Magic Satchel, Inc. » facebook

But I Don’t Have Time For (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn…)

Kim — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 01:12:40 +0000

One of the most interesting and valuable-to-me blogs I read is The Fluent Self. Authored by a woman named Havi and her promiscuous duck, this blog provides great intellectual and business insights in such a way that it feels like your best friend is gently but honestly nudging you in the right direction.

This particular post on what happens when you dismiss social networking is an excellent read. When you’re using social media to network, there are always people who chime in and knock your efforts. But anyone who has met their favorite client or landed a great project that way isn’t usually so skeptical. The fact remains that much of our networking and social business efforts have moved, for better or worse, to cyberspace.

Havi breaks down the efficiency of working social media into your marketing and networking strategy, and even details some distinctions a newbie might not pick up on, such as the near impossibility of keeping a Facebook profile business-worthy. (Unless you plan on denying friend requests from classmates and relatives, it’s probably best to file Facebook under “just mainly for fun.”) Also addressed is the seemingly universal phenomenon of “I’m on LinkedIn, now what?” with the caveat of knowing someone who uses it a lot. Lastly, it’s a great post to re-read when you feel like you’re having too much fun with social media.

Sayeth Havi:

Let’s see then. So as far as I can tell your other options are:

Spend half an hour a day leaving smart, insightful comments on other people’s blogs. No, wait. That actually takes longer.

Spend three hours a week crafting careful, deliberate, strategic letters to other bloggers trying to convince them to let you guest post there. And then another few hours writing said guest posts. No, wait. That actually takes longer.

Go to two live networking events each week. Let’s see, each thing is probably at least two hours, plus another hour to get there and find parking.
Plus another hour to shower and decide what the hell you’re going to wear. Plus another hour to transfer the contact information from people’s business cards into your [whatever you use for that]. Hmmmm. 8-10 hours a week. I’m going to go out on a limb and say: that actually takes longer.

And there’s no guarantee that any of those people you meet will end up reading your blog or leaving comments or buying stuff from you, so it’s not only a large investment of your time and energy, it’s also a huge risk.

But I get it. Not everyone has five minutes to hang out and goof off online.

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Embed a YouTube Video in Wordpress Without Going Insane

Kim — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 05:26:13 +0000

It’s one of those bloggy quirks. You’ve done it 80 times before, even like, once last week at least. But you’ve gone and forgotten how to embed a video again. Relax. Bookmark this page.

Go to the video’s page and get the embed code there. Pretend Wordpress doesn’t have a button to embed YouTube videos. Just ignore it forever, because that button will cause you nothing but grief. As an added bonus, you can customize the appearance of the video border to match your blog. Nifty!

But oh, no! The video is too small when small and too big when bigger. What to do? In the embed code, go to this part:

“true” width=”660″ height=”525″>

Open up your little calculator widget and divide each number by, for example 75 or 125%. Then replace those numbers with their reduced/opposite of reduced numbers. There. Easy, right?

(The comic is a classic from XKCD, one of my favorite sites.)

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Web 2.0 & Your Company

Kim — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:33:33 +0000

Instead of sending online shoppers coupons or information about sales, executives and employees at Henderson, Nev.-based Zappos.com regularly tweet about what happens to them at the airport, the fact that they eat marshmallows in between phone calls and the state of the economy.

This article in the New York Times is so informational, I can barely summarize it without re-posting it in its entirety. The most valuable points make the case for overcoming your concerns about social media (like that line from When Harry Met Sally- “it’s out there!“) with the indisputable value of a direct connection with clients, customers and networks.

“You can buy the same shirts at Zappos as at somewhere else. The product almost becomes less important; it becomes about the business.”

via Web 2.0 tools can foster growth in hard times – NYTimes.com.

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10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know

Kim — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 01:19:11 +0000

Continuing on with our theme of avoiding social media embarrassment, I’d like to share this must-read article for everyone over the age of 16 who has a Facebook account. This comprehensive piece details how to CYA from every angle on the ubiquitous, all-knowing Facebook. It won’t save you from being tagged in unflattering and possibly felonious pictures, but it might save you from sharing those regrettable night out photos with current and future employers and clients. And your grandma.

A typical setup for groups would be “Friends”, “Family”, and “Professional”. These three groups can then be used to apply different privacy policies. For example, you may want your friends to see photos from the party you were at last night, but you don’t want your family or professional contacts to see those photos.

10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know.

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Twitterers 1, Motrin 0

Kim — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 02:10:14 +0000

Via JK Virtual Office Resources, a cautionary tale for the internet age about the power of good and bad internet attention and your brand. Background: Motrin created some ads that unintentionally portrayed mothers in a less than flattering light. From the article, some key points:

…outraged mums, furious at the suggestion that their babies were a hassle, posted rebuttal videos on YouTube. Through Twitter, the microblogging service, thousands of people attacked the company.Eventually a marketing executive at McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that markets Motrin, e-mailed individual bloggers to apologise for the campaign. But the damage was done.

Motrin was caught off-guard. For days, no company representative replied. Critics accused the company of being not only insensitive but also unresponsive. (Bolding mine.)

(I know it’s a British-ism, but the visual of “outraged mums” is quite funny.)

Mistake #1: Ignoring the blogosphere- in the fast moving internet era, it’s pertinent to respond to good or bad internet feedback as soon as possible. No other medium snowballs like this one. Just ask any of these people.

The “Motrin moms” episode … demonstrates the perils for enterprises that are unprepared to interact with social media.

Exactly. The article, linked below, goes on to explain how many big firms have since appointed social media ambassadors to monitor and interact with influential virtual communities. Be aware:

“It’s no longer just companies talking to the press, and customer service talking to customers. All these other people showed up in the -middle. They may not be press and they may not be customers, but suddenly their collective voice is bigger than the traditional channels.”

Technology leader Dell is a great example of proper social media marketing and community interaction:

Dell is taking its customer feedback seriously. When the company launched the Latitude laptop last summer, six of the features, including backlit keyboard and fingerprint reader, were ideas that came from IdeaStorm…

..Dell, for one, has made a business of it. By broadcasting discount alerts on Twitter, it says, it has generated more than $1m in sales. And in the US, 59 of the 100 leading retailers, including Best Buy and Wal-Mart, now have a fan page on Facebook, according to Rosetta, an interactive marketing agency.

Other savings can be realised through the Web’s ability to reach many people at once. “If you solve someone’s problem on the phone, nobody knows,” says Mr Sernovitz. “If you solve that same problem in writing on a blog, it costs you no more, but thousands of people are satisfied. And then, if 100 people never call because they found the answer, you very, very quickly get to multimillion-dollar savings.” (Bolding mine.)

Proactive, pre-emptive and smart. Easy to find and follow information on the web raises your brand’s public image immeasurably.

This article is a really great jumping off point in understanding the different ways the internet can enhance or detract public opinion of your brand, and a compelling call to action for any business, small or large, with no strategy in place to handle internet word of mouth to their advantage.

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Use Facebook Wisely: 30 Great Apps

Kim — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 06:45:43 +0000

By now, most tech-savvy marketing strategies include some social media marketing. This cool Mashable post highlights 30 new applications to do more for your business with Facebook.

And none of them involve saving the rainforest through the exchange of virtual plants, thankfully.

Think LinkedIn is the only place for business? Facebook is growing rapidly and it’s becoming a destination for businesses and business professionals alike to establish a presence. Here are over 30 Facebook applications to help promote, network, communicate, collaborate and accomplish more with your business.

via 30+ Apps for Doing Business on Facebook.

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Twitter scoops major media outlets on Hudson plane crash

Kim — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:37:52 +0000

Who had the best coverage of this week’s plane crash? For timeliness- Twitter. Below the snippet, the article covers the coverage pretty thoroughly.

Worth noting: Flight Captain C.B. Sully Sullenberger has a Facebook fan page with 197,077 fans as of this post.

… a US Airways jet made a water landing on New York’s Hudson River, shortly after departing from La Guardia Airport. I found out about it via a Wall Street Journal e-mail alert that was sent out at 3:52 in the afternoon, about 25 minutes after it happened, and I immediately checked my regular breaking news sources. Nothing on Google News. CNN.com had a brief story that repeated the details of the WSJ alert, and a grainy screen capture from a local television news report, showing a partially submerged plane surrounded by boats. I followed the link through to the ABC affiliate but there was no live video or even an older video report.

But this is where it gets interesting.

A colleague in San Francisco IM’d me a Flickr link. It was a mirror of a picture that had been posted to Twitter by someone on a passing ferry, and it told a story that the professional news organizations had thus far missed:

People had survived the crash. Scores were standing on the wing, or exiting one of the front doors into a gray rubber life raft, or the inflatable escape slide. I counted 34 on the wing, and 11 on the boat/slide. At least three of them were wearing what appeared to be the yellow life jackets stowed under the seats — the ones in the safety demonstrations that require passengers to connect straps and pull down a red tab or blow into a tube to inflate.

>snip<

There was more Twitter information, too. Plane-related tweets accounted for eight of the 10 top “trending topics” (Hudson River, MSNBC, US Airways, LaGuardia, etc.)

via Plane lands on the Hudson, and Twitter documents it all.

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Facebook: Are you hip?

Kim — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:25:58 +0000

Facebook is now technically the 8th most populous country in the world. Are you using this resource to reach out to your client base?

I’ve seen resistance when developing marketing initiatives, but those numbers should be enough to overcome most reticence with this new medium. (Via Lifehacker)

Today, we reached another milestone: 150 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook and almost half of them are using Facebook every day. This includes people in every continent—even Antarctica. If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria.

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