Marketing Director

Social Media Workshop Part II

Blogging is a word that has had it's day. The word originated from it's initial meaning of "web log" which was shortened to "Blog". A blog is a publishing medium for ideas, opinions and thoughts. Some people blog about their personal life or interests while others use blogging to discuss ideas in their work and bring together insights gathered from others. The name of the game is value, provide it. Don't know what it is? Ask your audience. The largest blogging platform is Wordpress.com and it is the recommended option. I use Blogger because it's what I am used to and it works for my purposes. Advanced users or those with access to capable technology professionals should use Wordpress.org. The major differences between Wordpress.com and .org are listed here by Wordpress.




Today's Link Pack:



A blog is what you make it. For businesses as we talked about last week a blog can be used to provide value, build loyalty or answer questions your audiences may have to name a few uses. The most important thing is to get started with your blog and write some content before you start to promote it to the world. The best thing about a blog is that you can edit and update your post when necessary or when you see an error.


Whatever you are doing online to drive business having a focus on conversion is vital. Whether your conversions are very soft (Facebook Like or a Follow on Twitter, etc.) or very hard (transactional) moving your audience from one end to other should be a focus of your efforts. Mostly these things can be fulfilled best through LANDING PAGES.  Again landing pages will require you to have access to capable technology professionals or be proficient at using Wordpress, Blogger or HTML yourself.

A blog is a very important part of an online profile for business or personal use. A blog is so vital because Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook don't allow for the kind of publishing necessary to convey ideas to your publics. A blog compliments your other efforts on social networks and can lead to writing work for other publishing mediums whether online or print. This is an important way to leverage the content you write on your blog to publish in other places whether you blog for a business or yourself. Your blog also feeds other online efforts by backing up your insights and ideas with more concrete examples with links and references to supporting documentation.



Blogging: Beyond the Post - Tips and Tactics
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Facebook is different than other social network because it is more about staying connected to those who we already know in our lives. This isn't true for everyone and lots of people use it to connect with new people. For businesses and organizations the Facebook Page has become the place to communicate with Facebook users. If you are looking for a thorough walkthrough for using Facebook Pages and Facebook in general I recommend this web-based one from Mashable.


How you choose to use it is up to you, but those who know you are definitely those most willing to read what you write, offer advice and encourage you on your journey whether for business or personal purposes. It is important whether using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Blogging that you seek out friends, mentors, peers and allies who will honestly critique your work and help guide you to where you want to be with Social Media and Networking.



It's important that we don't overwhelm people on Facebook or Twitter with posts all of the sudden or all at once. Just like when we change our behaviour with our phones. I stopped answering my phone every time it rang. At first people were annoyed as they'd come to expect that I would answer immediately. In time they became used to expect me to not answer and they were fine. This change took time and some people may have stopped calling. This is possible with changing the way you use social networks.

Facebook insights are an important part of analyzing your use of Facebook for business purposes but when combined with URL shortening that analysis will help you judge the effectiveness of your efforts. If not many people are clicking your posts on Facebook there are two things to look at:


How many people 'like' your fan page or are your friend on Facebook? If this number is low then your efforts should be spent growing the number of people who like your fan page. Advertisements are the best way to bring new fans on and is recommended to grow your page initially. People won't know about it unless they are searching for it (unlikely), a friend invites them to it (more likely) or they see an ad for it (most likely).


Before we move on I'd like us all to take a look at Facebook Ads and walk through creating an ad together. We will then look at the data and statistics that Facebook gives us access to through some ad campaigns I've run in the past. I've written a post called Beyond the Click which discusses the benefits of Facebook advertising beyond the click.


About 20% of Facebook users or 100 million people don't have privacy settings on their Facebook accounts and when they post things Facebook logs that and makes it searchable. I often use this when media ask about a story and want to see people's reactions, but it can also be used to see what's being said about a restaurant, business or organization.


Go to Facebook, Log-in and search for a term or string of terms. Remember your AND, OR, "" and -. Once you've searched, click the "Posts by Everyone" button on the bottom left of the screen as below. Let's all try it together and see what we find. Try out a Facebook search of your own.




View more documents from Jeremiah Owyang.

Facebook for Business
Facebook Groups Versus Facebook Pages


Facebook is a powerful tool for gathering and enabling your personal or business connections. Sometimes a page is best (are you a business or organization?), sometimes groups are best (are you a group or club? Do you need to send messages directly to your group members?), sometimes a personal profile is best (politicians aren't always 'liked' but people want to know what they are up to).

Twitter for Business
Twitter can be used for business important that when using Twitter or Facebook for business that oyu understand how people want to interact with businesses and brands in these spaces is much different than their normal interactions (buy & inquire). Those things should happen on your website, a custom FB tab or in store. The focus of Facebook and Twitter is to build relationships with prospective customers. The job of your website, email, phone and shop is to facilitate the transaction.

Gathering Intelligence
The power of combining online and offline networking tools whether through learning more about someone before you meet them or trying to figure out how your competitors are connecting so well with their publics can yield powerful results for your organization. (see:TweetCloud or TwitterSheep).

If you don't have a LinkedIn profile yet be sure to set one up and and get started on completing it. On LinkedIn the system will guide you to completing your profile with a progress bar. Once your account is 85% complete you will need to reach out to 3 people to give you recommendations. Be sure to send a custom message to these people when requesting a recommendation of your work. If you are attending a conference that is on LinkedIn look at the other attendees and try to connect before the event with plans to meet. You don't have to do this through LinkedIn as many users also use Twitter, a blog or Facebook and can be contacted through those mediums.

As we move from meeting to phone to email to social networking it is important to maintain that you are human and so are the people you are interacting with. The same rules apply with both online and offline social networking: Be yourself, be generous, provide value, contribute and share.



Monitoring and measuring
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Social Media Implementation: Plans, Goals and Strategy

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Social Media Workshop Part I




The workshop will be structured into two halves. The first half will focus on personal social networking and social media skills like tracking and search. The second half (next week) will focus on the business of social networking, tracking and analytics we will also dive into how businesses are using and quantifying the use of social technologies.


LESSON #1: Shortening your links to track their effectiveness. http://j.mp or http://bit.ly

The purpose of this format is to demonstrate the many parallels between personal and business use of social networking. This format also helps to show the differences for both personal and business social networking. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have at any time. Answering your questions and inquiries is my number one priority as your instructor.






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Today's class will be rather straight forward and involve introductions to the course, one another and social networking. We will discuss the shifts that social media has caused and it's effects on communications. I always like to start off my classes with a simple survey. So please take this survey and be honest (it's anonymous).








This survey is an example of a feedback loop and just how easily and freely they can be created with free tools like Google Forms (part of Google Docs). Let's look at some of the ways that 'social' is transforming our world whether it's Twitter, Wikis or Linux people working together are changing our world.




Normally Twitter plays a large role in my classes but due to time restraints you will not be required to open an account for this workshop although we will be discussing Twitter and how it can be used for personal and business purposes. For those looking for some more information to learn the ins and outs of Twitter this free resource is the Twitter "textbook": http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/ (worth bookmarking). I am also available via Twitter, Facebook or email to answer your questions on any topic at anytime.






It is important to understand social networking in both an online and an offline capacity. The real benefits of digital social networking come when that digital connection becomes a face-to-face meeting. 


We will now be discussing listening as part of social media including: 
Two key components of successful Social Media are sharing and listening.

Mashable is one of the best sites on the web for examples of successful social media, textbooks for the major tools and updates on changes to major social networks or even ancient ones like MySpace. Be sure to check out Mashable before your take a well deserved break from class to grab a coffee or a bite to eat.


20 minutes - BREAK TIME


I hope you enjoyed a nice break. We are now going to talk about using Twitter, having goals and introduce LinkedIn. We will then go over the importance of having a completed Twitter profile and what it looks like to an outsider. Then we will move onto goals. Following that we will discuss LinkedIn. We will then discuss frequency and delivery a topic that is vital to long term successon social networks. First let's discuss Frequency and Delivery.








View more from Heidi Miller.

On Twitter does your profile have an image? A bio? A link to a blog, website or LinkedIn profile? These are all elements of a completed Twitter profile. Using Twitter can be done on a daily basis although this is not necessary. It depends on what your goals are for using the service. If you are using it to listen and receive information then your participation is less important but sharing and engaging will yield more valuable results than just sitting back and reading.


Whether you are a business or an individual, having goals when using social media is incredibly important. Let's look at personal goals today and next we will discuss business goals in more detail. Try to write-up your short-term, medium-term and long-term goals for using social media and email them to yourself. These goals may change or evolve but once you've written them down they will give you more of an idea of what kinds of activities you should be focusing on. Below I have put a sample of my personal goals as a template to work from:


Short-Term - This week, this month





  • Write 3 blog posts on kempedmonds.com
  • Connect with a publishing site (IE VanObserver) to see if they are interested in a story
  • Attempt to connect with 3 people on LinkedIn by proposing the purpose of my connection
  • Answer 2 questions/week on LinkedIn
  • Follow 100 new and interesting people on Twitter by searching for keywords and evaluating the people.
Medium-Term - 1 - 3 months
  • Connect with 3 local thought leaders for coffee to learn from them and share ideas
  • Develop a strategy to secure more speaking gigs
  • Develop my website so that it more clearly tells visitors about the professional services that I provide
  • Begin implementing the strategy to get more speaking gigs
  • Work to develop MDIA 1045 into an online course
  • Attend 3 events/month that I don't normally attend
Long-Term - 3 - 12 months
  • Work to expand my online reach beyond Vancouver
  • Attend 4 large conferences each year and connect with others there
  • Use Twitter to 'virtually' attend one large scale chat or event each month
  • Develop new relationships with those in my field via long-term relationship building
  • Interview 3 new trendsetters for my blog interview series.

Note that goals don't all have to be directly related to social media but all of them are important to my work and the development of my social networks. Think of your own personal goals in the context of what you wish to achieve through your professional efforts over the next weeks, months and years. These goals will change. Some will disappear or be deferred while new goals may appear and things you didn't think of will provide great opportunities. Our world is changing quickly and so should some of your goals. 

Let's now look at LinkedIn. I will use my own profile as an example for this one. if you have an account already take the next steps to bring your account to 100% completion. If you don't have a LinkedIn account please sign up here.

LinkedIn is the professional's social network. It is a place to meet and connect for future collaboration or business. It is a more complex social network than Twitter where connecting with someone is easier than on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is also perfect for demonstrating your knowledge or expertise and view the expertise of others through answers and groups.



If there is still time I would like to introduce you to Social Media Dashboards: Hootsuite and Tweetdeck. 


BONUS: RSS Feeds in Plain English




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Why I don't blog here these days


I am sure that everyone reading this is on edge ;) wondering if I've disappeared into the wilderness of the internet. Well the truth is I have. Most of my time is spent developing curriculum for courses and workshops at BCIT. I am currently teaching two classes and a workshop that runs two Mondays November 1st and 8th at BCIT's Downtown campus from 1pm to 5pm. There are still a few seats available and it's an incredible value. If your curious about the classes I am teaching here they are:

MDIA1045 - Intro to Social Networking - Course Blog - Starts again in January
MDIA2045 - Social Media for Web Dev - Course Blog - Currently available in the full-time program


I am volunteering with the The Violence Stops Here, a campaign engaging men to help stop violence. We need your help as we are currently attempting to secure funding from the Aviva Fund. We need you to vote today so please take a few moments to VOTE. Please know that you can vote each day so we need you to return daily after 9:01 PST and vote again. Together we CAN make things better.


Check back in November for some new content. Also watch for a new blog about Social Media Education I am writing with Capilano University's Jess Sloss: @thattallguy. I am also developing a podcast and radio show with @SmuttySteff of Blog fame for UBC's CiTR radio!

Now for a treat... This is my American Television debut! Can you spot me? HINT: It's early on.


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