) The City of Ottawa has a fabulous page that explains how you can set up your iGoogle page for RSS. Once you’re all set up, use Google Blog Search or Technorati to scope out blogs that interest you and click the RSS subscribe button (usually a little orange icon).

Start your own blog

If you’re really passionate about what you want to do, and can dedicate the time to maintain a blog, then consider starting your own. Blogging is a rewarding experience in its own, especially if you love to write. Check out my previous post “Social media and community management resources” for links and resources for blogging. Consider joining communities like MyBlogLog or the Bloggeries forum to help learn as you go and to promote your blog.

Tips to succeed in social media

Think you’re ready to go out and conquer social media to help find your dream job? That’s great, but it also involves a lot of ‘putting yourself out there’ and if you’re not careful it could backfire. So here’s a few quick tips to keep you on the path to success:

• Consistency across social media – If you’re building a personal brand you want to make sure you get credit for all your effort. Build your own ‘brand’ by developing a user name, photo and brief bio to use across all social networks so that people will recognize you at each and it won’t seem like you’ve developed a multiple personality disorder.
• Think before you post – Sometimes when we finally open our mouths, we can’t seem to shut them again! Remember that *anyone* could be reading what you’re writing so you may want to steer clear of controversial topics like religion or politics. Also you’ll want to ensure that you come across as a responsible professional so don’t drink and tweet!
• Commit time to do it all – An abandoned profile or blog may give off a negative impression of you, so before you start, make sure you can commit the necessary time to keep it up.
• Remember it’s about conversations - Be kind and polite to others, and always try to respond to comments posted on your profile page or tweets or however some one may be reaching out to you… Even if they don’t have a job offer for you.

That’s all I have for now! Have any tips that have helped you land a job? Have you tried something else I didn’t list here? Leave a comment!

Tags: blog, Facebook, google, job search, LinkedIn, MyBlogLog, Social network, twitter, Twitter Search
Posted in public relations, social media, tools of the trade | 5 Comments »

Why you should follow your brand and respond to blog posts…

Here’s a little success story I’d love to share because it affected me personally! Back in September, I wrote about some social media apps/community sites that had fallen out of favour with me or just off my the radar. One of those applications was socialmedian a social news sharing site that I had struggled to get interested in. In fact because I had lost interest I was actually getting annoyed by the daily emails I was receiving about it. Though I thought it was done and over with I hadn’t got around to unsubscribing which is why it made my list.

Well socialmedian founder Jason Goldberg reached out right away via the comments with a heart-filled request to give socialmedian another chance. I remembered when I originally signed up that I saw a lot of potential in the site, so I took his advice and committed to giving it another chance. Well now I love it. I’m skimming my news almost daily, clipping articles and even commenting on news story I like. I haven’t worked it into my everyday social media routine but I’m well on my way.

And *that* is why it’s important to follow your brand online and reach out when necessary. Not only am I re-engaged in the site, but I’m writing about it here! Great work Jason, and keep it up with socialmedian!

PS- Check out what I’m reading and sharing at socialmedian

**UPDATE** Looks like Mashable wrote did a much more in-depth review/interview with Jason Goldberg. Check it out…

Tags: Entrepreneur, Jason Goldberg, News media, Social bookmarking, social media
Posted in social media, tools of the trade | 2 Comments »

Can’t-live-without web tools

Since my previous post was all about sites you’ve forgotten about, it seems fitting this one be all about ones you can’t live without. However, now I want to address web tools. I was just thinking the other day, I self-taught myself HTML when I was 13 and built a couple web site back in the day but of course it was a tedious, time-consuming effort. So after the novelty wore off, I gave up on building web sites because I never really wanted to be a web developer. However, I remembered just how rewarded and accomplished I felt to have my own little piece of real estate on the World Wide Web…

And look here I am again! However, this time, I built the blog from nothing in a couple of hours. First I bought some hosting and a domain. I went with a hosting provider that self-installs Wordpress, so piece of cake… then I picked out a template, tweaked it a little and voila! Really *anyone* can do it. Really freakin’ cool when you think about it!

So on to the point, here are some web tools/apps/sites I just couldn’t bare to live without.

Wordpress

I think I just explained this one pretty well, but I would also pick Wordpress over Typepad, Movable Type and Blogger (yes, I’ve used them all!) because I just find it amazingly versatile and you can set up your blog ‘quick and dirty’ as I did with this one, or spend a lot of time making it absolutely how you want it (which is what I *want* to do with this one day). Also I’m constantly amazed with all the plug-ins, and constant updates. It’s just great.

Feedburner

Because what’s the point of talking if no one’s listening? I love the details Feedburner provides and tracking subscribers. Paired with Google Analytics you’ve got a full picture of who’s visiting your site, and after following for a while you can start to get a solid grasp on what works, what doesn’t, etc.

Google Analytics

Back when I learned to build web sites, as best as I can recall there wasn’t really much to measure your traffic aside from those stupid hit counters which never seemed to work. When my parents ran their own business I maintained the web site and I remember they had paid some company a lot of money to produce these “reports” about the traffic. Which were about as easy to read as a Japanese dictionary. While there are some great analytics tools out  there today, Google Analytics is fabulous…AND free. The great thing is, even if you don’t really know too much about analytics, Google makes it so easy to understand, within a couple of hours of poking around you will feel like a pro!

Youtube

Can you even remember life before Youtube? It’s only been three years, but for many of us, it’s changed the way we use the Internet.It used to be such a pain for the average person to post a video. I remember working on an e-newsletter for my college, and the administrative staff wanted to put a video in it. I remember spending hours trying to figure out how to convert file formats, compress the file as much as possible and posting a link on the landing page that subscribers would have to click to download the video file. It was ridiculous.

And finally… My *all-time* favourite…

Twitter

Twitter has literally changed the way I communicate. (Now it is only in 140 character intervals!) but seriously, via Twitter I am able to quickly find answers to probably any question I can imagine, “meet” people in my field or with similar interests around the globe and network/get to know each other without it being creepy or overly personal–which I love. I could go on all day about how handy I think it is, the versatility and many uses… but it’s Friday, so I’m out of here! (Oh yea, if you aren’t already, don’t forget to follow me!)

So what tools have changed the way you live/work/socialize? What could you absolutely never live without again?

Tags: feedburner, google, google analytics, twitter, wordpress
Posted in social media, tools of the trade | 3 Comments »