baku social media seminar - day 3

Baku social media seminar – day 3

June 28, 2012

Agenda for today: 10 – 11 Social media tools

11 – 11.15 Coffee break

11. 15 -13 Social media tools continued

13 – 14 Lunch

14 – 15 Play with social media tools

15 – 15.15 Coffee break

15.15 – 16 Play with social media tools continued

16 – 17 Your experiences

17 - Evaluation and Podio update

1 Facebook

Everybody is there, but should you be there?

Personal profile

• If you are a one man organization and company you can use your personal profile for branding and spreading messages

• You can also use it to gather information

• You should be willing to mix private and work

• There is an approximate max of 5000 friends

• Often becomes a problem for politicians and celebrities

Facbook page

• Facebook’s product for companies and organizations

• Basically a free webpage where you can interact with your customers and followers

• You have some standard functionality • But you can basically add anything as you like • People can ”like” your page, and this is

important, but NOT the only goal • The most important goal is to create interaction

and conversation • You must offer something interesting AND you

most encourage people to participate • Pages enables you to get a lot of statistics

IMS: Not very interactive!

Refugees united: Giving people something interesting

Amnesty International: Getting people involved in their communication

Facebook groups

• Use it for non-commercial purposes

• Good when you want to have a close group of people with a lot of discussion and interaction

• Unlike Pages people will see all of your updates in groups

• Be careful not to tire people with too many postings!

Facebook Places

• Relevant if you have a ”place” where you would like people to ”check in”

Facebook advertising

• Regular banner ads in the right side of the page

• ”Hidden” links in the news feed

2 Twitter

Openness is everything!

We have already looked at Twitter as a listening tool, but how do you use Twitter as a communication tool?

Twitter strategy

• Make sure that your target group is using Twitter

• Use Twitter to become part of the conversation on your topics

• Use Twitter to meet the right people

• Post interesting stuff on Twitter – Your own stuff

– But also other people’s stuff – become a hub

• Follow people – they will be more likely to follow you

• Tweet often – at least a couple of times per day

Twitter tactics

• Understand the language: – # tags

– @ tags

– Retweets

• Use hash tags for all of your subjects – ie. a conference

• Involve people in conversations with @ tags

• Retweet other people’s tweets

Twitter is actually extremely simple, but it takes a long time to get used to the language and the culture

Stick around and don’t give up!

3 Google+

The new kid on the block

What’s cool about Google+?

• In many ways better design than Facebook!

• You can control friends and business connections in circles

• You can create business pages

• It will most likely improve your Google rankings

• You can create video conferences with hang-outs

• It is closely integrated with Google’s other products: Gmail, Maps, Docs, Android, etc.

What’s not so cool?

Nobody is using it!

(but this may change)

4 Google Drive (previously Docs)

The tools for everything

Google Drive

• Share documents easily

• Work on the same documents

• Create surveys

Survey example

Collaboration

5 Blogging

The original - but still going strong - social medium

Blogging tools

• WordPress.com – The best tool! – You need to have some technical skills – Thousands of plug-ins – Thousands of developers – You can build entire websites on WP (IMS)

• Blogger.com – Very easy to get started – No technical skills needed – Less flexible than Wordpress – Connects with Google+

• Tumblr.com – Very popular platform in the US – Very easy to get started – Typically a younger and less techie crowd but everybody uses it

• Checkthis.com – A one page blog – Use it if you want to publish something very quickly and link to it from

Twitter

What is a blog?

• There is no definite definition… but: • A collection of posts ordered chronologically

with the most recent on top • Usually enables people to comment • Usually links to other content – many blogs

comment on each other • They often use tags • Authors are often non-professional writers

(they are not paid to blog) • People blog about subjects they are

passionate about • Blogs tend to link to similar blogs to create

a network around their subject (blog-roll)

RSS reed

Previous posts

Recent comments

Blog roll

Comments

Sharing

Blogging strategy

A blog can be a simple repository for information, but if you REALLY want to create a blog then you should do the following:

What to write?

•Start with what interests YOU and what you are passionate about

•…but think about your target group

•Show authority – let people know that you know what you are talking about

•Stay on the topic – so people know what you are writing about

• Decide whether you want to be a curator, an author or both.

• Get inspired by finding other sources/bloggers that write about your subject area (use RSS readers)

• Encourage colleagues and connections to provide you with blogging ideas – reward them by naming them

Links

•If you are inspired by Internet content, make sure to provide links.

•Use links as often as possible – it will make you a hub for your readers.

•Some blog posts can actually just be a simple link and a couple of lines of text.

Citations

•Steal, link, copy other peoples’ content but remember to mention the source – and if possible always with a link to the source.

Comments

•Always reply to comments if a reply is expected (unless the comment is completely off topic or spam)

•Never get agitated about negative feed-back. Start out with being polite and simply ignore people who are deliberately obnoxious.

•Remember that people seldom get nasty when they feel that they are talking to a real human being (unless you are a politician or celebrity)

How much to write

•There are no rules about length of blog posts

•People read long as well as short blog posts

•Use short blog posts and many links if you wish to be a hub of information – a person who sifts through information and finds the relevant stuff.

•Use longer blog posts if you want to:

–Talk about technical issues

–Start a debate about a substantial topic

–Publish your own thoughts or findings on a substantial topic

Keywords

•Create a list of keywords that are related to your blogging subject

–Think of which subjects you will typically be writing about

•Use the keywords to tag your blog posts

•Use the keywords in your headlines

•Use the keywords as much as possible in the body copy

Embedding content

•You can make your blog more interesting and dynamic by embedding content such as pictures, videos or interactive applications

•Look for the embed codes which more and more often accompany dynamic content.

•Think about copyright issues!

6 LinkedIn

The professional social network

LinkedIn

• First of all well suited for recruiting

• Build your CV for your own career

• Build a company profile to attract employees

• Use it to get in contact with people

• Use it to locate relevant people

• Follow groups on relevant topics

7 Slideshare

Share your presentations

Slideshare

• Whenever you present something put it on Slideshare – be transparent!

• Follow people on Slideshare and see their presentations

• Link to your Slideshare presentations

• Embed your slideshare presentations on your website or blog

8 Video sharing

Video is easy and travels fast in the social media

The two most important tools

• YouTube

• Vimeo

Why video sharing?

• Video ads life and action to your blog or website

• You can use video to make complicated stuff more simple

• Video is easy and cheap to produce

• Most internet users have sufficient bandwitdth

How should I use it?

• Create a Youtube or Vimeo channel and put all of your videos here

• Embed videos on your website or blog • Share your videos in social media • Don’t be afraid to share long videos, but most of your

videos should be less than five minutes • Bring the video camera everywhere it is relevant • Remember that sound quality is more important than

image quality • Use video to:

– Document conferences – Explain what you do – Present your staff – Anything you feel is relevant and interesting

9 Images

A neglected side of social media – no more…

The most important tool

• Flickr.com – the classic image sharing tool

• Pinterest.com – image sharing on steroids

• Instagram – Images gone mobile

When is image sharing relevant?

• If you are working with images or photographs

• If you are working with a very visual subject

How to use image sharing

• User Flickr.com as a repository for your images. • Use your Flickr images in your blog or website. • Use Flickr.com as a cheap photo agency • Use Pinterest if you really want people to share

your pictures – primarily relevant if you have really beautiful pictures.

• Pinterest is a little like a blog: you must create a ”tone of voice”. http://pinterest.com/nosistem/middle-east-poster/

• Use instagram if you snap quick pictures with you mobile phone and want to share them on social networks

10 Social collaboration

The social organization

The most important tools

• Basecamp.com

• Podio

• Yammer

• Dropbox

• Google Apps

When to use social collaboration

• In smaller organizations that do not have an intranet

• If you cooperate with many different partners

• If you want your employees or partners to contribute with content

• If you want a safer place to back-up documents

• If you want to collaborate within documents

How to use the tools

• Basecamp: Very simple tool – mostly to keep track of documents and control processes.

• Podio: Almost and alternative to an intranet. Find thousands of apps or build your own apps for your specific purposes. Podio has a non-profit policy.

• Yammer: Similar to Podio – a social alternative to the intranet.

• Dropbox. Excellent for sharing and backing up documents

• Google Apps. Also shares documents but offers a long range of other services (Google docs, email, Google+, etc.)

11 Customized social networks

When you need your own Facebook

Relevant tools

• Ning.com – the market leader. Not free anymore but fairly cheap

• Mixxt – the free alternative to Ning

• More: http://socialmediatoday.com/joshcanhelp/318097/10-tools-create-your-own-social-media-network

Why build your own?

• When you need to create a community of people with common interests and STRONG dedication (cancerforum.dk).

• Sometimes you need people in a private setting.

• When Facebook or Twitter lack functionality.

• If you want to own your own data and content.

Ning community

Cancerforum.dk

12 Delicious.com

Social link sharing

Why should you share links

• For your own sake. On delicious they are easy to find and do not disappear if your computer does.

• Share links within the organization

• Share links with partners

• Share links with the rest of the world

• Share your links on your website or blog with an RSS feed

Group or individual work

• Select a tool that you do not know but which is relevant for you or your organization

• Try the tool: – Create profiles – Create content – Understand how it works

• Take notes and be ready to present your learnings to the group – What was good about the tool – What was bad – Will you use this tool in the future? For what?

Group discussion

Evaluation and update on Podio

peter@petersvarre.dk www.linkedin.com/in/petersvarre

www.facebook.com/petersvarre www.twitter.com/petersvarre

www.slideshare.net/petersvarre www.youtube.com/petersvarre

www.foursquare.com/user/petersvarre www.kommunikationsforum.dk/peter-svarre