EyeSee

If you are like me and looked at all the templates out there but can’t seem to find anything that would work for you it’s time to think, customization.

There are many ways to go about it but the simplest is to start with the default Wordpress template.

This template let’s you customize the header color.  If you want more then start adding widgets to take care of the little extras that you would like on the side bar etc.

Now I am getting pickier, I want the Blog to have the same header as the rest of the corporate website with a little twist on the color.  To achieve this I got the help from Rick the integration expert.

Pretty cool, huh.  This is a work in progress but just wanted to give you an update on the latest in the changes of the UI for EyeSee.

It’s the thing to say in the social networking world, isn’t there a service where I update my profile once and all the other profiles get updated?

AtomKeep claims to solve the problem.  They do support all the major social networkin or web 2.0 sites e.g. Linkedin, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and more.

They are in Beta so sign up and try it out. I do put the disclaimer that I have not tired them out. If you do, do share your experience.

The 5th and final Social Media Breakfast is on tomorrow morning.

When: Thursday December 11th

Where: Gowlings - 160 Elgin Street on the 26th floor

Time: 7:30 AM

Given the weather and the OC Transpo strike it’s a good idea to car pool if possible.  Joe Boughner and Tom Hofstatter have set up a Google Sites page to let people post rides needed and offered at

http://groups.google.com/group/smbottawa-ride-sharing

On a side note SMB is crowdsourcing their logo.  Do take time to vote.  Also the tag is smbottawa.

I finally took the plunge a few months ago and signed up on Twitter. It’s as simple as

Q What are you doing?

A 140 characters to answer

Update

That’s it in a nutshell however it has some really cool features which I will share at length here.

This is what the home page looks like.

What are you saying?

This is where you say what you have to say about whatever you want to say.  The catch is that you have only 140 characters to say it in.  Click update when you are done.

It could be some thing serious like a product launch or just as simple as where you are having you next cup of java.  If you share a link, it does shorten the link, tinyurl, thus maximizing on the 140 characters.

Like most web 2.0 or social networking sites it’s evolved from a purely social to business related as well.  I find it very useful for following the latest product launches, news, ideas, information and whereabouts of people.

Someone mentioned that she turns twitter on her mobile when her spouse travels on business.  He is very good about posting updates like boarding plane, plane landed, renting car etc. It puts her mind at ease to know that he is ok.

If you like short and simple then twitter is for you.  It’s not for lengthy posts with comments.

Let’s explore the top navigation bar.

Profile

This shows every tweet you have ever made.

Find People

You have the option to invite people from other networks.  Once logged into your email it will go through the list and see who from your address book are already on twitter.

Select those that you’d like to start following.  Continue.

For those that are not there you can select people that you want to invite and click on send invites.

The other option is to invite via email.  Twitter will send an automated email inviting them to join, a standard in the social networking world.

At first I had a hard time with this feature as most people I knew were not on Twitter nor had the desire to be on it.  So using my address book from email did not work well.  As I started networking and hanging out in the Social Media spaces I found a lot more people to follow.

Settings

here are the usual Account and Password settings.  Fill out whatever information you want displayed.  If you are a very private person you do have the option of protecting your updates.  Note you will not be on the public timeline if you select this option and only people following your updates will see them.

Devices

Everything is mobile these days.

So do add this feature it will go a long way in sending those instant updates.

Notices

This is a great feature.  “Nudge me if I haven’t updated in 24 hrs” a txt to you phone.

@ Replies - this is very important as this is the filter for the volume of information you want to receive.

The usual email me for updates and newsletter gotchya.

Picture

Great to personalize your profile.  Note size only 700k.

Design

This is twitters attempt at customization.  This is definitely an area that needs improvement.  It’s best to select a current theme as attempts to customize fail miserably.

Now the Right navigation bar.

You will see you photo, name.  Below this you will see ….

Following

Tells how many people you are following, in this case I am following 105 people.  Clicking on this link will give you the listing of all of these individuals.  You do have the option of removing them or inviting more people.

Followers

Shows how many people are following me.  In this case 35.  Clicking on this link gives a full listing.

Updates

This indicates how many updates are there, 39.  I guess I need to start tweeting more : )

@Replies

This shows all the tweets that have been in response to my tweets

Direct messages

This is where you can send a direct message to the people following you. It has the usual Inbox and sent folders

Favourites

Star your vavourite twitter updates and they get saved here.  A great feature if you have you find a link useful for example.

Everyone

Well it’s what it is, everyone who is tweeting on twitter!!!!

Following

This shows a summary of the people you are following with the option of showing all.

Device Updates

This is where you set up you mobile device, got to add this to my to do list.

Well there you have it, Twitter 101.  So if you are not on twitter go ahead and try it out.  I will share my thoughts on the good, bad and ugly of twitter in the new year.

I am at The Code Factory listening to Radian6 talk about Social Media Monitoring and it’s importance.

The Motrin event of last week, Motrin baby wearing add,  is what we are discussing.  Within 24 hrs a mommy blogger in Colorado and was offended by it.  You are not a real mommy if you don’t have the baby near you.  Another blogger tweeted about it and within 24hrs 1500 bloggers, tweeters talking about it.  by monday the add was pulled from their website and cancelled the campaign.

Did Johnson and Johnson make the right decision to cancel the campaign based on the sample of 2000 complaining about it based on the population of 300000 don’t like it.

This is the importance of Social Media.

Here’s what people said about this add

Stephanies Video

swom

What’s up now

Crunchy domestic goddess

Radian6 social media monitoring tool has 9 languages currently.  It captures the entire social media space. Capture comment and tag are tracked.

• 90-10 million blogs are tracked
• youtube, google videos 400 video sites
• images
• mainstream news cnn.com, globe and mail. RSS feeds in title and commenting activity
• forums with RSS feed or board reader
• wikis
• twitter
• Proprietary web crawlerby domain, IP domain and where you are from on Blog
• A blog lifespan is three days
• Do not track mySpace, Facebook etc.. as this is private within the community

Set Topic Profile

Radian6 widgets

River of news - can set a date and timeframe.  Measurement perspectives are view count, comment count, unique commentors, engagement, view count. Weeding out spam comments.

Metrics

Gives the 50 most mentioned words.  It also has the ability to drill down on each word or words.  Open a River of news per word.

Can export data into multiple formats

Trending graph

Track if their launch is getting any buzz and what the buzz is about.  If there is an explosion and what it is about.  Can open up a river of news for any point on the graph.

Influencer weighting scale

on topic post, total comment count, total unique comment, average engagement, on topic inbound links, web count.  Ontopic inbound and outbound topic links.  Can get social profile.

User account $100 per month per user per subscription

$500 a month for upto 10k posts.

Monetizing your Social Media Passion was a hot topic at Podcamp Ottawa.  This session was facilitated by Robin Browne.

People generally made connections through Blog or podcasts.  These mediums were used to communicate their passion on their niche.  Although there were no direct monetary rewards for the time invested in publishing to these mediums they did get contracts due to fame in these respective areas.  Susan Murphy agreed with this but did state that she blogged because she was passionate about it.

Give away stuff for free became the common theme in this discussion.  The average person dabbling with Social Media did not generate significant revenues however the contract work came due to fame established with the respective audience following.

Freemium was the word of the day, this means some for free and some premium content.

Most people writing books did not make a lot of money as the Publishers did as the publishers take huge risks in producing and marketing the books.  A successful author in Canada sells on average 5000 books.

One way to get exposure is to comment on other blogs outside your circle of friends.  Check your Blog statistics to see how much traffic if any you get back from comments on other blogs.  Banner ads do work however most people don’t look at them and are not effective way to make money.

Kevin Kelly came up about his theory on how to make money on line.  A true fan will give you $100 a year for what you are selling.  If you can get a 1000 of these fans you can make a living.  Scalable to which city you live in.  Have a donation box as this works.

Mark Blevis shared his journey in monetizing social media.  He started out by  developing content, perfecting techniques in podcasting and story telling.  Attending events and recording them for his podcasts.  If you jump into this and want to make money right away it’s not for you.

He suggested getting comfortable with the equipment, settings, venus etc.  Learn little tricks, how to place it, edit etc…  Respect yourself, your guest etc….  If trying to market you abilities in content creation, production..  worry about all of this later.

Everyone has their angle but no direct method.  Trying to convince people that you are an expert.  Need to have an angle.  Invent a niche that you are in.  Place yourself at the top.

More tips

Social Media isn’t a product. but a vehicle to communicate to large amounts of people to share information, communicate etc. Use the tools to make yourself successful.

That idea of specializing is important.  General idea of joining communities and adding value.

An important part of your personal brand is to organize events that is key to your success.  You have to create the opportunities and not wait for people to organize them.

Nothing happens in isolation anymore.  It’s wide open.  Bring social media into your current job.

Communicate internally within the organization

Hugh McGuire started his Podcamp Ottawa, session off with a somber podcast from the Scarborough Dude.  This particular episode was very well done with the Scarborough Dude as the only narrator talking about a funeral, he was wondering if he was a good father, his son stood in front his friends and how his sons friends accept him for who he is.  He had a few pauses and his voice was used well to make the story very compelling with great descriptions of the surroundings.

This lead to a great discussion about silence being a good thing in a podcast.  Using words to describe the setting, what’s going on etc. gives the listener a visual of the surroundings. Radio is a visual medium if done well and old radio shows are good examples of this.  This American Life had podcasts that are very personal, honest, open and connect with others.

Infliction of word has powerful meaning compared to a script, thus audio brings on emotion. Podcasts speak to the human need to communicate.  TV has extra info. to process, while podcasts are just audio.  The need to focus on the audio only and pulls us in. while pauses provide drama.  Podcasts are very powerful and hear it one to one.

The next Podcamp Ottawa session was facilitated byMaurizio Ortolani, who is part of the team at NAC that uses new media to build an online community.  He talked about Christopher Millard who produces the NAC podcasts.

They have about 4000 subscribers which translates to twice the capacity of the concert halls.  There are over 8000 downloads over the past 6 months.  The demographic consists mainly of older people who are the annual subscribers (seniors), high school and university students.  He alluded to having reached the glass ceiling with this and maxed out with web programs etc…  No increase in 12-16mths.

The older subscribers download the podcasts and burn them onto cd so that they can listen to them on their long drives.

As with any social media medium the podcasts are used to create events and vice versa.  Every few months NACO have a live cast, Chris Mallard hosts the podcast.  This podcast event is attended by 200 people. The podcasts are also used for regular visiting artists who can have pre. and post recording of events.

The most popular podcast to date is an interview with Peter Hinton from Due South, which resulted in 50k downloads!!  These podcasts are also converted into promotional cds’ as part of an incentive program to subscribers.

Jennifer Covert has taken on the role of e-marketing and she shared some of her adventures in this area.

This formed the basis of the discussion.

Charles Hodgson talked about how he had reached the glass ceiling with his podcasts, Podicitionary and had a breakthrough in the past month.  He attributes this to doing full text transcripts of his podcasts.  Link love, is another great factor in creating Google juice.  Almost most of his community are email subscriptions some are through itunes, direct downloads, stumble across due to Google.  He did turned on the Wordpress stats tracking.  He now has some sponsors and his subscribers are very positive about that.

A tip is to use Google to find podcasts as opposed to the search on iTunes.

People are more web oriented than podcast oriented.  Why use podcast as a word so come up with a new one.  Use audio instead.  It’s going to happen organically anyways.

70 percent on comuters.  LIsten to ipod who travel a lot.  Providing multiple channels to use the medium they way they want .  Don’t have to hand code the page anymore as the tools are out there.

Podcamp Ottawa started off with Jeff Parks giving yet another engaging discussion about podcasting.  He talked about his mantra of give it for free.  which has worked very well for him.

He has a vast collection of interviews which are popular globally, so popular that he has been invited to speak at conferences worldwide.  He does not charge for his guest speaking engagements and his only request is for his conference pass and his travel expenses to be covered. It’s an opportunity of a life time to speak to all these individuals.  His show is about the guest speaker and not about Jeff.  Conversation is more important than technical expertise.

The big question was how does he then pay his bills?  His popularity worldwide has lead to contracts which pay the bills.

He suggests focusing on the relationships and not the monetary aspects of podcasting.  This will translate into passion which in turn will lead to making an income.

Quote “Memory is more important than reality.”

This was the setting for the discussion that followed.

Kristina Mausser of Digital Word gave an example of a typical marketing budget.  Say a company has a budget of 10 thousand dollars they will typically spend about 7 thousand on brochures which don’t lead to any tangible business.  By using podcasting or other social media you can create build build a relationship with your niche market.

She spoke about her time as the head of a marketing department for a specific geographic region.  Her company printed borchures which were distributed within that region.  This resulted in no business at all.  She had to call the customers herself and develop the relationship with them by meeting with them in person.  When it was month end she would call those customers to make some sales.  So the key to her success was the relationships not the brochures.   So podcasting is another way to build a relationship on a much lower budget.

If you are passionate about podcasting then the value you get is enormous.

Jeff parks talked about his recent interactions with a Grade 6 class, they have access to the same info. as us, however don’t have the experience we have.

Make your podcast available in various forms to your audience and let them pick the medium based on their preference.  The french name for podcast is long and very technical so should the English term be used?  The consensus was to use the shortened form of the french phrase.

Another way to describe podcasts to people is using the term internet radio as that is very easily understood.

Kids in Europe and Asia have have multiple mobile devices and use it more than we do in North America, this results in them using mobile devices to find info. vs the web.

Most organizations have a mandate to deliver to larger audiences on a smaller budget so podcasting and social media fit within these budgets.

I am very thrilled to be attending Podcamp Ottawa this morning.  Only 30mins to go.

Here’s a sneak peakof the sessions

Conversations before Code - Jeff Parks

Social Media Monitoring Tips & Tricks

The most Intimate Medium - Hugh McGuire

Monetizing yoru Social Media Passion - Robin Browne

See you there