There was a lot of talk for a while about the diminishing interpersonal interaction due to new technology. People walk down the street glued to their phones, plugged in to ipods or use the ATM instead of interacting with a bank teller; but doesn’t the interaction that occurs on these new gadgets still count? Interpersonal interaction has just moved from street addresses to a URL addresses.

It’s not uncommon to fear change and especially when you don’t know how to function all these new gizmos widgets and gadgets. Social media empowers people who may be skeptical or have questions and concerns. It allows you to engage with networks and communities that share your views and ideas or that can contribute to your company. Businesses that are not familiar with how to function Facebook or Twitter, or even which medium to choose should not let that be a barrier to adapting with the times. There is enough proof now that social media works and that you need to join the band wagon.

There was an interesting article today about schools integrating Google Apps into the curriculum to help educate and expose kids to multi-media so that they can evolve with the times. It’s never too late. If you don’t know where to start, or what social sites apply to your business that is when you seek out help. There are social media experts at NetScope, Inc. that can both educate you on how to do it yourself for your business and or can provide you with external services. Don’t shun the new, embrace it!

With the internet and new technology we have an abundance of resources that leave no excuse not to go green. These 5 things come to the top of my mind:

* E-books:

o For every 200 million e-books downloaded, three million and two hundred thousand (3,200,000) trees are saved

* iPhone:

o Applications: iRecycle, Measure your Carbon footprint, join online communities

o Paperless entertainment

o Transportable and easily accessible information

* Social Media:

o Twitter: Creates buzz and attains reach and impressions in mass quantities drives traffic to information source.

o Facebook: Allows us to reach billions and gain support in saving our earth through different networks and communities.

o LinkedIn: A professional niche outlet to reach and converse with people of stature with power to make change.

* Blogs:

o An easy access resource that empowers personal voice and helps people establish credibility

o A way to be heard and discovered by influential people

o A convenient medium to express yourself

* Youtube:

o Informative and/or entertaining videos that can be viewed and then shared (Sharing is Caring)

 

What do you think are the best E-ventions that contribute to save our planet?

Social Media Marketing has become a central topic to "talk about". This is the problem; we need less talk and more action. This article below that I read on www.socialmediatoday.com talks about how our hunger for information is keeping us from getting the real nutrients we could gain from actually applying what we learn…

Minimalist Marketing: Keep Your Learning Diet Simple
by Todd Schnick on 04/11/2010

Do any of the following scenarios apply to you?

1. You spend too much time on social media apps like Twitter and Facebook, telling yourself that you are “learning” from your community. When in fact, you are just horsing around, or broadcasting one-way…

2. Under the guise of research and learning, you read too many books, most of which don’t really apply to you, or what you do.

3. Or more likely, you read a lot of books with the intention of learning, and do not implement ANYTHING that you learn.

4. You subscribe to 250 blogs in your RSS reader, telling yourself that you need to know what others in your space are doing. And you spend hours sifting through clutter and don’t spend enough time actually reading, or learning.
Yeah. Me too.

DISCLOSURE: Let me make this clear. I am NOT suggesting that you stop reading – and learning – to improve your craft. I am suggesting you make more careful choices about what you read – and then take steps to implement things you learn – things that will have measurable impact.

In fact, you are a fool NOT to read more. Learn more. And apply what you learn. I just think too many of us do not practice good habits when we seek to learn (In fact, I could make the point that practicing minimalist marketing should free up valuable time to learn more…).
So, here are a few of my ideas on ways to simplify your learning, and get more out of the time investment:

Continue reading

Facebook - I really like the Facebook app. It's not perfect but it gets better and better with every upgrade. The app lets you chat with an interface similar to the iPhone's MMS messaging interface, you can view photos and status updates, and you can even sync your contacts photos in your iPhone contact book with the Facebook profile photos. Skype - Skype is a great way to voice chat with other people. For example, if you need to make a business call long distance and you know that your cellular company is going to charge you an arm and a leg, you can talk to the other person for free if you both have a Skype account. And once you're talking, you won't be able to tell the difference between an online call and a cellular call. MySpace Mobile - Since the dawn of Facebook, MySpace is definitely not as popular as it used to be. That said, it still has a decetly-sized following, ranking 5th on the top free paid apps under the Social Networking section of the App Store. As for the quality of the app, it takes a long time to load and isn't very user friendly. AIM - This is a really neat app. I like it beause I like to stay logged onto AIM on my home computer, but it's very inconvenient since I can't be there to get all of my messages when they come in. With the AIM app, you can select to stay logged in for 24 hours. Additionally, you can also have push notifications sent to your phone, so if someone IMs you, you'll be notified. Twitterific - This is the application that I use to manage all of my tweets. I like it a lot. You can add multiple accounts, you can do searches of nearly anything, you can @ reply, retweet, and send messages to other accounts. Another really neat thing about this app is that you can send emails with tweets in the body of the email. Extraordinary application.

Facebook - I really like the Facebook app. It's not perfect but it gets better and better with every upgrade. The app lets you chat with an interface similar to the iPhone's MMS messaging interface, you can view photos and status updates, and you can even sync your contacts photos in your iPhone contact book with the Facebook profile photos. Skype - Skype is a great way to voice chat with other people. For example, if you need to make a business call long distance and you know that your cellular company is going to charge you an arm and a leg, you can talk to the other person for free if you both have a Skype account. And once you're talking, you won't be able to tell the difference between an online call and a cellular call. MySpace Mobile - Since the dawn of Facebook, MySpace is definitely not as popular as it used to be. That said, it still has a decetly-sized following, ranking 5th on the top free paid apps under the Social Networking section of the App Store. As for the quality of the app, it takes a long time to load and isn't very user friendly. AIM - This is a really neat app. I like it beause I like to stay logged onto AIM on my home computer, but it's very inconvenient since I can't be there to get all of my messages when they come in. With the AIM app, you can select to stay logged in for 24 hours. Additionally, you can also have push notifications sent to your phone, so if someone IMs you, you'll be notified. Twitterific - This is the application that I use to manage all of my tweets. I like it a lot. You can add multiple accounts, you can do searches of nearly anything, you can @ reply, retweet, and send messages to other accounts. Another really neat thing about this app is that you can send emails with tweets in the body of the email. Extraordinary application.

The main aspect of SEO is increasing the rankings that a website has. In lamence terms, this means manipulating your content so that your website appears at the top of the results.

That said, let me share a short anecdote. Many years ago, when I was just learning how to code websites, I didn't really understand the concept of validating your XHTML. See, I was one of those people who learned how to code a website using tutorials on the internet, and so I wasn't instilled with the concept to using valid code. Tiny mistakes in my coding would render my code not valid. All I had to do was fix little mistakes, and everything would be okay.

The same can be said of search engine rankings. Visualize valid XHTML as synonymous to your website appearing at the top of a query's results. One little error in SEO techniques will render your code invalid. Like fixing invalid code, changing something to increase your search engine ranking is usually small, so let me offer to techniques:

First, include a descriptive title bar. When you open a webpage, whether you know it or not, a title bar displays on your screen. If you are using Mozilla Firefox, then on the upper-left hand corner of your screen, you will see a small image of a fox, followed by the title of your website, followed by "- Mozilla Firefox." This is the title bar, and it is one of the most overlooked ways to increase your ranking. I can't tell you how many times I've been to a website whose title bar reads "Homepage." First, the word homepage includes no information for a search engine. A more descriptive title would be "Corporate Search Optimization Blog: Howto increase search engine rankings." Now, when a spider is crawling your website, it will see something much more descriptive.

Second, determine your link popularity. Link popularity is the number of quality sites that link your your site. Nowadays a supermajority of search engines use some form of link popularity in their ranking algorithms. There are many free, online tools that you can use to determine your link popularity. Submit Express offers one (link to: http://www.submitexpress.com/linkpop/).

While most people would overlook these two simple things, they're a lot like adding alternate text to an image when W3C renders your XHTML invalid. It's the little things that count, and these will definitely set you in the right direction.

I have owned an iPhone for almost a year now, and I, like the rest of the community have been subject to the "there's an app for that" joke. The joke follows as such: whatever jam you're in, there's an app that will get you out of it. If you need to defuse a bomb and rescue the mayor’s niece with mere seconds to spare, there’s an app for that. If you wanted to finally figure out if Shcrodinger’s cat is dead, there’s an app for that. We all know that there's an app for just about everything. Just the other day, I read the following article about a real-world instance where the iPhone has come in handy: Alone in the darkness beneath layers of rubble, Dan Woolley felt blood streaming from his head and leg. Then he remembered -- he had an app for that. Woolley, an aid worker, husband, and father of two boys, followed instructions on his cell phone to survive the January 12 earthquake in Haiti. "I had an app that had pre-downloaded all this information about treating wounds. So I looked up excessive bleeding and I looked up compound fracture," Woolley told CNN. Read the rest of the article. http://alturl.com/ym5e The aforementioned man had been trapped in the ruins of a hotel in Port-au-Prince as a result of the earthquake the struck Haiti, and remembered he had an app that would help him survive. He looked up what to do on his app, including how to treat for shock, and was pulled from the rubble more than 60 hours later. While some perceive the "there's an app for that" saying as merely a joke, there really is a wide-variety of apps for everything, and chances are that one of them can save your life.

Whenever something horrible happens, I cannot seem to have to right words to express what I'm feeling. Something similar happened when the earthquake struck Haiti. I knew inside what I was feeling, how I felt for the Haitians whose lives will never be quite the same and the Haitians who lost their lives, but I don't have the ability to articulate how tragic and how unfair it is. While I can't comment on how terrible things are in Haiti, I can comment on how terrific a role social media is playing in what's happening there right now. This past week, I came across an article that covered just that (see: http://thecustomercollective.com/TCC/49144?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=The+Customer+Collective+%28all+posts%29). Here, I'd like to expand on each of the points Rhodes covers in his article. Rhodes covers three aspects of social media's involvement: how it provides a voice for the victims, how it informs society of rescue attempts, and how it provides eyewitness content. I would recommend reading the full article to get a good sense of social media's involvement. What I want to cover here is how each social media outlet is playing a role. First, Twitter. Search "#haiti" on Twitter and you'll find a plethora of tweets. Some provide links to news articles covering the earthquake, some are personal stories from Haitians themselves directly after the earthquake struck, and still others are pleas for monetary help. A real estate agent announces that he's donating a portion of his commission to the Haitian relief services each year. A Haitian in the midst of the earthquake comments that people are singing when the night begins. And a statistician posts some horrifying, well, statistics. Second, Flickr. Flickr and other photo sharing sites like Photobucket, have done a fantastic part of notifying outsiders how tragic it really is. A picture of a mother and her sons standing in front of their demolished home. And then a picture of three young children, who probably lost their parents. There are grotesque images and some non-grotesque images, but all propose the same thing - things in Haiti are bad, and the photographs have inspired relief services. Third, YouTube. Pictures can only do so much. Since the earthquake, YouTube has been filled with videos that provide caught-on-tape images of the aftermath. The videos only add to the sympathy and compassion felt by non-Haitians. Fourth, Facebook. With the dawn of the option to create groups on Facebook, hundreds of groups have been created specifically for outreach purposes. Most link to websites like World Vision or the Red Cross where you can donate money toward relief services. Some are prayer groups, others simply support groups. Some are continually posting updates from news sources. Either way, Facebook plays a big part. As you can see, along with the mainstreem media, social media is playing a big part in spreading awareness of the earthquake in Haiti.

There are many ways that one can advertise his site through social media and marketing. You could create a Facebook fanpage, start a Twitter account, post videos to Youtube, and do essential a slew of other things to boost web traffic via social media and marketing.

Or, you could hire someone to do it for you.

Meet Jason Sadler. Jason makes his living by wearing t-shirts (link to: http://iwearyourshirt.com). Jason wears a different company's t-shirt every day of the year, taking pictures of himself, writing blogs, making videos, and then updating his Twitter and Facebook accounts. For this service, he charges the face value of the day. For example, if he wears your t-shirt on January 1, then you pay him $1. If he wears your t-shirt on January 8, then you pay him $8. If he wears your shirt on December 31, then you pay him $365. This may not seem like a lot, but over the course of the year, he makes $66,795.

The story of Jason Sadler brings two points to mind.

First, it brings the point of finances to mind. In my school district, to make as much money as Jason, teachers would have to have both a bachelor's degree and eight years of teaching experience. Does Jason have to have a bachelor's degree? No. Did Jason need to wait eight years to earn this much money? No. Granted, he has a degree in social marketing. But the point is that he didn't have to. I think that this story really gets to the heart of why the Internet is one of a kind. With the Internet, anyone can make money. All you need to do is have a great idea. The Internet is the place that hails the progression of ideas. And anyone who has one can get a grounding in the world. 

Second, it brings to mind advertising. You don't have to have a knowledge of social marketing to advertise your website. It is without a doubt the biggest and most accessable way to advertise your website, but you don't have to know anything about social media and marketing to use it when you can hire Jason Sadler to! Don't have a t-shirt for your company? For $25 additional dollars, Jason will make a shirt for your company too.

It's a win-win, in my opinion. It works out for Jason, and it also works out for you, the company.

In early centuries, news of virtually everything was communicated by word of mouth. In our modern age, the phrase “word of mouth” can refer to anything communicated by way of text messaging, email, media, et cetera. Because humans have a natural tendency to talk about things that interest them – from gossip to news to websites – a real power can be found in things communicated by word of mouth.

 

There are several ways that webmasters can promote visitors to talk about their websites:

 

• Viral marketing – by creating an unforgettable viral market strategy, people will have no choice but to talk about a particular website.
• Commercials – like a viral market, commercials will get people talking about your website or product (e.g. Super Bowl commercials).
• Social media – through social media, a company can amass a plethora of fans that have the option of inviting other people to become fans.

 

Word of mouth has been the world’s oldest form of transferring information about nearly everything, and it still remains (though with a slight change of definition) a powerful way of informing people about a website or product.