Me Media

Social media tips for non-techies

11:02 AM

The Media is Hiring...on Twitter

To anyone who has migrated over here from the ASBPE post that I recently wrote: Welcome! Be sure to click on the Get Started tab to take a look at my "best of" posts. 


The day after the post went live, I discovered and started following (@themediaishirin), which posts a range of media jobs. 

This is a great use of Twitter especially if you're in the media industry. 

Make sure you follow them if only to see a great use of Twitter (and no, I'm not on the payroll)


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2:11 PM

What Social Media Tools Do You Want To Learn?

As I write this blog post, I'm up to my eyeballs in social media tools. I have a business partner with whom I'm launching a website that will take over where this blog leaves off.

As we finish our research and move into the development phase, we're wondering what social media tools we should focus on. Let us know by leaving a comment below.

What social media tools do you want to learn more about:

  • Blogs: Blogger, Movable Type, Vox, Wordpress, TypePad, etc
  • Media: Flickr, Photobucket, Live.Yahoo, Ustream, YouTube, Vimeo, Mogulus
  • MicroBlogging: Twitter, Tumblr
  • RSS Reader: Google Reader, NetNewsWire, Bloglines, FeedReader
  • Social Bookmarking: Del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia, Digg, Stumbleupon
  • Social Networks: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, CollectiveX, Ning
  • Social Network Aggregator: FriendFeed, YouMeo
  • Social News: Digg, Stumbleupon, Mixx, Reddit
  • Wikis: Wikipedia, PB Wiki, Wetpaint
  • Podcasts and Webcasts
  • Online role-playing games (Second Life, Webkinz, Club Penguin)
  • Building a website, buying a domain, etc.

Are there any other tools or how-to's we've left off?

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6:00 AM

A Review of "YouTube: An Insider's Guide to Climbing the Charts"

If I would have followed the instructions in YouTube: An Insider's Guide to Climbing the Charts  (O'Reilly Media, 2008) I would have set up my video equipment and recorded a review for you instead of writing. 


I don't feel quite talented enough yet to produce the next You-cumentry so a written review will have to do. 

First off, and in the name of full disclosure, I had some interest in reading this book because one of my clients would like to start broadcasting on YouTube. From a personal and blog perspective, I was interested in learning how to post videos and build a community within the site. 

When I started reading the book, I had two thoughts: (1) this is way more instructive than I thought it would be and (2) my aspiring film-maker daughter would love this book. 

Written by YouTube experts, Alan Lastufka and Michael W. Dean, the book went beyond my expectations. Instead of a step-by-step manual for how to extract a video from your iPhone and upload it to the user-generated broadcasting site, YouTube: An Insider's Guide to Climbing the Charts starts you off believing you could possibly be YouTube's answer Steven Spielberg (okay, that's a bit of overkill). 

What this book delivered, that I wasn't expecting, was a comprehensive manual for creating good video -- from content conception and creation to collaboration and community. 

Aside from a few digs on social networking -- which I found odd given YouTube is considered a form of social networking -- this book was a great read, especially if you have any interest in learning how to create and post video content. 

My grade? A

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6:45 PM

An Interview with Ryan Paugh, Community Manager

If you've set up your social networking site or LinkedIn Group and just can't get enough, you may want to consider a role as an online community manager. 


Online Community Managers, or organizers, are considered one of the "hot jobs" of the era. A Google search of the term "online community manager" will return 45,000,000 results including this article from Seth Godin's blog, Jobs of the future, #1: Online Community Organizer and this article from ReadWriteWeb, Community Manager Jobs are Hot. 

Recently, Ryan Paugh, Community Manager for BrazenCareerist.com and author of his own blog RyanPaugh.com/blog took some time to talk with me about his role as Community Manager for Gen-Y focused Networking Site. 

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What does it mean to be a community manager for BrazeenCareerist.com?
Community Manager is a difficult role to describe.  Basically, I am the go-to guy for members of our online community.  I identify their goals and do my best to make sure our community supports them. I also encourage engagement on the site.  The more people who are actively participating in our community, the better I am at doing my job.

And I make sure that the business side of our company is staying true to our members as we develop new models to generate revenue.  I go back and forth a lot: working with development and working with strategy.

What sort of online experience did you have before you came into this role?
My day job included managing websites for a Fortune 500 company's internal communications. A lot of what I was doing involved content management and upkeep.

When I was off the clock, I was just starting to acquaint myself with the blogosphere.  Ryan Healy and I launched Employee Evolution and through its development I kind of got a knack for content management systems like WordPress.  I'm nowhere near an IT guru.  I rely on our developers for everything we roll out to the community, but the knowledge I gained from just taking an interest int he process really helped a lot.

Why Community Manager? What drew you to that role?
That's a funny question because I wasn't really drew towards the role at all.  The role sort of drew itself towards me.  In a startup environment you're sort of dabbling in a bit of everything until you discover what your strengths and weaknesses are as a team.  Mine turned out to be working with people.


What kind of technical experience do you need to have for your position?
It all depends on what kind of support you are getting.  At a larger company you might be able to get away with little or no technical knowledge, because you have a stellar IT department to back you up.  But when you are working on a smaller team (like me) you need to at least understand how systems work.  Basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, information design, etc. are going to make you more valuable.


What is a typical day like for a community manager?
I get lots of e-mails actually.  And that's a good thing!  It means the community feels comfortable communicating with me.  So a good portion of my day revolves around solving problems for individual community members.  I also need to decide whether the problem they are having is isolated or something that might be affecting others in the community.  If it is a larger problem, I make recommendations to our developers and help them create a better user experience.

I am also taking a proactive approach.  Not everyone is going to ask for help.  So I reach out to people in the community that aren't outgoing enough to make the first move.  This goes a long way for some people.  And I can't think of that many communities who take the time to engage people that personally.


What is the part of your community manager job you look forward to the most?
Just helping people.  I thrive in environments where I can use my strengths to help others.

What is the part of your community manager job you like least?
Turnaround time.  We have so many ideas to make things better, but it takes time.  I'm really excited for the plans we have in store for this year.  But waiting to bring them to life ... I lose sleep thinking about it. 

Have a question for Ryan? Interested in joining a great Gen-Y online network? Don't delay, visit the BrazenCareerist site.

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9:39 AM

How to Create a Favicon

You may be wondering "What's a favicon?"

According our good friend Wikipedia, "A favicon (short for favorites icon), also known as a website icon, shortcut icon, url icon, or bookmark icon is an icon associated with a particular website or webpage." You often see them in the address bar next to a URL.

So how do you create one? It's actually pretty easy.

I use a site called the Favicon Generator (http://www.favicon.cc/).

It's extremely easy to use. Following the step-by-step instructions listed on the page, you can upload an image or file and shrink it waaaay down to size or you can create your own pixelated icon using the box provided.

The site will walk you through whatever questions you may have including acceptable image file types and sizes (Supported file types: jpg, jpeg, gif, png, bmp, icoMax. file size: 4 MB).

After you've created your code, you'll be directed toward a piece of code that you embed in your own site.














A quick note, though: Favicons won't show up on Internet Explorer 7 pages so if you're using that and wondering why your code isn't showing up you know why.

Let us know how your favicon experience went by leaving a comment and your URL.

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6:58 PM

Who should you be on which social networking site?

If you're anything like me, you've got a business side and a fun/quirky side to your personality.

If you're really like me, you'll be proud of your social media accomplishments, but don't necessarily want your bosses to see everything you do in your spare time. 

With all of the social media available, you may start to wonder what -- or who -- you should be on which site? 

There are probably hundreds of articles available that tell you what kind of person you should be on which site. Most of them will tell you to be authentic, or to be yourself. That's all well and good but what if yourself wants to have a social media mullet and be all business in the front and party in the back? 

You pick and choose your medium. 

Personally, I use Facebook for friendly interaction. It's where most of my real in-person friends are, or at least get me well enough to know when I'm joking or not. I do not accept friend requests from coworkers on Facebook. I like to keep my personal life somewhat personal. 

For professional interaction, I rely on LinkedIn. While I know all of my contacts personally, there are a lot of personal things I don't share with them and therefore do not cross-promote. I do not post my personal blog(s) or projects on my LinkedIn profile. 

I use Twitter as a personal/professional hybrid. Because I don't know most of my Twitter followers (or those I foll0w) personally, I will use Twitter to ask professional questions (or answer profession-related questions) while also interacting with people on a friendly level. 

I have followed several social media experts' advice and cross posted my Twitter stream to Facebook; however, I then follow several other social media experts' advice and removed the stream because the conversation(s) got confusing at times. 

How about you? Who are you in social media? 

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8:14 AM

How do you find the time to learn social media?

I often hear people say that they don't have the time to learn social media. Between kids, work, wanting to have a life, etc. they have difficulties making social media a priority. 


I wanted to learn digital and social media to improve my potential for employment so I made learning it into a part-time job. So I didn't watch a t.v. show or have dinner with my husband every night. It's okay. My brain is still intact as is my marriage. Nothing suffered when I made time to sit down and learn.

But I realize I'm different. My personal life situation is different than most people and I do have nights where it's just me and a laptop and nothing to do but learn. 

I'm curious about what factors prevents people from learning social media. Is it relevance? Time? Fear of the unknown? 

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8:24 AM

How much should you reveal on your blog?

I sometimes refer to my personal blog on this site. The blog, which shall always remain nameless, is a bit of an online diary for me.  

When I created my blog, I used a somewhat creative blog name and a fairly specific URL. I didn't realize when I was setting up the blog that I would use it to post personal narratives. I thought I'd drop in a few stories every now and again, like I'm doing here, but I never imagined that I'd use it as therapy. 

It's my own fault for not creating a blog action plan or a blogging mission statement like Darren Rowse suggests here: 5 Steps for Planning the Direction of Your Blog in 2009. I should have decided from the very beginning what kind of blog it was going to be and stuck to it. 

My personal blog, like me in real life, has been through numerous variations in 2 years. I've changed its look, it's focus, its 'story' format. You could say it's had a bit of an identity crisis. 

By not sticking to a topic -- whether it was going to be knitting, motherhood, recipes, etc. -- I created a bit of a blogging maelstrom. I committed a huge blogging offense by zig-zagging the content. 

I've since learned the error of my ways and made improvements with other blogs. This one, for instance, focuses on social media; others have had a more narrow scope. 

I tell this story to help you not make the same mistake I did. Here's a list of things I wish I would have done with my personal blog: 
  1. Not use such a specific URL unless I was going to write about business-related topics.
  2. Used a pen name or a nickname if I knew I was going to reveal personal things.
  3. Should have had a blog action plan or at least something of a mission statement or guide.
  4. Stick with one topic and post about things relating to that one topic. Don't go all over the place.
  5. Consider privacy constraints. If I was going to lend a name and personal information to people, I should have done it in a more intimate way. 
How much do you reveal on your blog? Do you have regrets? What tips would you add to how much you should reveal on your blog? 

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9:05 AM

A New Business Venture for the Me Media Blog

I alluded to this on Twitter yesterday as well as on Facebook: My 2009 Social Media Resolution was selected as one of 10 of SmartBlogs on SocialMedia's 2009 Social Media Resolutions. 


My resolution? To bring social media to everyone, particularly to those who feel somewhat technically challenged. I've been trying to do this through the Me Media Blog, but I've come nowhere near tackling all of the tools out there and there's got to be more than just me who wants to do this. 

Lucky for me, there was. 

I met @WindyCityConnect on Twitter when I was looking for a web designer. He DM'd me, I gave him my e-mail and we struck up a conversation. I told him my idea to start a series of workshops, books or a website to teach people how to use social media. 

He had a similar enthusiasm to my own and thus a partnership was born. 

We're in the midst of developing our new website -- the one that I alluded to in my resolution -- right now. 

In the mean time, I could use your help. We need ideas for what you want to learn. Is it how to create a webpage for free from scratch? How to do a podcast? What's a Tweetdeck? 

Leave a comment or send me an e-mail with your ideas. 

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5:00 AM

Compare a LinkedIn Group with a Social Networking Community

So far we've walked through how to create a social networking site and how to create a LinkedIn Group.

If you're contemplating creating either group (or both) for your own projects, you may be asking yourself: How do I know which is right for me?

That's a question I've actually dealt with myself. I've created both social networking communities and LinkedIn Groups and I still get tripped up when I'm creating a new networking group.

The following is what I've gleaned from my own experiences:

LinkedIn Groups are a good fit for education or career-related networks. Most educated and career-oriented people have a LinkedIn page that includes a resume or list of skills. If you're considering creating a network within those parameters a LinkedIn Group is probably a good match.

In a LinkedIn Group, members can pose discussion questions to other members in the group, post articles and find other industry members to add to their network.

A LinkedIn Group also requires less maintenance than a social networking group. Most of my interaction has been approving members and commenting on conversations in the beginning.

I've seen a lot of magazines create LinkedIn Groups, particularly in the business to business environment. A great example of a magazine that has a strong LinkedIn Group presence is FOLIO. FOLIO is not only present in LinkedIn, they also have a social networking community as well.

Social networking communities or sites are an excellent format for people who share similar hobbies, passions and causes. I've seen several awesome communities that are based on content other than what I've just listed (Brazen Careerist is one and is geared at the Generation Y age group; FohBoh is another and is geared toward restaurant and food service professionals).

What you'll see in on those community pages is an awful lot of customization which is what makes them different than than a LinkedIn Group.

Within a social networking community you can add or remove as much as you want. You can design it any way your heart (or CSS ability) imagines; you can embed blogs within the community, start a discussion forum (or 20), create groups within groups. The possibilities appear to be endless.

The customization is what makes a social networking community more high maintenance. Where as a LinkedIn Group follows a strict template, the social networking site does not.

In my own personal experience, the social networking sites I've created have been focused around a common thread that was not career-related.

If you've contemplated a LinkedIn Group versus a social networking community and would like to share your story, please leave a comment or contact me to appear in an upcoming Me Media post.

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