Hello dear readers! Again, welcome to everyone who has just recently tuned in — we really appreciate your page views and comments, and hope you’re enjoying your time here.

A Happy Thanksgiving to all those Americans out there — eat lots of turkey and pumpkin pie today!

In celebration of the holiday (and because we probably won’t update again until after we’ve woken from our holiday-induced food comas), we have another chapter for you!

Read Chapter 18 now!

Also, please note that you can subscribe to our blog in two different ways! Get our RSS feed here. Or, if you’d like to subscribe to our updates via e-mail, WordPress has just added that widget! To subscribe, scroll down to the bottom of our side navigation (underneath our Tweets and our RSS feed), and click the “Undazzle me!” button.

Cheers!

The Flickr platform – part of the Yahoo company – has exploded in the last year, with the addition of social bookmarking and RSS feeds. The ability to integrate into Facebook with the widget MyFlickr and photo editing functions has also expanded its reach. But how are others using Flickr to engage in business conversations?

A “soft” case study
Interestingly enough, I read a recent blog post by prominent blogger Jay Baer, from Convince and Convert fame, on how one photographer has been using Flickr to “soft” crowdsource.

Jay interviewed Tyson Crosbie, a photographer out of Phoenix, Ariz., about how he used Flickr to crowdsource his photos among his audience. He decided to use the platform to allow users to vote for their favorite photograph for his clients – providing the client with another valuable source of feedback (example).

According to a quote from the Convince and Convert blog post by Jay, Crosbie said:

“I initially began the soft edit crowd sourcing process as a way to better educate myself and my clients about photography,” says Tyson. “Sometimes clients select photos that they probably would not have, but the positive feedback from the community can be influential.”

An online community
Crosbie was able to build his brand and develop a powerful online community because he engaged in a fun and interactive conversation. Not to mention that beyond the fact that users were discussing what they liked, the photography was getting more exposure, hence more business for Crosbie. It helps that he adds his logo and name to the bottom, right-hand corner of his photos for further brand recognition.

It all comes back full circle when done right and Crosbie, in fact, did it right. He said:

There are dozens of people who comment on the photos. Some are professional photographers, but most aren’t…If they know the subject of the photo, they are more likely to comment, and some people just love the process and participate regularly.

How does this help me?
There are so many social media platforms out there, and they all serve a valuable purpose, but utilizing the right one based on your objectives and strategies is imperative. Flickr can be a great tool when you want to share content, specifically photos, with your friends, consumers, co-workers and so on. It also allows you to tap into a whole new audience by letting people speak their mind about the topics presented to them, as well as generating potential revenue from the increased brand reputation.

People could crowdsource my picture by commenting

As an example, Crosbie actually builds the “soft” crowdsourcing fee for his photography into each project. This is a way for him to create extra value to the customer and provide another unique selling proposition (remember that term?) to his audience. He has even built a reputation around shooting avatars for Twitter users. Now that’s a niche to be in!

Jay mentions about Crosbie that:

Business portraits for use in social media and elsewhere make up a large portion of his commercial photography work, and he charges $500 for that service – including the soft edit crowd sourcing process.

This can be of help to you by keeping one thing in mind; that with the right strategy and creative mindset, you can use Flickr to build your personal or business brand in new and innovative ways.

Subscribers to the Cloud Testing service can take advantage of the new RSS feed of current status for a project, which has moved out of Beta into production.

The feed can be accessed via the home page for a Project:

You can then view updates in your RSS reader of choice – we use Mozilla Thunderbird:

Every Wednesday I offer tips for adulthood.

Last week I took a self-imposed vacation from this blog in order to focus on marketing my novel. It was an unusual thing for me to do, but I’m so glad that I decided to do it. As the self-development guru Colleen Wainwright – a.k.a. Communicatrix – put it so well in a comment on that post:

“Hardest thing in the world, carving out time for the Not Immediately Necessary. But how else does the big stuff get done?”

How else, indeed?

So in this week’s tip list, I thought I’d share what I learned from that experience and, specifically, how to make “time off” (as in time off to carry out a specific project, as opposed to a vacation) productive:

1. Tell Other People What You Are Doing. Several people – including myself – noted that I wrote a blog post to announce that I wouldn’t be blogging for a week. Why not just…stop blogging for a week? But I did that for a reason. I knew that if I told readers what I was doing and gave myself a time-line, I’d be more inspired to hit my goal. And I did.

2. Cut Distractions. This is obvious, but it bears repeating. Much of the joy that comes from being a blogger doesn’t just come from writing posts, but from reading other people’s blogs, commenting on those blogs, sharing an interesting article on Twitter, etc. Doing all that is a big part of how I come up with my ideas. And while I didn’t stop reading my RSS feed last week (perish the thought!), I did dramatically reduce the amount of time I normally spend in the blogosphere.

3. Stay Focused. Another obvious suggestion, but which also bears repeating. Midway through the week, I realized that I could easily have devoted the entire week just to clearing out my inbox. And by “clearing out my inbox” I don’t mean deleting announcements about “What’s on at The National Theatre” or the latest cure for cancer in homeopathy.  I mean attending to really useful articles and websites I’ve flagged for myself about blogging, writing, publishing, etc. that I *really must read.* But then I reminded myself: Nope, that’s not what I’m doing this week. I”m working on the novel. But that insight did motivate me to take another, future SIV (that’s “self imposed vacation” as opposed to SUV, FYI..BTW..IMHO…ha!) that will just be about blogging best practices.

4. Recognize That You’ll Never Totally Clear Your Inbox. I think I had this fantasy that once I took this large, annoying monkey off my back (e.g. sending out the novel to agents), the sky would magically part and I’d be relaxed and in control of my to-do list. But taking time off also made me realize that, much as I’d like to, I’ll never completely reduce my “to do” list to zero. Because as soon as I take one thing off the list – like “send out novel to agents” – something else immediately moves in to take its place, like “blog promotion.” Sure, there’s all this stuff floating around out there about inbox zero and the Four Hour work week. What-ever. I think for most of us, it’s about reducing our to-do lists to a manageable level and then taking it one step at a time, accepting that whatever we prioritize comes at the expense of other things we’d also – genuinely – like to be doing. That’s just…life.

5. Remember that Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder. One of the best ways to appreciate something in your life is to take a break from it. Your feelings while your away will tell you how much you either totally love it or could actually live without it. Back when I was an academic, I took a year off to work for the United States Treasury Department, precisely in order to see whether I’d miss my life as a professor. I didn’t miss it at all and mailed in my resignation half way through the year. In a similar vein, last week while “not blogging” I realized how much I love this blog and missed both writing it and being part of this community.

And that was the best lesson of all.

*****

If you’re interested, here’s my piece in yesterday’s PoliticsDaily.com about the pro-Israel lobby in the U.K.

Image: Monkey On My Back by Mshai via Flickr under a Creative Commons License.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary; syndicating means republishing an article that comes from another source such as a website.

An RSS is a means of publicizing updates about websites. It may or may not include a summary and photos of the latest posting. But those that provide summaries (thus Rich Site Summary) allow users to skim through the article so that they could decide later on if they want to access the website source. The RSS feed usually contains the title of the update originating from the website. It is also usually the link to the website source.

There never seems to be an end to new marketing buzz words on the internet. You most likely have heard of RSS feed. Chances are though you are so caught up with other avenues of marketing that you haven’t given much thought to this venue as yet. It would be worth putting on your “to do” list though as it has some great potential.

If you have been trying to figure out the basics of RSS feed you may be thinking that it’s really not going to be all that significant. It most certainly is though. In fact Microsoft will be sure to support it in their platforms in the future.

With an RSS feed, the content sent out is the most recent content added to your site, automatically. If you run a newsletter, you need to prepare the content and email it out. With an RSS Feed, the content is sent automatically.

What ever you post to your blog or put on your web pages, goes out to your feed subscribers. You can market using your RSS feed by writing creative messages and articles that include calls to action you want your readers to take.

Building you RSS feed subscribers is just as important as building your mailing list and you should take some time to set it up correctly.

One way to submit an RSS feed for your website is to put up a blog or “weB LOG” Blogging software usually contains built in code that will submit your feed to RSS directories every time you make a new post. For some people, however, this can be tricky. Blogging software out of the box can be a little intimidating, and they usually provide very little to no documentation. Hosted blogs like WordPress and Blogger usually contain those built in codes, but customizing your blog to your liking can be difficult.

Why use RSS?

No longer do you need to search for fresh content every day to provide information on your site. RSS is a lot more convenient because it allows you to utilise other people’s information and feed it directly onto your website or blog.

You no longer need to rush writing articles or hire article writers. Just search for relevant articles from directories on the internet and RSS allows you to feed them directly to your website.

How to use RSS

Using RSS feeds is easy. You just have to add several lines of code on your web page or blog and your content will automatically be updated.

Usually you need a feed reader or news aggregator software to gain RSS feeds from different websites and display them on your own web pages. Feed readers come in a variety of platforms but there are also the web-based feed readers such as My Yahoo, Bloglines and Google Reader.

After obtaining your feed reader, the next step is to find sites that syndicate content and add the RSS feed to the list of feeds your reader keep tracks of. This is done through subscription and usually by entering the feed’s URL into the feed reader.

Read about Get one way links also read Manual directory submissions and Directory submissions .

…because they get my all new Dashboard widget! It displays the posts on CP’s What’s New? blog, right from your dashboard!!

Here are some pics:

The front of the widget!

The back of the widget!

You can download it here!

You can download it here!

You can download it here!

…or from our Box.net widget!

 

-Mac Storm

RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many internet news-related websites, blogs, and web content publishers allow RSS Feed to whoever wants it. RSS allows you to easily stay informed regulary and as frequently, it also saves time to visit the websites you regularly visist.

In wordpress.com, go to appearance and click on widgets, then drag RSS widgets to mainside bar as many as you want. Find the website you wish to subscribe and copy the address then paste the url to the widget and give the title and options to each RSS. After saving it, refresh the site, it will automatically show the result.

RSS Algemeen

RSS is een toepassing van XML en wordt gebruikt om links naar informatie op je website beschikbaar te stellen aan anderen. Die “anderen” kunnen bezoekers van je site zijn, maar bijvoorbeeld ook andere websites kun je gebruik laten maken van deze links.

In het Engels spreekt men bij RSS over “syndicated content”. Er is eigenlijk geen goed Nederlands woord waarmee je syndicate in deze betekenis kunt vertalen. Het wil zoveel zeggen als het gelijktijdig beschikbaar stellen van informatie aan anderen. Syndicated informatie bestaat ook buiten het web. Een bekend voorbeeld is Scott Adams die bekend is van zijn Dilbert strip. Deze cartoon wordt beschikbaar gesteld aan kranten. Zij mogen de strip publiceren, zolang zij hiervoor maar een vergoeding betalen.

Op het web werkt het met syndicated content op een zelfde manier. Via een zogenaamde RSS feed maak je de links naar (nieuwe) informatie op je website beschikbaar, waarna anderen deze links kunnen gebruiken. Een andere webmaster kan deze links bijvoorbeeld automatisch laten opnemen in de voorpagina van zijn eigen website en bezoekers van je site kunnen via een zogenaamde RSS reader je RSS bestand ophalen en kunnen zo direct zien of er nieuwe informatie op je site is verschenen.

Wat is RSS precies?

Als je nadenkt over alle informatie die via het web toegankelijk is, dan valt op dat je veel van die soorten informatie kunt zien als lijsten. Denk bijvoorbeeld aan: zoekresultaten van een zoekmachine, nieuwskoppen, aangeboden goederen op een internetveiling, onderwerpen op een forum, etcetera.

Als internetter bezoek je waarschijnlijk dagelijks een aantal vaste websites die hun specifieke lijst publiceren. Vaak is er niets veranderd en verlaat je vervolgens de site weer. Dit wordt lastig als je dit met vele sites moet doen. Iedere keer de site laden, kijken of er iets nieuws is of kijken waar je ook al weer gebleven was. Het wordt al snel onoverzichtelijk en tijdrovend.

Met RSS kan je het je bezoekers een stuk makkelijker maken. Stel dat je een nieuw artikel hebt geschreven. Je kunt nu geïnteresseerden laten weten dat dit artikel verschenen is door de pagina als “item” op te nemen in het RSS bestand van je site. Mensen die je RSS feed bekijken met een RSS reader zien nu dat er wat nieuws is verschenen en kunnen met een druk op de knop het nieuwe artikel lezen. Hiervoor hoeven ze niet eens meer een browser te openen.

Een RSS feed kun je goed vergelijken met een nieuwsbrief. Het grote verschil is dat bezoekers geen e-mailadres hoeven op te geven om je RSS feed te lezen en dat hun RSS reader bepaalt hoe de informatie in de feed wordt weergegeven.

Waar staan de letters RSS eigenlijk voor? Op deze vraag zijn meerdere antwoorden mogelijk. Er zijn namelijk meerdere versies van RSS met verschillende definities voor deze afkorting. In totaal zijn er drie:

• Rich Site Summary
• Really Simple Syndication
• RDF Site Summary

I had the opportunity to attend a morning session class yesterday at our local chamber office on social media for your business.  Since I’m personally addicted to Facebook (yes I admit it) I thought I might be wasting my time.  But I’m so glad I attended the class taught by Stephanie Wells, Executive Director of Anderson County Tourism Council.  She explained the first step in good marketing is a great website.  After the website is posted then it is time to join the world in social media.  Not only is it a great place to showcase your business, most of the items I’m talking about today are free.

FACEBOOK:  Facebook popularity is growing daily.  There are over 300 million people on Facebook with the fastest demographic being age 35 and older.  Sixty-Five million users access Facebook on their mobile device and are twice as active as a regular user.  What can Facebook do for your business? First of all, it can give you one-on-one communication with consumers.  You can create a free fan/group page to gain exposure, measure demographics, create surveys and tests, offer rewards and increase sales.  Social networks can also generate more people to your website.

Success Story on Emerging Media with Gary Vaynerchuk:

TWITTER: Twitter is another fast-growing social network your business should be taking advantage of.  It is a free way to stay connected to customers/potential customers where you can get feedback, give advice on new products, etc.  You can even incorporate your Twitter feeds into your website.

MYSPACE:  Be sure and create a free page on MySpace to reach as many people as possible.  Remember to link the page back to your website.  Although MySpace has many users, it has a younger audience which may fit your businesses needs.

Businesses should also consider purchasing advertisement with the above social networks.  Although there is a fee involved, it really isn’t that expensive to get your word out.  Be on the cutting edge of digital marketing while reaching the audience according to your needs.  The great thing about social networks is their database of users’ demographics so you can advertise to a huge audience or you can narrow it down to your smallest targeted audience.  It is easy to post an advertisement.  Just follow the simple steps on each site for more information.

WORDPRESS:  Create a free blog for your customers weekly. This blog could be about new products or you could feature a product of the week or just give your customer tips or advice. Connect this blog to all other avenues such as Facebook and your Website to get the most exposure and save time.

YOUTUBE: Every business should have a free YouTube page.  You can list your videos that are ten minutes in time or less. This would be a great place to showcase your commercials and commercials from your vendors about the products you sell.  You can also link these videos into your social networks and webpage.

RSS FEED: Now you are asking how will you manage all these accounts?  Set up all your accounts where you can view them on one page using RSS feeds.  There are several sights to choose from, but I recommend using widgets which are applications on NetVibes.

You are probably past information overload by now, but I just touched the tip of the iceberg.  Do you have more recommendations about placing your business on social network or any success stories? I would love to hear your story or opinion!

Do you have a favorite author? I know I do and most of them have blogs or websites. To find them, I run their names or their book titles through a Google search. And voila there they are! Sometimes, though, they don’t have an RSS feed in place or, because they are extraordinarily busy, do not update their website on a regular basis. I might bookmark the site but forget to go back to it and then, much later, find out my favorite author was at the Barnes and Noble on Saturday! Without an update, I would not know they were there because I never received the information.

Aaarrgh!

All is not lost though! The date and time might very well pop up on the Internet and, if I have my own RSS feed in place, I can have it sent to my feed reader, also know as an aggregator, to keep me updated. To do that, create an OPML file and upload it to the feed reader.

Gina Trapani has a great tutorial on how to create one for Google Reader. Netvibes and Bloglines also allow you to create OPML files and upload them.

You can do the same thing about people and topics you want to follow. Create an OPML file and feed it into your RSS aggregator. Be proactive in your findability and personal learning.

What does it mean to be findable, though, on a professional level?

It isn’t just opening up a LinkedIn profile (although that’s a good start) but also being active in the learning community at large. You are an expert in your field and therefore should be findable. That means that if a peer reads a comment on a forum you belong to, he or she may want to read your blog. Or find an article you wrote last year. Or respond to something you wrote on a wiki or on Twitter.

By being visible, or findable, on the Internet you are participating in a learning community that spans the globe, age range, and digital divide.

Resources

• Open Directory > List of Web-based Feed Readers
• 8 Tools to Track Your Footprints on the Web
• Feed Your Ego with RSS

Today I have added some RSS feeds to my blog. The first of which is a feed from Vladstudio. Vladstudio is one of my favorite websites for desktop wallpapers and inspiration. I love his illustrative style and his use of color in most of his works. I also enjoy that he posts tutorials from time to time on how he created his digital works!

The second feed is from Design Milk, which is a collective of architecture, art, home furnishings, interior design…even style and fashion! I love to browse the many different images throughout this feed. Whether it is for inspiration or just to span some time. I hope that you enjoy what you find there also.

The third feed is from WebUrbanist. WebUrbanist is a blog collective showcasing alternative art, urban design and strange architecture. Please, enjoy the feeds as much as I do, and keep coming back for more!

Everyone will find this database of journalist ‘Twitterati’ useful.

Following journalists on Twitter is a great way to keep up with the news and I use Twitter as an RSS news feed. I’m so reliant on Twitter that I rarely go directly to news sites these days – as my news is fed to me in a stream of live updates.

So when I found this database of journalists I was pleasantly surprised. There have been attempts to capture the Twitter feeds of journalists, and indeed one organisation tried to sell my company a Gorkana style Twitter database for £10,000 annual fee. Luckily social media has the answer and this neat site looks like it will eventually become the definitive guide. http://www.mediaontwitter.com/

We’re glad you’re here! Use the tabs above to watch videos, read the latest updates or even send a donation.

Be sure to subscribe to the updates on Kenny by going to this link: http://kennwong.wordpress.com/feed/

Latest Posts

^ example of keenanevans rss feed

Internet: Useful Tips:
How To Use RSS Feeds

rss feed is basically a way to see if your favorite websites & blogs have new material. (which saves you time!)  Everyone should understand rss feed, because it is the way of the future…

I am currently using shrook as my rss reader -

Shrook – free RSS reader for Mac OS X

Shrook is a full-featured RSS reader that’s completely free – no ads, no spyware. And if you want to access your feeds on another Mac, iPhone or any web-connected PC, just get a shrook.com account for painless synchronization.

I thought it might be a good idea today to remind you about subscribing to Days of Serendipity. That’s right, you can have my blog posts delivered right to your computer along with content from your other favorite blogs all in one place!  I know that not everyone knows about RSS feeds – heck, I haven’t thought about them much until recently, but it saves the time of trekking from blog to blog and wondering who updated recently. All you have to do is click on the “Subscribe to Feed” link at the top left hand side of my page, add in a few extra clicks and, voila!, my self-proclaimed wonderfulness will be at your fingertips. Now, ignore my sarcasm and scoot!

Picture of the adorable tea caddy my husband bought me in Paris.

Wha?  That’s what I call being able to post a tweet that also gets written to your blog(s) which gets sucked into an RSS feed which populates a syndicated space on a website, gets indexed in the Google feed and possibly generates revenue.  Tweet tweet.

With an increasing number of holiday festivities being held in the home this year, we’re all looking for creative and cost effective ways to spruce up our table settings and create a look that will impress our guests. When it comes to setting your Thanksgiving table, options for the adventurous host are limitless. What are the hottest trends for you to bring to your table this year? Here are a few ideas that will take your Thanksgiving table from ordinary to extraordinary:
Color, Texture and Mix – Match:

In table linens and accessories, this year we are seeing rich, saturated colours. We are also seeing a lot of texture and the mixing and matching of patterns with solids. There are a lot of options out there to do something warm and inviting.

Color Trends

Warm tones have always been popular for Fall and that continues with some of the biggest trends in colour combinations this year. Some of those include:
- Deep Spice and Aubergine with muted Gold accents – Dark Chocolate with Blues and Gray accents – Olive Green, Aubergine and softer greens as accents – Dark Chocolate, Taupe and Natural

Tabletop Decor

- Use things that you already have in your home – pull out your 3 or 4 of your favourite vases of different heights. Use complementary colors of fresh flowers for a simple and stunning arrangement. Fill three or four vases and/or glass bowls with different colors and sizes of ornaments, fruits, leaves – anything with color and texture that will create visual excitement.

- Your guests are all unique – why not celebrate their individuality? Use different patterns and/or colors of napkin rings that match their unique personalities. Are they simple or sophisticated? Fun or formal? Unpredictable or conservative? Show them you care with a little customization to complement your table linens.

- Candles are always a dramatic and cost effective way to make a statement – use votives at each place setting with a name card and emphasize beautiful table linens for a classy and simple look. Or go more dramatic and cluster your favourite candle sticks of varying heights and looks as a centerpiece. Use colors that complement or match your dishes, glasses and table linens.

- Nothing brings subtle sophistication to your table like a well-selected runner. Use one the length of the table plus 12 inches to hang over the edge (usually a 90″ or longer) as the perfect centerpiece. If you are using a solid tablecloth or placemats, make sure to jazz it up with a festive pattern. If you have a patterned look already, use a vibrant solid runner that picks up on one of the colors in your runner.

- Use 2 napkins instead of one with a napkin ring. With a solid napkin inside, and a more decorative napkin on the outside.

When setting your table, just remember: do what feels right for the mood. A casual gathering calls for a relaxed setting. A formal meal should feel that way at the table. Either way, it doesn’t take much to elevate your in-home dining experience. Replacing an old tablecloth with something fresh an exciting, and adding a few simple table accessories can go a long way to impressing your guests. It’s that time of year when family gatherings abound and everyone spends countless hours congregating around the dinner table. With the hours spent preparing the perfect meal, make sure you don’t forget to finish it off with the perfect setting..

It was our turn to conduct the seminar teaching to 04. We were suppose to touch on a topic on social machines. So Matt, Sin kai, Ying Ying and I stayed back on thurs to sort things out for the last time and really get things done.

I personally am glad that I chose this topic. Social media has always been my interest and with these few weeks of school, I’ve grown to love it even more. Without this topic, I wouldn’t explore some of the sites that I’ve been wanting to know. I was very keen on doing either RSS feeds or social bookmarking sites. I chose the latter.

Let’s start off with continuous computing. It’s mainly about how the web works in social terms. We upload, we download and we share. It’s continuous as it is always updated and we constantly find these stuffs to download. Ying gathered them in a circle and started off with the class finding the various social media icons around the class.

Then it was about continuous partial attention. It’s something like multitasking, but has a different objective. We can do work and tweet at the same time. That’s continuous partial attention. Our main objective is to do more than 1 things to stay connected. We played ‘duck duck goose’ in class and I standby beside my laptop, typing the necessary stuffs on tweetdeck to see who actually are the ‘victims’ of CPA. Haha. It was fun, but a lil draggy though.

RSS feeds! I felt that there were more things that should be covered, but I guess its up to you to go and explore. RSS feeds are like your one-stop of information  where its updated constantly at your convenience. The only step you have to take is to get a RSS reader (eg. Google reader) and select the stuffs you would like them to update about. You can go to websites to seek and hunt. I could go on and on about how RSS works, but without the hands on experience, it wouldn’t work. 

Here is a video to show you how Google reader works.

Now.. Social bookmarking sites. It’s like bookmarking your favourite blogs,news, sites, information… But the social aspect comes in where you can SHARE what you’ve just bookmarked. Sites such as Delicious helps you to do the same thing. Also, you get to explore what other people bookmarked.

A great advantage is that you are able to drive traffic to your own site. What do I mean by that? You bookmark your own site, you click the ‘public’ sharing. People see it, they click on it and TADAH! one more unique hit on your site.

Also, you probably get more information than what you primary need. Let’s take ‘cheese’ for example. You want to know what are the different types of cheese. You search by tags in Delicious and click on cheese. What you get is nothing less than information. What is cheese? What are the different types of cheese? Where can you find the best blue cheese? How are cheese made? See?! An expansion on knowledge!

Damn. I could post a entire post about social bookmarking sites. But again, it’s for YOU to go and try. Try out delicious.com or digg.com or stumbleupon.com and others. Feel free to ask me if you need help whatsoever.

In conclusion, we are able to participate in providing information and data in the web. We never knew we had the ‘power’ to do that. But when the web drives to a more social medium, we as normal users of the web are able to do so. It has broken down the communication barrier that the web once oppose. We now connect with one another through different means, we stand by each other through different words, we gain more as we stumble upon the different sites much more to our convenience.

Some of the recommended websites for you to check out!

Google reader : www.google.com/reader

Del.li.cious: www.delicious.com

Stumble Upon: www.stumbleupon.com

Digg: www.digg.com

This would mark the start of the 4th week. It’s counting down real fast.

There is a lot of buzz around Twitter these days, but if you aren’t looking to find out what your friend had for coffee this morning or what’s happening in the latest celebrity gossip, does Twitter have relevance for business? The answer is yes. But it takes a little digging to understand when and how to use this exploding social phenomenon as a tool to build your business.

Marketing has traditionally relied on push methods. Content was sent via direct mail, television advertisements, e-mail, and more. Regardless of the channel, the strategy was to push information in front of consumers, whether they were looking for the information or not.

MousePaper Calendar Mouse Pad - email johnny.ray@wilsonawards.com

Today, thanks to the Internet, marketing has become far more reliant on pull methods. Whether it’s news, politics, business or entertainment, people can pull the content they want, when they want it, so they are receiving only information of relevance to them when they are looking for it. For marketers, the goal is to get people to pull information on their products and services or, if the person is searching by topic, to make sure that their company’s products and services get in front of the user’s eyes. (Hence the importance of search engine optimization—SEO.)

One of the places Internet users are pulling information from is social networking sites. While many in the business community are still getting their minds around whether or not it is relevant to their business, social networking itself is exploding—and its influence over branding and word-of-mouth is growing.

In part, this growth in influence is being driven by skepticism about traditional media. Instead of relying on television, radio and publications, people are turning to word-of-mouth sources such as Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Digg and Facebook. Consumers may not see these sources as more objective, but they may see them as more “pure” in that they are the “real deal” and less influenced by corporate speak. They also provide information that is more diverse.

Make Your Own Easy Button - Press for Sound johnny.ray@wilsonawards.com to order

Twitter Basics

How are consumers getting information from these sources? They are looking at comments, blogs, trackbacks, feedback and other forms of user interaction. If you’ve read the reviews of a book on Amazon before buying, looked at the seller ratings on eBay, or clicked through a link on a blog post, you know just how powerful these peer influences can be. One of the most powerful these days is Twitter.

So what is Twitter? At its inception, Twitter started out as a content management system. Over time, it morphed into a mass messaging system of the most global and colossal kind. The premise of Twitter is simply to ask millions of people, “What are you doing?” then allow them to answer in 140 characters or less. The result is a free social messaging utility that allows millions of people to stay connected simultaneously. The power for marketing is nearly unlimited—if you can harness it.

Once you open a Twitter account, you can “follow” people that you choose. Once you log into your Twitter account, updates from everyone you are following are displayed to you in a list (like a giant RSS feed) in real time. You can then scan all of the “tweets,” as they are called, to stay updated with what people are posting and what they feel is important at that time. People can choose to follow you, as well. When they do, your tweets are displayed in their Twitter account, along with all of the tweets of everyone else that person is following.

Tweets can be about anything, but from a marketing perspective, you want to keep it about relevant business issues. You might tweet about the status update on a project, an announcement about a new blog post, or a link to a resource you think your followers might be interested in.

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For example, interlinkONE offers multichannel marketing software. As president of interlinkONE, I tweet about marketing information that I think clients, prospects, and others in the industry might find valuable.

You can also do what is called “re-tweeting,” which is the Twitter equivalent of forwarding an e-mail message. “RT” stands for “re-tweet,” and the name after the @ reflects the original source of the information. This is hyperlinked so that people can click through to the original source if they find the information of value.

People can also send you personal messages. Unlike e-mail messages, these messages are posted publicly, like posting a comment on a blog. By posting a comment, this not only gives you an avenue for communicating with the person who has the account, but indirectly with others following them, too. Like posting a comment on a blog, which gives you visibility to everyone who reads that post, commenting on a tweet puts your comment in front of every person following them.

Using Twitter for Marketing

How can you use these capabilities to market yourself? Whether you are tweeting, re-tweeting or commenting on someone else’s tweet, you are creating visibility and marketing yourself and your company. From a marketing standpoint, the goal is to begin to attract followers so that you can post information and position yourself as a thought leader to your followers and, by extension, your followers’ larger social network circles. This leads to greater industry recognition, brand building and hopefully, sales.

Although some Twitter members use the platform to sell, sell, sell, I prefer to stay away from this approach. Positioning yourself in terms of thought leadership can be more powerful—and longer term. This means posting things that are of value to the people that follow you. Your posts may be related to trends in the marketplace, links to valuable e-books or white papers, providing marketing ideas, and so forth. It will also help you discover other sites and communities where you can share your knowledge.

Of course, you can post what’s going on in your company, as well. This might include news updates, events and new product announcements. You can also post fun things. Did someone have a baby? Is your company a-buzz with the NCAA tournament pool? It allows you to show the human side of your business. You don’t want to overdo it, but keep in mind that people do business with people, not with companies, so personalizing your business can have long-term benefits for customer loyalty.

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Let’s look at some specific steps to using Twitter for marketing.

• Lead Prospecting

Find people who are in your target audience and follow them. One way to do this is to search on specific names in the “Search People” box at the top of the page. Another way is to use the search box at the bottom of the page and search on terms that are relevant to your business. The search results will return the names of Twitter members that include these terms in their profiles.

Once you have leads, “follow” them. This allows you to read these members’ profiles, read their posts and do intelligence gathering before you make contact. Even if you do not contact this person directly, they will get a notification from Twitter that you are following them. This allows them to visit your profile to find out about you.

You can also do searches based on geography. For example, you might find all of the people that mentioned the word “print” in their profile and who live in a 15-mile radius of your ZIP code.

• Join Conversations

Just like networking at a business event, you are the most successful with social media when you are actively involved. On Twitter, this includes re-tweeting posts or making replies to other people’s posts.

Replying to another person’s post serves much the same function as posting a reply to a blog post, except that your reply becomes visible to all of the people following that member. Not only does this put your post directly in front of this extended network (giving them an opportunity to re-tweet your post), but your Twitter ID is hot-linked to your reply so they can click through and find out more information about you. To reply, just add the “@” symbol followed by their Twitter name. For example, @JohnFoleyJr, or @PrintingNews. You are the most successful with social media when you are actively involved.

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• Competitive Intelligence

We’ve already talked about using the search functions in Twitter to locate prospects, but you can use them to do competitive reconnaissance, too. Put your competitors’ names (or even your own company’s name) into the search box and seeing what comes up. It’s like having your ear to the wall to see what people are saying.

• Build your network

Twitter is nearly useless unless people are following you, so the first thing you need to do is build your network. Use the advance search tools to find Twitter members who are relevant to you, who you would want to have following you and who might have interest in your product or service.

Twitter also allows you to access the followers of others, such as your clients, your peers and your competitors. If I find the CMO of a company, for example, I check their followers and click on them. They are directors of marketing or other senior executives, I’ll follow them to find out more about them, and hope that they check out my profile and follow me.

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• Engage with the network you have built

In order to get traction on Twitter, you have to use Twitter. You have to get out there, get the conversations going, post information and make yourself visible. You want to be focused in your target audience and post relevant information. If that person isn’t you, it might be someone else at your company to whom you designate the job.

When possible, let others tell your story. Word-of-mouth marketing has exploded. If you have a great company, product or service, people will spread that message for you. That starts by tweeting relevant information. If you become a good conduit for content, people will return the favor (hopefully) by re-tweeting the information. That’s one reason I find content that is relevant to my followers, even if I didn’t write it.

• Be consistent

There are companies that put in hours a day building their brands on social networking sites like Twitter. Some even hire full-time people for this function. Not everyone can do this, but the more time you spend, the more benefit you get. We put in one-half hour a day on Twitter—it is a consistent brand building effort. If you really want to have a strong social networking presence, you have to work it. Be consistent.

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• Track and analyze

Yes, the activity generated by Twitter can be tracked. One way we do this is integrating the conversation into a CRM tool. We follow clients and prospects, and put their Twitter activity directly into our records. In other words, we track their Twitter activity the same way we track anything else, like phone contacts or files we’ve sent. In our system, we capture the current five tweets. Good salesmanship relies on knowing about your prospects. That’s a content management issue, and Twitter can be great content! We also track the hits to our Web site that come through Twitter. When we post an article or retweet, we pass that through a Tiny URL that is tracked in our system. We tie together landing pages that people don’t know they’ve been passed through. It’s a highly effective tracking mechanism. We use the same method for links from other social networks, such as LinkedIn.

Not only can we tell where people are coming from, but we can tell where they are going. We know what they are reading on the site. We can also track back from Twitter activity to see how we are doing from our search engine optimization efforts. For example, we might see that people come from Google search to Twitter to the interlinkONE Web site. This tells us that Twitter is having an impact on our Web traffic.

Benefits of Twitter

There has been a lot of negative buzz about social networking sites as being a waste of time. Far from it. From a marketing perspective, Twitter is highly effective, when used correctly, for doing the following things:

1. Finding prospects;
2. Talking to and educating your customers and prospects;
3. Providing a platform for establishing yourself as a thought leader;
4. Enabling you to establish your brand as a useful resource.

At the same time, do not lose sight on the fact that Twitter or any social media is simply one part of a successful marketing mix. As with any channel, it doesn’t act alone. Traditional marketing media must still be used to reach everyone in your audience.

John Foley is the president and CEO of interlinkONE Inc., a company which produces a software solution that manages marketing needs.

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