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




      Sharing




   Comments
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/joshcan
  help/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
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www.kommunikationsforum.dk/peter-svarre