Personal and Professional Thoughts on Social Media

I have officially dumped YouTube. He was old, played out, and everyone got a piece of him. I moved on to a player that’s shiny and new. His name is Viddler.

I discovered Viddler from Demo Girl’s screencast on ididwork and didn’t think much of the player until I saw Viddler’s president, Rob Sandie, showcasing how you can customize your player.

We’re talking about customizing the shade and color of your player, a custom logo, and yes—you can even decide where your videos link to!

I’m all for customization and Viddler just took it to the next level. Here’s my custom logo in a recent video did for my company called “Sharing is Easy“. It’s not as cool as Rob’s. You won’t see a guy dancing in the background but it’s a start.

For an awesome step by step tutorial on how to customize your Viddler player, check out Alex Carpenter’s blog. He even has screenshots of other custom logos by Viddler creators.

Earlier this month, our company was invited to be guest speakers at Becky Carroll’s Marketing via New Media class at UCSD Extension. Carroll’s class focuses on how social media can leverage customer loyalty and engagement. In fact, the book that she uses in her course is Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff—a definite must read for any company looking to gain insight and engagement from their consumers.

With that said, we were definitely excited to meet her class (especially me since I’m a big fan of public speaking). We presented what Brickfish® was and how companies can use our platform to launch a social media advertising campaign. Below is the presentation that we shared with her class that night:

Again, special thanks to Becky Carroll and her students for letting us speak. You can learn more about how her students are embracing social media by reading her blog at Teaching Social Media.

By the way, if you’re attending the 2008 BlogWorld Conference, be sure to check out the Creating Customer Loyalty with Social Media panel as Carroll will be one of the moderators.

Every morning our team meets to discuss items we’ve been focusing on, what’s been completed, and projects we need extra time on. This week I wanted to try something different so I rallied a couple of my co-workers to try out ididwork.com. It’s a simple and easy-to-use web app that lets you keep a log of the work that you and your teammates have completed. With ididwork, we were able to view status updates from each member on our team which kept us in the loop during the day.

Fig. 1 Work categorized by tags.

In addition to microblogging our status updates, team members were able to analyze how much of their work was dedicated to a specific tag (see Fig. 1) and how much time was spent on a task. Employees can even send their work logs to managers for feedback and review. These reports can be exported into Excel or a PDF and you can edit your settings to automatically send a report to your manager as often as you like (i.e. weekly, every 2 weeks, etcetera). ididwork also has a graph that illustrates the number of entries your posted in a day or in a week (see Fig. 2).

Fig. 2 Number of Entries per Day.

The web app isn’t going to replace our morning meetings, but it helps us analyze how we can be more productive at work. For example, if ad hoc reports for clients make up 70% of my day, it would be a good idea to work with engineering on how to automate those reports.

For an awesome demo of ididwork.com, check out Demo Girl’s video tutorial below:

Would you use ididwork? If so, what would your tags be?

(Video Credit: Demo Girl)

Special thanks to our friends at BatchBlue for creating BatchBook, an easy-to-use CRM software, that has literally saved us hours organizing our contacts and managing our communications with partners. Not only do they have a remarkable product, excellent customer service, but they have cool t-shirts too!

Your happy customers,

Ashley, Stephanie, and Rachel (aka R3K2)

Special thanks to Jun Loayza, Chief Marketing Officer at Future Delivery, for this post on 12seconds. Don’t forget to check out his blog on Living the Startup Life.

12 seconds is not a lot of time for a lot. You can’t really watch a Youtube video, read a blog post, or even microwave a hot pocket (the entrepreneur’s food of choice). However, in today’s society where attention spans are short and the barriers to meet new people have significantly decreased, short busts of information and messaging are exactly what fill the gaps between the work we do at the office or when we’re stuck with writer’s block.

Enter 12seconds.tv. Think of it as the Twitter for YouTube. If you use Twitter, you know that this is a breeding ground for bloggers and startups to keep in touch, share ideas and information, and promote their products or brand. So it follows that 12seconds could potentially be used in the same way.

While browsing through my friend’s short impromptu videos I think to myself, “This is going to be the next Twitter!”… and I’ll tell you why:

1. 12 seconds is perfect for bloggers who want to convey a simple burst of information
2. It easily syncs with your Twitter so that you automatically post your video link on your Twitter as soon as you record your vid
3. It doesn’t suffer from decision paralysis. On Youtube, you can create a video about ANYTHING. On 12Seconds, it greatly limits your decision making and makes you focus on one core theme for the vid.

For a while I wanted to be a “Youtube star.” We’ve all seen them, those people who have the weekly wrap-up show or some funny little sitcom that they post up every other day. However, I just don’t have the time, let alone the creativity and resources to become a star. Plus, it’s so saturated that even if I had good content, I just wouldn’t be discovered. This is why I’m so excited about 12Seconds! I have the opportunity to apply all that I’ve learned about what sticks with YouTube, Twitter, and blogging and apply it to 12Seconds. It’s brand new so there is no competition, I can stand out immediately, and I can be a pioneer in the types of 12Second vids that I have.

So how can you stand out at 12Seconds? Still a little early to tell, but here are my predictions:

1. Pick a topic and stick to it. Your friends read your blog or twitter because they’re your friends and are interested in you. People outside your network could care less about what you do on your own time. If you want a steady stream of subscribers, you need to become a thought leader on a topic. I predict something similar on 12Seconds. What kind of entertainment value you’re able to present to your viewer is up to your creativity and personality.
2. Start conversations. You’re not able to video reply someone on 12Seconds yet, but I’m sure you’ll be able to do that eventually. But, you are able to do it if you have the person’s Twitter. Just add the “@username” to your video’s title and you’ll reply to them via your Twitter account.
3. Use the blog widget. There are twitter, meebo, and flickr widgets, so why not use the 12Second widget? This is such a great way for you to personally interact with your readership.

I feel that anything right now that is targeting bloggers and providing them with a vehicle to get their message and personal brand out there is hitting at gold. Look at Twitter and Plurk. You can even take Tradevibes as a great example: if you provide a group of people with a tool to distribute their brand or product, the group of people will use it and run with it.

I predict that 12Seconds will be successful, so hurry up and get your username before someone takes it! See you on the channels…

* If you would like an invite to 12Seconds, feel free to reach out to me at jun (dot) Loayza (at) gmail.com

Today’s Guest Blogger is Erin from The State That I Am In. Erin currently teaches preschool special education and shares her thoughts on how she’s managed to incorporate social media with her students and their parents.

I became a blogger shortly after I got married, when I was finishing up graduate school. I’m not really sure why I started a blog then. I didn’t even read blogs at the time. An acquaintance had a blog, and it looked like fun to me. I’d always tried to keep a journal growing up, but I really hate my handwriting and have no patience for writing things out by hand. Plus, I think my thoughts are really important and people should want to read them!

I signed up for a blogger account and spent hours stressing over posting and changing colors and whatnot. I posted randomness about my life (I still do) and gradually began reading and commenting on other blogs. Eventually, I moved from blogger to typepad, from typepad to wordpress.com, and from wordpress.com to my very own self-hosted wordpress blog. I love writing on my blog and have gotten to know so many great people through it! Blogging has become my main hobby, but up until last year, I had never really thought that blogging could be more than a hobby.

At the beginning of the last school year, I became my building’s instructional technology facilitator. In addition to teaching my wee ones, it was my job to teach other teachers how to use the technology we had available to us. Funny how my blogging hobby had actually given me the skills to be qualified to do this. If you’ve ever worked with preschool teachers, you’ll find that they are generally afraid of technology. I actually had to show 10 teachers in my building how to set up and turn on their computers last year!

I knew it was going to be a tricky year. I was going to have to prove to the other teachers that using technology would be worth their time. While talking to another district teacher, I found out that she was starting a blog for her kindergarten students. The idea intrigued me, but I was hesitant at first. What were my preschool special education students – most of whom function at the level of a two-year-old – going to do with a blog? I decided to just go ahead and give it a try. If it didn’t work, it didn’t work.

I spent quite a bit of time on my home visits at the beginning of the year explaining to parents what a blog was. Some parents were naturally hesitant to have their child’s picture appear on the blog, but most agreed to try it. My first couple of posts were just summaries of our days at school with random pictures. As I played around more with the blog, I started adding slideshows, which were a huge, hit with the parents and my students! I also then got permission from every single parent to have his or her child appear on the blog. I loved having the blog as a way to bring families into the classroom, and my kids loved seeing themselves and their accomplishments. I was even able to record myself reading some of our favorite books so that the kids could listen to the story at home!

Overall, my classroom blog has been a huge success and I plan to do even more with it this coming school year. I now have other teachers in my building who are interested in blogging, and I get frequent e-mails from teachers across the country about how to get started. Blogging may have started out as just a hobby for me, but I now have a personal blog, a classroom blog, and a business website that includes a blog. Social networking tools, like blogging, are a great way to get to know people online, but they are also a great way to enhance your work life and build your business.

I work very hard to keep my personal and professional Internet lives separate. If you are interested in seeing my classroom blog or business site, please e-mail me at stateiamin1 [at] gmail [dot] com for the links!

One of the most memorable booths at Comic-Con was the Sony Online Entertainment booth where they unveiled DC Universe Online. There were multiple demo stations available and it created a huge buzz among the crowd of hardcore comic fans. Fortunately, my husband and I were able to get a first look of the game and I have to admit - I’m not much of an online gamer and we don’t even own a PS3 but after getting our hands on the game and experiencing it, all of that just might change.

What had to be the most exciting part of the game was that I could could defy gravity and run up and over buildings and choose whether or not I wanted to be a super hero or a villain. On top of that, I could create my own legion or league of super heroes or villains. What type of character would you create? Would you be good or evil?

Check out the DC Universe video from Mahalo Daily below:

(Video Credit: Mahalodotcom)

If I had to award one costume from Comic-Con as the most entertaining, it would go to Dexter and his tribute to MySpace. I literally laughed out loud when I saw Dexter coming around the corner in his costume because it was so original and well thought out.

In fact, when I asked if I could take a picture of him he insisted that I be in the photo with him. I honestly didn’t know what he meant until he unhooked the back of his contraption and he swung out the “Who I’d Like to Meet” window - how creative is that?!?

Even more entertaining, I read at Rama’s Screen that a guy that actually works at MySpace took a picture of Dexter to share with Tom. I can only imagine what Dexter has planned for next year’s Comic-Con!

Since 2001, we’ve been going to the San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) and this year we didn’t miss a beat. This week’s theme will feature highlights from SDCC including plenty of photos, updates on must-have games, ridiculously talented artists, and websites that you’ll definitely want to check out. Stay tuned for Stephanie and Storm Troopers - you don’t want to miss it.

If you went to SDCC, let me know what you thought or share links to photos and videos that you captured.

There are several reasons why people have multiple Twitter accounts. Some people use one account to keep their friends up to date on events privately and automate their other account as an RSS feed.

I have two Twitter accounts that I maintain. @HeyStephanie is for personal use and @Brickfish is geared towards highlighting new and exciting Brickfish campaigns.

Thanks to the Carsonified team, I no longer have to sign in to each account individually to make updates and neither do you! In four days, the Carsonified team built a web application called Matt to simplify ‘multiple account Twitter tweeting’ (say that five time fast!). And boy does it make managing multiple Twitter accounts easy.

Step 1: Simply login at Matt with your Twitter username and password and this will generate your first Twitter account.

Step 2: Next you’ll need to click on the “Click here to add a new account” link and enter the username and password of your second account.

Step 3: If you have more than two Twitter accounts and would like to add more, repeat Step 2.

Step 4: Once you’re done setting up your accounts, you’re good to go! Type in your 140 character tweet and check off the accounts that you want Matt to update for you and click on “go go go” - it’s that easy!

Have fun Twittering and don’t forget to add me as a friend if you haven’t already.

(Photo Credit: TheMattinator.com)

Attention all twenty something bloggers, now is your chance to leave a lasting impression on the Twenty Something Bloggers (20SB) community.

The Admins want you to create a one of a kind header to represent our social network. You can start from scratch, use Wordle as a background, or incorporate the 20SB badge in your design. Headers must be 955×200 pixels.

Each 20SB member can submit up to 5 entries but don’t forget, the contest ends August 3, 2008 and all entries must be submitted to the 20SB Header Contest Flickr Group.

While the prize for the winner is still to be determined, I think bragging rights is sufficient. For complete details of the contest, visit the 20SB blog and to spark your creativity, here’s my submission to the contest:

If you’re not already a member of 20SB, it’s not too late to sign-up.

20SB is a great community of active bloggers that are all approaching, in the middle, or just past their quarter life crisis. WIth over 1900 members and more than 100 groups, you’ll find a diverse community and plenty of reading material to get your creative juices flowing for your next blog post.

In fact, 20SB is full of activities with blogger meetups, blog swaps, and is currently in the process of rolling out category specific RSS feeds for everyone. Click here for more information about the RSS feeds.

What I like most about 20SB is the active forum, the friendly folks, and the fact that anyone can nominate a member to be a featured blogger on the homepage. Even more exciting is the fact that the group has recently been added to Alltop and thanks to Zakstar, a 20SB group has been added to LinkedIn.

With that said, what are you waiting for? Come join us.

(Photo Credit: 20SB)

(Banner Credit: “Cityscape and skyline brushes” by c Luddy
Tag Cloud created with Wordle.net)

This past weekend I tried to make the leap from WordPress.com to self hosting HeyStephanie.com. If you visited over the weekend you would have noticed that my blog was down and/or timing out - that was my weekend of madness.

Long story short, the move didn’t work out the way I wanted it to and it caused more frustration and aggravation than I had hoped for. I won’t go into details but I will say that the lesson learned was, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” I’m perfectly happy with my blog hosted at Wordpress.com but that doesn’t mean I won’t take another stab at self-hosting. It just means that when the time comes, I’ll most likely find someone to do it for me at a reasonable cost. Work smarter not harder right?

With that said, I want to say thank you to everyone that took the time to help me and contacted me to let me know if the site was loading or not.

Special thanks to these awesome folks below, you guys rock!

acnatta: http://dresramblings.com/

yeaiknit: http://yeaiknit.com/blog/

tinylittlebit: http://tinylittlebit.wordpress.com/

ralph: http://ralph.fm/

(Photo Credit: diegocervo)

Wordle lets you create “word clouds” from an RSS feed, a del.ici.ous username, or you can paste in a bunch of text to generate you word cloud.

Once you have the text all set, you can tweak your word cloud with different layouts, fonts, and color schemes. And because images created by the Wordle application are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license, you can use your Wordle on anything from book covers to T-shirts. I added my Wordle to my new Contact page.

Just remember to let people know how you created your Wordle. If you took an image from the Wordle gallery, don’t forget to mention where you got it from.

Thanks to Andrew, author of The Working Title, for highlighting Wordle in his blog. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have found out about this awesome site. And kudos to Jonathan Feinberg for creating Wordle, I absolutely love it.

It’s that time again! It’s time to share the standout blog posts, websites, and social media tools that I discovered this week and would like to share with you.

Posts

• BatchBook is Great for Contact Management by Chris Brogan
• Flex Your Communication Style to Avoid Email Problems by Breanne Potter
• How to Promote Other People’s Content and Drive Traffic to your Own Blog by Problogger

Websites

• MyToons.com - the world’s greatest online animation community – now in HD!
• Comic-Con.org - okay, so I didn’t just discover this website this week. In fact, I’ve been going to Comic-Con for the last 5 years and plan on attending this year as well. I just wanted to add it to the list because I just bought my tickets this week which was a major highlight to me.

Social Media Tools

• BatchBook.com - the ultimate contact management web application. They have awesome customer service too!
• Tablefy.com - find the data you need, compare the results, and share it with colleagues and friends

Editor’s Note: I wanted to share with you the guest post I did for Maxie at IHateSoMuch for the 20SB Big Blog Swap. Maxie’s a blogoholic from Chicago and a featured blogger in Alltop’s Twenty Something. If you haven’t checked her out yet, please do - you won’t regret it.

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Ever since college, Post-It notes have been a must have in my arsenal of tools to stay organized. I could easily write myself a reminder and stick it to my monitor, mark important chapters for easy reference, and my favorite – write a quick love note to my husband and stick it to the door before he leaves for work.

Recently, I discovered Sheer Color Post-It notes which has literally taken my reading experience to the next level. My friend and I share marketing books with each other all the time but when I come across an important quote, I’m tempted to highlight it but can’t because it’s not my book. Now with sheer color post-it notes, I can highlight, circle, and make notes without getting reprimanded.

My dependence on these sticky square pads isn’t rare. In fact, if you run a Google search on “how to use Post-It notes,” you’ll receive thousands of results including Leon Ho’s list of Twenty Uses for a Post-It Note. How do you use your Post-It notes?

What I love most about Post-It notes is that they can be used for other activities besides reminders, planning, and brainstorming. To prove my point, you can check out the entries in the “Post-it® Notes: One Million Uses & Counting…” contest on YouTube.

Here’s my favorite entry:

(Video Credit: Emaz88)

This has to be my favorite Brickfish campaign simply because it’s easy to enter and the prizes are fantastic! Who doesn’t want a $500 gas card?

Check out the prizes listed below but don’t forget to read the complete rules, regulations, and legal notice:

(Photo Credit: Brickfish)

Organizing my emails in Outlook is simple. Every client has a separate folder and I use the Outlook wizard to create rules so important emails don’t get caught in a spam filter or get neglected. This helps to keep my inbox free from clutter and more manageable.

What isn’t simple, is trying to organize my contacts. In fact, I’ve been searching for a contact management software that would enable me to do these three things:

1. Utilize tags to organize contacts
2. Create targeted email lists
3. Track conversations easily

Friends and colleagues suggested that I create an excel database or create groups in my Gmail account. Unfortunately, both suggestions wouldn’t allow me to use tags to group contacts together. Plus, tracking conversations in excel is tedious.

Fortunately, I came across Chris Brogan’s post on BatchBook.com and was floored with his review. The BatchBook features met all of my needs. I could organize contacts with tags, generate instant email lists, and track conversations instantly. My favorite features were the ability to add photos and create custom contact fields. Their plans were affordable too. In fact, I signed up for the Baby Blue account to test the waters. If I decide that I need to increase the amount of storage, users, contacts, or SuperTags - I can always upgrade later.

In the end, BatchBook was the solution to my problem. If you’re looking for a robust contact management application, I suggest you take a look at BatchBook. Below is a full breakout of features that they have to offer.

(Photo Credit: BatchBlue.com)

Today’s guest blogger is Maxie, author of I Hate So Much and member of Twenty Something Bloggers. We’re both taking part in the 20somethingbloggers’ Big Blog Swap. Special thanks to Ben Boudreau for organizing this event and thanks to Maxie for her guest post.

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Hi everyone! My name is Maxie and I normally write at I Hate So Much… but for today, the day of the 20 something bloggers swap, I’ll be writing here. I don’t really write about any certain topic on my blog, but for this switch I will be writing about what Stephanie usually writes about– Social Networks and other Internet related matters. This is perfect for me because I’m basically a slave to the social networks of the Internet. The thing I’m a slave to the most? My blog.

Some people may not think of blogging as a social networking tool, but I think it’s the most powerful of them all. When I started blogging it was just as an outlet for my every day thoughts. I never imagined that anyone would want to read it, let alone subscribe to it. The more people read my blog, the more I wrote. I would go and read my commenters’ blogs and give them my feedback and thoughts on what they had written. Even though blogging started as a solitary activity, it turned into much more.

I’ve been blogging for a little over 6 months and I’ve built many friendships with people I’ve met through my blog. My summer is filled with trips with bloggers, blogger meetups, and the prospect of writing about all of it on the place where it all began. My own place on the internet that has turned into much, much more.

For me blogging isn’t just a way to let out your feelings and talk to others– it changes everything. It changes the way I look at things, how I observe situations, and even my plans for the future. It has changed my life in huge ways and I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything (other than maybe a billion dollars.)

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I have 32 subscriptions to blogs and 1000+ items in my Google Reader that’s waiting to be read. While I filter through these unread items and take steps to simplify and organize my RSS feeds, here are a couple of standout posts, websites, and tools that I found worthy to be highlighted this week.

Posts

• A Flickr Project for Everybody at ChrisBrogan.com
• The Main Difference Between Twitter and Plurk by Darren Rowse at Problogger.net
• Syndicate Your Personal Brand Through Social Media by Dan Schawbel at Personal Branding Blog

Websites

• KidZui - The Internet for Kids: An innovative way to stay in tune with your kids’ online activities
• TinyURL: Shorten that long URL for your tweets or plurks
• Searchme Visual Search Beta: See pictures of web pages that answer your search

Tools

• TweetLater.com: Schedule Future-Dated Tweets
• FlogBlog Facebook Application: Easily integrate your blog to your Facebook profile