After a few weeks of holiday, we are back online...here is a reminder about Reputation Management for all those conducting business online.

Being aware is being prepared!
Reputation Management

The growth of business using social media is massive – the use of Internet marketing has swollen – in a fantastic way that increases online brand awareness. So who is being loyal to your business? What is your market talking about (is it you?), how is the industry comparing – state, national, global?
Growth of social networking sites enables the Internet marketer to communicate directly with their target niche audience. Despite the ease of using these readily available tools, the use of is not enough. To go one step further you need to identify what your market is saying about you/your company and others in the industry.

This basic marketing principle is another method in designing new products and services having the knowledge on the exact wants are in your market/industry.
Online tools available:

1. Google Trends: allow a user to identify real time topics and what your target niche audience searches for online.

2. Twitter Search Tool: Find out exactly what your target audience are asking. This information is like gold – to provide a new product, the designer needs to know exact needs and wants are from potential customers/consumers.

3. Reputation management tools: Conduct a Google search for reputation management – there are numerous online tools available where you can find out exactly what the market is saying about you…an example is www.marchex.com

You can also view services to compare your online reputation to that of your competitors. Some of these service vendors will provide you with recommendations on how you can increase your online persona brand.

If you are out to attract prospective customers and develop your online presence and exposure, you owe it to yourself and the financial future of your business to learn everything you can about Internet marketing.

Happy Social Networking Peeps!

Choosing social media to suit your business...

Choosing your social media strategy to suit your target audience can be simplified if you put it into different terms.

I read an article from The Art of Healing (Vol 2, Issue 27) "What does it mean really..to lose one's health". Although this article is based on the Australian Health System, Dr Mohamed Khadra stated:
"If you are dealing with a doctor who isn't communicative, who isn't able to sit down and really go through the benefits and risks of a procedure, who isn't transparent about why they are doing it and involving you in a shared decision-making capacity -- perhaps you are going to the wrong doctor,"

What do you make of this statement? I would say that in simple terms, you would not be choosing a social media platform that your target audience does not use; I would ensure that my target audience was receiving the information and 'online' comforts to keep them coming back for more. Why would your fan base 'target audience' come back to your site if they did not feel supported or getting any benefit from your posts?

When choosing your social media platform, clearly identify the who's, what's and where's. Once these have been identified you will be able to better approach your social media campaign.

Thought to share with you - The National Archives, in Canberra Australia reached 150 000 digitised items September last year.

http://www.nla.gov.au/digicoll/

You can explore the national library’s digital collection that contains selected items providing users easy online access to some of Australia’s most significant cultural materials.

A retweet is the act by which someone else passes/shares your information via a tweet through Twitter.

By including a retweet inside your document, straight away the reader will have:

• your Twitter ID
• a link back to your site
• a link back to your PDF, or
• whatever you want!

This will help grow your Twitter followers, as well as driving traffic back to your site.

Let me show you how..

Retweet Button
First of all you need a retweet button.. a graphic that will be placed inside your PDF file that people will click-on to actually retweet.

Either grab one from Google or use this one:







To save this image - right-click on the image –> save image as..

Building the Retweet URL

The following steps will build upon each other resulting in your retweet URL.

Write Your Tweet
You need to write a tweet.
This is the tweet that will appear in Twitter when someone clicks on your retweet button.

Some things to consider include:
• keep your tweets to about 120 characters or less.. this allows for others to add comments to the tweet
• put your Twitter ID (eg @sociallywiredno) in the tweet.. this will help to grow your Twitter following as your PDF starts to get retweeted
• use a #hashtag for tracking purposes.. this will help you track the retweets

The tweet that I will be using is:
How to add Retweet buttons in your PDF documents | The Social Media Guide (via @sociallywirednow)

Create a Shortened URL
You will also want to include in your tweet a shortened URL that points back to the document’s landing page.. it is from this page that your PDF file can be downloaded.

It is advisable to direct people to a landing page to give them an idea of what your document is actually about, rather than pointing them directly to the PDF file itself (as they won’t know what they are downloading).

There are many URL shorteners that can be used including,
• bit.ly
• tiny.url
• su.pr – This shortening service exposes your content to StumbleUpon’s 8 million users - in addition to Twitter’s users

http://thisisthemightlylongurlintheinternetexplorerbar/2010/how-to-add-a-retweet-button-inside-your-pdf-documents
into: http://su.pr/1adj34

Your Tweet
Now you need to merge the tweet from before with the shortened URL you have just created.. to give you something along the lines of:

How to add a Retweet button inside your PDF documents http://su.pr/1adj34| The Social Media Guide (via @sociallywirednow)

You can see I have incorporated the following components into this tweet,
• the name of this document’s landing page
• shortened URL
• the name of my blog
• my Twitter ID
• total characters = 125 (which leaves room for comments, etc)

Create the Retweet URL
We want to create the actual retweet URL that invokes Twitter, via your browser, and populates it with your tweet.

We will build this up in three simple steps.
1. Copy this text
• http://twitter.com/home/?status=

2. Append your tweet to the end of the previous step

• http://twitter.com/home/?status= How to add a Retweet button inside your PDF documents http://su.pr/1adj34| The Social Media Guide (via @sociallywirednow)

3. Replace all spaces with a plus (+) sign

If you use a hashtag symbol (#) change it to %23

http://twitter.com/home/?status= How+to+add+a+Retweet+button+inside+your+PDF+documents+http://su.pr/1adj34+|+The +Social+Media+Guide+(via+@sociallywirednow)

You have just created a retweet URL!

Test the Retweet URL
You will want to test this URL works before we link it to the retweet button.
It doesn’t matter if you are logged into Twitter or not when you click on the retweet URL.
If you are not logged into Twitter the login page will display, after logging in, the tweet field will be pre-populated with your tweet.

If you are already logged into Twitter, then the tweet field will become populated with your tweet.

Create Your PDF File and Embed Retweet Button
The final step now is to put the retweet button into your document and to insert the retweet URL (from the previous step), into the retweet graphic as a hyperlink.

To be able to add a hyperlink to a PDF document you will need PDF creation software such as Adobe Acrobat (not Adobe Reader).

1. Open up your file in Microsoft Word then paste in the retweet graphic.I would recommend doing it in more than one location within the document.

2. Right-click on this retweet graphic and select hyperlink

3. Paste in your retweet URL then click

You have just hot-linked the Twitter retweet button with the retweet URL- And embedded it all into your document.

Finalise the PDF File
Last but not least convert this document into a PDF.


You have successfully added a retweet button inside your PDF document!

Did you know….Google automatically adds AND to find words together - so you really do not need to add it in there! Google will also disregards any spaces between commonly used words. For example childcare will include child care as well..

Basic Principles

Phrase search ("")
By inserting double quotes around a set of words you are in fact searching for exact results in that exact order. For example, "local dance clubs"

Search exactly as is (+)
By including a plus character, it forces Google to search exact words in exact order. For example, local+dance+clubs

Search within a specific website (site:)
Google allows users to specify that search results must come from a given website. For example, the query [Rudd:news.com.au/theaustralian ] will return pages about the Prime Minister but only from The Australian.

Words you want to exclude, NOT(-)
Including a minus character immediately before a word excludes results containing this word. The minus sign must appear immediately before the word and be preceded with a space. For example, anti-virus -software will search for the words 'anti-virus' and exclude reference to software.

Fill in the blanks (*)
The * (star character) or wildcard, is a little-known feature that can prove powerful. If you include * within a query, it tells Google to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) to then find best matches. For example, the search [ Google * ] will give you results about many of Google's products (go to next page and next page -- many products).

The query [ Obama voted * on the * bill ] will give you stories about different votes on different bills. Note that the * operator works only on whole words, not parts of words.

Over the last few months I have been wondering exactly how to teach someone to collaborate.

Seems like a simple statement. Collaboration spaces are the tools to use, in which we teach others to use. One particular method I get best results from is:

One on one training. Guiding the user through the collaboration spaces, using specific examples within their work environment. The user will use their own documents, thoughts and structures.

Memory Joggers, quick reference guides and contact numbers for HELP. I like to provide any participant access to hard copy references so they can quickly refer to it during the working day. People like these, especially if they are small enough (and some like GLOSSY) to place beneath a keyboard.

Follow ups. I encourage any participant to contact me with all their questions, but to try and resolve it the best they can. By learning 'the hard way', i have found participants learn other useful tricks...Having said this, it is important to go through any resolved issues with the participant - incase they are doing it wrong and counteraffecting another issue highlighted!!

Person to person follow up. If the participant is in close proximity walk past and ask directly on their progress, thoughts and issues after their initial training..However, because we are discussing COLLABORATION...why not collaborate on the HELP FORUM...which will also help those trained in distant locations.

I encourage the use of collaboration, and found that by using this space to resolve issues and re-hash learning outcomes effective; it not only creates a knowledge base for future participants, but develops confidence in Collaboration (the action) itself and builds rapport via online communication.

Of course all learning methods are different to every person; there is no one learning approach that can be applied to one group. IT is the Trainer's job to understand the group and individual(s) to best develop a learning package that will be effective.

How to teach collaboration.??

Collaboration is an approach; Someone once discussed learning Email for the first time in the workplace. Though email was simple enough having many advantages, it was still a HUGE change in work practices (snail mail, telephone, fax). The same principle used then should be applied to learning collaboration.

To teach collaboration I would recommend:
Encourage the use by using it yourself
Force the use of collaboration - place all documents and discussions in the collaboration space with all users involved.
Continuous training
Create an online forum for help topics
Actively research how other departments are integrating collaboration
Old Way New Way workshops and training http://www.changetools.net/

Teaching collaboration and having the user to apply this approach is the hard part.

Many users can see the positive outcomes, there are many that dont have the time to relearn, there are alot of people that dont trust the new form of work methods.

Do you have any tips or tricks on how you have taught collaboration?

http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcloudcomputing%2Esys-con%2Ecom%2Fnode%2F1198120&urlhash=Af72

Found a snippet of information about stabilising Cloud Computing. There are people out there that are in fact on to it (why wouldnt they). There is a fantasic blog all about cloud computing, if that interests you. Below is an excerpt from their blog post late last year!

San Jose 12 May, 2009

Monitis launches industry’s first deep EC2 monitoring service. Monitis Cloud Monitor records instantiations and terminations of virtual server instances, automatically configures Monitis agents for deep fault, performance and configuration monitoring, and provisions external availability monitoring. Cloud computing enables companies to attain scale on demand and hence reduced capital investments.

Amazon’s Web Services package is the market leader for on demand dedicated server provisioning and cloud computing. Virtual machine instantiation in Amazon EC2 is a minute and click away. Both startups and established companies are increasingly leveraging EC2 in their production systems. EC2 allows companies to scale to unlimited servers and payment can be tied to actual usage instead of monthly contracts. Users can run 20 servers per 1 hour or 1 server per 20 hour at the same cost.

Software can launch additional services on demand including ability to scale when it experiences heavy load. This has potential to create the following problems for the administrator: 1) cost escalation due to uncontrolled service launch and 2) inability for monitoring service to handle dynamic server instantiation. Monitis Cloud Monitor provides control over services running in EC2 by leveraging Amazon’s API for automated service management. Cloud Monitor leverages AWS account detail to regularly poll active instances, record changes in instance (start/stop) and executes user defined rules & actions including: ability to issue alerts, and setup additional internal/external monitors for new instances.

Monitis automatically configures its agent for probing server CPU, load, storage, and processes resource utilization. Monitis service provisions external http, ping, database and/or custom monitoring. An example of custom monitoring includes notification rules such as “notify if greater than 5 instances are running”, “add an agent for every new instance, start CPU & storage monitoring, and notify if CPU utilization is more than 80%”, etc. “There is tremendous growth in on demand cloud computing and we see growing need for explicit cloud monitoring” said Hovhannes Avoyan, “with our customer first policy, we are here to address the need and we provide a fast, easy, affordable tool”.

Monitis Cloud Monitor is web centric software and no downloads are required. The service is expected to be used by both site owners and IT service providers

Cloud Computing (not physically, though I know alot of people this is one of their wishes)

Cloud computing is Internet- ("cloud-") based development and use of computer technology ("computing").^[1] In concept, it is a paradigm shift whereby details are abstracted from the users who no longer need knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them.^[2] Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption and delivery model for IT services based on Internet, and it typically involves the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources as a service over the Internet.^{[3][4] (Wikipedia)}

Cloud Application Examples

• Peer-to-peer / volunteer computing (BOINC, Skype)
• Web applications (Webmail, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Yammer)
• Security as a service (MessageLabs, Purewire, ScanSafe, Zscaler)
• Software as a service (Envysion.com, A2Zapps.com, Google Apps, Salesforce,Nivio www.nivio.com ,Learn.com, Zoho, BigGyan.com)
• Software plus services (Microsoft Online Services)
• Storage [Distributed]
• Content distribution (BitTorrent, Amazon CloudFront)
• Synchronisation (Dropbox, Live Mesh, SpiderOak, ZumoDrive)

Cloud Platforms Examples

• Services
• Identity (OAuth, OpenID)
• Payments (Amazon Flexible Payments Service, Google Checkout, PayPal)
• Search (Alexa, Google Custom Search, Yahoo! BOSS)
• Real-world (Amazon Mechanical Turk)
• Solution stacks
• Java (Google App Engine)
• PHP (Rackspace Cloud Sites)
• Python Django (Google App Engine)
• Ruby on Rails (Engine Yard, Heroku)
• ColdFusion (Adobe)
• .NET (Azure Services Platform, Rackspace Cloud Sites)
• Proprietary (Force.com, WorkXpress, Wolf Frameworks)
• Storage [Structured]
• Databases (Amazon SimpleDB, BigTable)
• File storage (Centerra Blades,Amazon S3, Nirvanix, Rackspace Cloud Files)
• Queues (Amazon SQS)

Characteristics of Cloud Computing

In general, cloud computing customers do not own the physical infrastructure, instead avoiding capital expenditure by renting usage from a third-party provider.

They consume resources as a service and pay only for resources that they use. Many cloud-computing offerings employ the utility computing model, which is analogous to how traditional utility services (such as electricity) are consumed, whereas others bill on a subscription basis. Sharing "perishable and intangible" computing power among multiple tenants can improve utilization rates, as servers are not unnecessarily left idle (which can reduce costs significantly while increasing the speed of application development).

A side-effect of this approach is that overall computer usage rises dramatically, as customers do not have to engineer for peak load limits.^[9] In addition, "increased high-speed bandwidth" makes it possible to receive the same response times from centralized infrastructure at other sites.(Wikipedia)

The iPhone can be used to access the same files and music that the desktop machine used at home can. You are able to travel with the laptop and just pull down your data from the internet. The data remains secure, backed up in the ether and forever available.

Living the dream? Or “Living in the cloud”….

Risk 1.

Your most important files are the ones you need with you at all times, or at least at any time. But what if the internet connection is down? How do you get the spreadsheet from Google docs, or refer to the map in that email when you are offline?

The standard scenario is that you have your connection chopped of when you’re on a plane, although I actually like the relaxing offline time of a plane ride. This is a problem, but in truth you are cut off whenever you are away from home or office.

3G modems?

Work best when using small data sizes, but the networks are still too slow for shifting big files like music, photos or movies. When outside 3G coverage (possibly your next holiday destination), you may as well be on dial-up. Wi-Fi is no way for the professional to work…

Resolve this risk!

Notebook with a day-long battery life and a guaranteed, 24/7 connection that’s fast enough to stream HD video. We’ll imagine that you get a cheap plan with no crazy bandwidth caps. Would this work?

Your thoughts?

I wanted to see how everyone uses Facebook, accepting or adding friends – or not adding or accepting.

During my lifetime I have come across several types of friends. I can rattle off a few: work mate, best mate, chick friends, guys you know through friends, old school friends, old work friends…then there is the awkward one…the guy you have just started seeing. Or, wouldn’t mind dating!!

Ok, so you scope out their reaction first to Facebook. Judging by her/his reaction you get a gauge on whether they are on it, active on it, or not at all.
She is on there! Bang.

You go on and see what you can find, any photos, any comments, and best of all, who she is mates with and whether she is single! Of course you would like to improve the chances of having similar interests, so snooping in her interests is something to look at.

She is a smart one. She has locked down access to her page, unless you become friends with her. But her profile picture is intriguing.

Now this is going to drive you crazy isn’t it? What is she up to in that world? It’s something that you can’t really ask about because the simple answer is ‘you know I talk to family and friends’. Doesn’t really take a Sherlock Holmes to figure this one out.

Is it inappropriate to ask her to be your friend on Facebook when you have only known each other for a month?

And when you do become friends on Facebook..What happens then…you both will be stalking one another’s every move, to see who else is on the scene, if they are telling you the truth? And of course any photos taken of them – what are they really like when they are with their friends. You may find once you are friends it reveals so much more than what you really intended.

Dating and being on Facebook gets complicated, because dating is not a committed relationship! When you are dating, you are just that..having had no talk or mention of the future. Or you may have talked about future plans, without really thinking about the commitment level. Do you assume you are in a relationship only because you have been dating a few months? Apparently this is something ‘you’ should know. Personally, I have to be told as I am very black and white. I might have feelings, but would never assume the other person would unless told directly.

The tricky part in all of this is knowing when to add the new boyfriend as your boyfriend. Do you talk about it? Or just do it?

What do you think?

I wanted to see how everyone uses Facebook, accepting or adding friends – or not adding or accepting.

During my lifetime I have come across several types of friends. I can rattle off a few: work mate, best mate, chick friends, guys you know through friends, old school friends, old work friends…then there is the awkward one…the guy you have just started seeing. Or, wouldn’t mind dating!!

Ok, so you scope out their reaction first to Facebook. Judging by her/his reaction you get a gauge on whether they are on it, active on it, or not at all.
She is on there! Bang.

You go on and see what you can find, any photos, any comments, and best of all, who she is mates with and whether she is single! Of course you would like to improve the chances of having similar interests, so snooping in her interests is something to look at.

She is a smart one. She has locked down access to her page, unless you become friends with her. But her profile picture is intriguing.

Now this is going to drive you crazy isn’t it? What is she up to in that world? It’s something that you can’t really ask about because the simple answer is ‘you know I talk to family and friends’. Doesn’t really take a Sherlock Holmes to figure this one out.

Is it inappropriate to ask her to be your friend on Facebook when you have only known each other for a month?

And when you do become friends on Facebook..What happens then…you both will be stalking one another’s every move, to see who else is on the scene, if they are telling you the truth? And of course any photos taken of them – what are they really like when they are with their friends. You may find once you are friends it reveals so much more than what you really intended.

Dating and being on Facebook gets complicated, because dating is not a committed relationship! When you are dating, you are just that..having had no talk or mention of the future. Or you may have talked about future plans, without really thinking about the commitment level. Do you assume you are in a relationship only because you have been dating a few months? Apparently this is something ‘you’ should know. Personally, I have to be told as I am very black and white. I might have feelings, but would never assume the other person would unless told directly.

The tricky part in all of this is knowing when to add the new boyfriend as your boyfriend. Do you talk about it? Or just do it?

What do you think?

A New Year

A new job? A new home..a new hairstyle?

I can help you find ways to promote yourself and find a new job - if that is what you need!

Get yourself aquainted with LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com), fill in your personal details and upload a copy of your recent CV.

Now you have done this, here are some tips and tricks:


1. Groups

Actively participate in a handful of groups related to your professional interests to expand your network. Find "Groups" on the navigation bar. From here you can search for a group to join, manage your groups or start a new one. Groups will keep you updated with industry-related information, plus they function as a forum where you can propose and answer questions, helping you become a recognizable name.

2. Company Buzz

Under "More..." choose "Application Directory". This will bring you to a page with a number of applications that you can add to your homepage and profile. The "Company Buzz" tool aggregates mentions of a company from Twitter, allowing you to discover relevant trends and comments about your company. The tool lets you customize and modify the topics to watch and displays charts to track activity. "A lot of people who use Twitter don't know where they can see what's trending, so this is a great application for that," says Eve Mayer Orsburn, CEO of Social Media Delivered, a social media consultancy.

3. Recommendations

These blurbs from your coworkers make your LinkedIn profile more dynamic and bring more credit and validity to your profile. Career experts recommend that you seek recommendations from your coworkers, former managers, direct reports and even clients. Shorter tends to be better; one or two paragraphs will suffice.

4. Events

"Not enough people use events," Orsburn says. "It's a great way to find and connect with new people." Under "More..." choose "Events". Here you can view events (including webinars) that your connections are attending, search popular events and find ones to attend. Orsburn recommends searching for a person you admire and looking through the events he or she is attending. This will give you a good sense of which conferences or events are worth attending, and will help you build more meaningful connections.

5. Advanced People Search

Try using this search method instead of the basic search when looking for new connections. The "Advanced People Search" allows you to find contacts based on geographic area, company, keyword, industry and more. Advanced People Search also gives you the option to search based on when users joined LinkedIn, which Orsburn says can be especially handy. "One of the best ways to find people who can help you is to help them first," she says. "When you use this function to find someone who's a new member to LinkedIn, you can introduce yourself, mention that you see this person is new and offer to introduce them to some of your contacts." You can find this feature under "More..." in the navigation bar.

Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. It's a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one too many) into dialogues (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to connect in the online world to form relationships for personal, political and business use. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).

Social media are distinct from industrial media, such as newspapers, television, and film. While social media are relatively inexpensive and accessible tools that enable anyone (even private individuals) to publish or access information, industrial media generally require significant resources to publish information. Examples of industrial media issues include a printing press or a government-granted spectrum license.

"Industrial media" are commonly referred to as "traditional", "broadcast" or "mass" media.

One characteristic shared by both social media and industrial media is the capability to reach small or large audiences; for example, either a blog post or a television show may reach zero people or millions of people.

The properties that help describe the differences between social media and industrial media depend on the study. Some of these properties are:

1. Reach - both industrial and social media technologies provide scale and enable anyone to reach a global audience.

2. Accessibility - the means of production for industrial media are typically owned privately or by government; social media tools are generally available to anyone at little or no cost.

3. Usability - industrial media production typically requires specialized skills and training. Most social media does not, or in some cases reinvents skills, so anyone can operate the means of production.

4. Recency - the time lag between communications produced by industrial media can be long (days, weeks, or even months) compared to social media (which can be capable of virtually instantaneous responses; only the participants determine any delay in response). As industrial media is currently adopting social media tools, this feature may well not be distinctive anymore in some time.

5. Permanence - industrial media once created cannot be altered (once a magazine article is printed and distributed changes cannot be made to that same article) whereas social media can be altered almost instantaneously by comments or editing.

Community media is an interesting hybrid. Though community-owned, some community radios, TV and newspapers are run by professionals and some by amateurs. They use both social and industrial media frameworks.

Next week I would like to talk about Social Equity in collaboration and social networking

Chat soon

SWN

Pump it up with your profile pictures – best practise dimension speak

Here are a few basics:

Facebook Picture (Profile or Page)

Profile Picture: 200 pixels wide (100 dpi).
Height can vary substantially. Facebook will convert to a JPG and will shrink images wider than 200 pixels so your page looks best if you save as a JPEG and have an image exactly 200 pixels wide. Since the image spans two colour fields trying to match the background is pointless – in fact, it looks better if you use a third colour as the background, to add some contrast (the blue is #EDEFF4 and the white is standard #FFFFFF).

(Another good idea is to put a 1 pixel border around your photo using colour #D8DFEA. This matches the menu border colour – have a look at the Avid Reader page for an example.)

Facebook Thumbnail
You cannot upload a separate thumbnail image for Facebook, you must zoom into a 110×200 pixel area of your picture that looks good. Think about this when choosing your picture image.

Twitter Picture

Twitter picture: 73×73.
People are able to view a larger image by clicking on your face (or logo)- you may want to do a larger image – still keep dimensions around a variation of 73×73 (i.e. 146×146 or 219×219). Twitter accepts and does not convert a PNG, so use a PNG.

Twitter Background
Because the Twitter website is not fixed in position background image option on Twitter is a design nightmare. Avoid trying to make things line up perfectly on the right side of your profile – rather, put anything important on the left side or have a subtle tiled image. Important: make sure background image colour is the exact match of an HTML colour, and define the rest of the background with that HTML colour. If you do not apply this step the image will look appear as an invisible box.

YouTube Account Image

YouTube account image: 88×88 pixels
Scaling throughout the site at 60×60 (Make sure your image looks good at both) and upload in JPEG format (other formats are just converted to JPEG).

YouTube Channel Background
YouTube backgrounds that are not tiled are centred (and, thus, look ridiculous behind your channel info). If you do a background at all (a solid colour is good), make it something subtle that you can tile nicely. (Note: YouTube is rolling out new channel designs, so stay tuned)

LinkedIn

Profile: 80×80 pixel JPEG works best for the profile image
Company Page: 100×35 pixel JPEG (Other image formats are converted to JPEG automatically even if they are the correct dimensions.)

Flickr

Buddy icon: 48×48 pixel JPEG
Group icon: 48x48 pixel JPEG

What is a blog?
A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log.
Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”.
A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links (to other web pages and to video, audio and other files).
Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. Often blogs focus on a particular “area of interest”, such as Washington, D.C.’s political goings-on. Some blogs discuss personal experiences.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Effective Blog Tips
The user experience of a blog is determined by two factors – author activity and reader activity. Ultimately the goal of a blog is to increase the activity and create discussions; provoke thought – create a knowledge base.
The below points highlight areas that can be focused upon in order to achieve a successful blog. .

Accessibility
Give the readers an ability to receive posts via email – you cannot assume that users understand RSS feeds.

Controversy!
Most successful blogs create conversations on the web about topics that have yet to be discussed in detail; topics where people have definitive opinions. Think about intense discussions in a physical sense – and relate it to an online environment. Same principal. Topics that are controversial are great for blogs as they start conversation.
Why would someone want to get involved in an outdated topic that has been solved, proven, or talked about from all angles?

Voice
You as a blogger are an author. People read specific books because of writing style, opinion, (subject) and personality – the same principle applies to a blog. Test out your writing styles to match your readers.
Which one works best? The one where you get replies!

Become a Subject Matter Expert (SME)
Do not be scared to discuss on other blogs in the same topic. Others will see your posts, and consequently want to know your back ground and see how much you really do know!
If someone goes to a blog with zero comments for every post, sometimes that can give the impression that no-one reads it.

Link Link Link
A smart idea would be to link various viewpoints – which will keep readers coming back for more conversation. This will also help in getting people linking back to you.

Writing Style
Look at the direction of the way your posts are written. Do you want to end your blog post with an open question? Or a closed question?
Having a closed question really ends any conversation. Think about this. If you were talking to someone and said:
“Would you be interested in going to Hawaii?”
Reply: “Yes”
OR
“Why would you want to go to Hawaii?”
Reply 1: “Because of the nice beaches, the surf, the people, the history of Pearl harbour”
Reply 2 “Why is Pearl Harbour so talked about still?”
Reply 3 “Pear Harbour is part of the world history….etc”
This conversation could go on because it is emotion based and gets people thinking and wanting to voice an opinion. Rather than blogging about would I yes/no be interested in going to Hawaii.

Another way is to research and learn from other SUCCESSFUL bloggers.

Another social media web site that is available is Ning. ANY person is able to creat a network based around their own interests and passions. Currently there are 1.6 million networks that are available - with 36 million registered users!!

Interestingly, millions of new users are coming to Ning to both explore AND express their interests, revive old interests and discover new passions. Another advantage to this tool is the social collaboration - by ths i mean building friendships online with others having a shared pursuit.

Ning is based in Palo Alto in California, founded in October 2004 by Gina Bianchini and Marc Andreessen.

Visit Ning now!

Twitter... it Can Improve your rankings...Twitter is more instant than email or web releases!

Did you Know?
There are now 350,000 publishers from the White House to CNN to John Cleese pumping out almost 600,000 feeds and generating around 5,500,000 clicks to your sites every day.

Google Analytics Integration
Twitterfeed now adds special 'UTM' tags to each post that it publishes. Google Analytics can read these tags and integrate the information into its reporting. You'll be able to understand how people clicking on your posts from Facebook differ from those clicking from Twitter and track the complete path of their visit to your site.

Check out Twitterfeed for your social networking www.twitterfeed.com

An effective online discussion enables the online community to create knowledge in a social environment. A summary of the characteristics of a good online discussion are:

Have an Effective Moderator (person who initiates conversation...ie the blogger?)
Encourage users to introduce themselves
Create a Community of Practice

For a classroom environonment,you can also:
Clearly link criteria for an acceptable response with any grading criteria
Use user-friendly language and humour
Provide helpful directions for technical support
Keep the length of message short (75-150 words, for example)
Develop clear naming conventions (topic or subject lines to help you and students manage the messages-for example, include Message 1, Message 2, etc. in the name)
Lurkers are communicated with directly via personal e-mail

Lagging conversation is re-energised
Supportive e-mail is used by the moderator to supplement online discussion
Activities are designed in order to foster interdependency and weaving of ideas.
Develop directions that will lead users to think about the topics in a way that generates and demonstrates understanding.

Guest discussants are invited
Do provide an alternative space for very informal discussion (Gossip or Coffee Shop)


What do you think?

The best way to maximise performance on these resources is to:

• Update regularly with quality content – such as knowledge, news updates, media releases, fun stuff!?/upcoming events and specials.

Create a fan base for the groups. The best way to do this is:

• become a fan of other groups – to increase potential client base world wide/nationwide – I can do this
• let people know you are on there – newsletters, website widgets – ie Become A Fan, Word of Mouth, if you have friends on Facebook- get them to join as you never know who They Know.

Social Media effectiveness relies on others to contribute to the resources. The Social Media Marketing really is word of mouth and it is because of this, that the less spam on the resource the better. We don’t want people to think we are there purely for money!

Another good way to increase fan bases is by being a little crazy – I have heard people having slogans such as “If I get 80000 fans I will do….” Or in a marketing world “I will donate/give away such and such if we get 80000 fans”.

Completely up to you, depending on how conservative you would like to be. I have yet to see if the above slogans work for non celebrity’s…you can only wonder!

We are going to work with Michael Massey @ Atmanjai (Detox, Yoga and Wellness Centre in Phuket) to get 80000 fans - and if we do, we will put money towards a sponsorhip for a child in need.

Here's to the sponsorship of a child in need!!