My thoughts on social media?

Music in the background – Black Eyed Peas – Talking about your generation

Building an online community, product development, joint ventures or affiliate programs are not something you can easily implement for immediate results. This is the same principle around social media sites. It should not take longer than 6 months to get your word out, then another 6 months to really integrate and communicate with the readers. Social media, sorry to say, is a long term operational activity for your marketing.

Top sites to get more traffic via the internet?

Traffic - not referring to cars…but people accessing your site, your information via the online channel – the blessed Internet. Anyone can access it, the only difference is which browser they chose to use.

Get more traffic and plan it into YOUR schedule, so that there is a time when you must do it, remember to do it and your online community expect it!

1. Just like you go fishing (or hubby) get your bait together and link it all up!

Use Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us or StumbleUpon. This is by the far the easiest and most powerful way to get traffic to your site during the weekends.

Social news sites usually get less news during the weekend, and it is likely that your bait will be more successful during this time!

2. Publish During the Weekend. Publishing during the weekend will get you some traffic, especially if you have many feed subscribers as some of them will visit your site to read the full article or comments. Smaller sites can also benefit as new content will bring in a small amount of long tail search traffic.
   

Set future publish dates on your post during the weekend so you don’t have to sit down in front of the computer to write. Asking a question is sometimes the quickest way to put out an extra blog post.

3. Biggest one to mention, and the least used is COMMENT on other BLOGS.
1. Why? When you reply to a blog, leave your web site subtly, or enable other bloggers to investigate YOU
2. Promote your understanding and view points, invoking curiosity!
3. Some good blog sites: Blogcatalog or MyBloglog, orble, blogger – all you need to do is search keywords about the subject you want to ‘make comment on’

4. Adwords- sign up to Google AdWords – free and you may even get paid for it too!

5. Try Blog Traffic Exchanges. Blog traffic exchanges the tools which allow you to obtain traffic by visiting other blogs. They are more useful for newer blogs and as they require more time and effort on your part, I suggest using them strategically to find new blogs within your niche as well.

The downside of all of these methods (with the exception of paid advertising) is the time-investment. Do you really want to spend time in front of the computer on the weekend? The amount of time needed for these tasks will vary and perhaps it would be better to alternate them each weekend to lessen the workload.

Another way to deal with this would be to get someone to help promote your site(s) grow much faster.

If you have the time and interest, try implementing some of the tactics listed in this article. I’ll love to hear if it helps you to get more visitors this weekend.

Of course, contact me and I can give you a selection of social media management packages to choose from (from $75)!

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