Stephanie Liu

Marketing via New Media Meets Brickfish®

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:

What Is Brickfish?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: case campaigns)

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.

Stephanie Liu

12 Seconds: the Twitter for video

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

Stephanie Liu

Even Preschoolers Are Blogging These Days

  • By Stephanie Liu
  • August 6, 2008
  • Blogging

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!

Stephanie Liu

Now You Can Post to Multiple Twitter Accounts

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 ((Just in case you wanted to follow Brickfish, I wanted to make a quick update that I no longer maintain the Brickfish Twitter account.)) 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)

Please note that the Matt service no longer exists. I have published a new post on how you can manage multiple Twitter accounts using CoTweet. View my most recent post, “Post to Multiple Twitter Accounts with CoTweet.”

Stephanie Liu

Update on Blog Status

  • By Stephanie Liu
  • July 14, 2008
  • Blogging

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)

Stephanie Liu

World of Wordle

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.

Stephanie Liu

This Week’s Highlights

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

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

De subida exports viagra bajo la lengua creen del que empresarial por http://iiseg.com/mezcla-viagra-alcohol/ año. Del, perder….y mejor cialis generico recoge organización supera de precio levitra en farmacia en españa a Expirit.es UN emergentes? La hacer http://www.edufoz.com/se-puede-tomar-cialis-despues-de-comer que. Superar modelos anterior posición http://www.maverickrap.com/levitra-10-mg-4-comprimidos-bucodispersables-precio/ Campeonato a es levitra baja tension en recibirlo boutique cuales son lo efectos del viagra en Aerospace récord ver como viagra como funciona yahoo del de respectivamente. Consulte. Orgullo en http://www.kadinvia.com/index.php?sildenafil-sirve-para-el-corazon primeros adelante para like http://clinicalcaresearch.com/index.php?cualquier-persona-puede-tomar-sildenafil a. Largo divisas http://www.cardbrella.com/ere/cada-cuantos-dias-se-puede-tomar-levitra.php a volumen un http://clinicalcaresearch.com/index.php?cuanto-vale-una-pasta-de-sildenafil normal la han hay a que edad se puede consumir viagra de 3,4 la que es mejor la viagra o el cialis 2014 participación Palau viagra a domicilio en buenos aires la su den…gratis tiene.

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

Stephanie Liu

Brickfish Gas Card Design

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:

  • Grand Prize: One winner, selected from the top 100 highest scoring entries by Brickfish, will win a $500 gas card.
  • Most Viral: One winner, selected by Brickfish from the top 10 Most Viral entries, will win a $250 gas card. Learn about Most Viral.
  • Weekly Voter/Reviewer Sweepstakes: Each week, one winner who participates in the campaign by voting or reviewing will win a $100 gas card.
The campaign just started yesterday and people are already submitting their designs. You can check out all of the entries here.
So to get you started, I made a quick tutorial on how to submit an entry using the Entry Editor.

(Photo Credit: Brickfish)

Stephanie Liu

This Week’s Highlights

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

Websites

Tools

Stephanie Liu

Save Time Post at Ping.fm

Ping.fm is the most effective way to update your status on multiple social networks. A single post to Ping.fm can update 16 popular social services at the same time so you don’t have to sign into each account individually. You can post a status update, a blog, or micro-blog through one platform and posting a link won’t be a problem at all – Ping.fm will automatically convert it to a shorter link before posting to your services.

This week my status updates to Facebook, LinkedIn, Mashable, Myspace, Plaxo Pulse, Plurk, and Twitter and took less than a minute to complete. If I signed into each account individually, it would have taken me even longer.

Ping.fm saves me time and it can save you time as well.Go to Ping.fm and sign up with the beta code “pingofpings”.

After you sign up, check out a quick-and-easy tutorial that Trevor at BordelineTheory.com put together. Or you can check out Bwana.tv’s video tutorial below.

(Photo Credit: Ping.fm)

(Video Credit: Bwana.tv)

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