**We help with your digital and social media, ethnic and international marketing to reach diverse audiences. Contact us**
It’s the 4th week of 2012 and no one is talking personal or business resolutions any more. I did make a fresh to-do list. It includes refreshing, rethinking, eliminating and replacing. This is where about.me comes in.
I first got wind of about.me from collaborator Laura Bazile in her new year greeting and it caught my eye again on Facebook when I spotted a “hire me” ad that landed on an about.me page.
Turns out that at least 313 of my contacts have about.me profiles. Why?
We designed about.me for ourselves. A lot of us have multiple online profiles scattered across various services, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, and Twitter. And one problem we face is pulling all of this information together to build a single on-line identity — be it for personal use, or to create a professional on-line profile. We’ve focused on enabling you to create your personal splash page, quickly build a personal and dynamic splash page that points visitors to your content from around the web, and understand how many people see your profile, where they’re coming from, and what they do on your page.
The most recent mutation of Facebook seems to have more people in an uproar than after previous mutations. And it’s not over yet (but since social media is always evolving we shouldn’t be surprised).
Next is “Timeline”:
Zuckerberg, Facebook creator explains that Timeline is, “the story of your life,” significantly altering the way people’s information is shown on the world’s leading social network, presenting “all your stories, all your apps, and a new way to express who you are.
As of today:
I am not sure if I will enable Timeline or not for my personal profile but would love to that option for business pages. One could highlight and showcase important business events such as product launches including photos and videos, customer feedback and customer service, events, human resources news and more.
People are considering Google+ as an alternative to Facebook as the recent changes and repeated privacy concerns are leaving some users displeased. I have decided to cautiously use Google+ while I decide how I should use it. I am leaning toward using Google+ as an additional place to have a business profile. A site that feels friendlier than linked in and not as noisy as Facebook. To that end I probably have to go back and rethink my Google+ circles.
It is anything but boring when working in social media and the plethora of choices can only mean that one has to really consider why they are engaged in social media.
Many of our friends administer one or more pages on Facebook, but there is one essential feature Facebook “forgot” to make – the option to get email alerts when somebody posts or comments on one of your pages.
Hyper Alerts is a feature that sends you an email within minutes after a posting – or only a summary each hour, day, week or month if you so prefer.
Try it out – it’s totally free!
Hyper Alerts is in Beta and was created by Hyper Interaktiv in Oslo.
I am giving Hyper Alerts a whirl because I manage several Facebook pages and of course I want to know who posted what and when. Now I don’t have to go looking for that info, it will come to me.
I may be a little late to the party but I am glad that I joined in with Wibiya. The break neck speed with which new social networking and social media tools are released often prevents me from being an early adopter of all the cool tools.
For those who don’t know about Wibiya:
Wibiya provides a web toolbar that enables blogs and websites to integrate the most exciting services and web applications into their blog or website. The platform is a one-stop shop for fully customizable, easily manageable third party web applications that can also be tracked for statistics.
Adding the Wibiya web toolbar allows users to choose from a great variety of tools and features including facebook and twitter integration web applications, Google Buzz, Smart Share, Real Time Notifications and Statistics, 3D picture galleries, 3D YouTube video galleries, etc.
This is my first blog post of 2010. I spent the first month of the year in the capital of the United States and while I worked on a client project, I spent the rest of my time basking in the glow of being with my family and old friends. I didn’t want to spend any more time on the computer than absolutely necessary. So I limited myself to work and correspondence with the ones I love in Sweden, and arranging social activities in Washington, DC.
February took me to Lappland and the Ice Hotel and I was on the look out for the Northern Lights and all of the other magic associated with northern Sweden. Again, no motivation to blog during this once in a lifetime (for me) trip.
But today I read an article in Forbes online magazine that predicts an increase in digital advertising spending, and for the first time, that more money will be spent online than in print. Written by Dirk Smillie the headline reads:
Web ads to get a 10% boost in 2010. For the first time advertisers will spend more on digital than print.
We’ve been waiting for this: A study by Outsell, to be released Monday, reveals that U.S. advertisers are spending more this year on digital media than on print. Long predicted, this Madison Avenue milestone has finally arrived thanks to a 9.6% boom in digital advertising in 2010.
That number comes from Outsell’s annual advertising and marketing study, which collected data from 1,008 U.S. advertisers (both consumer and B2B) in December 2009. Of the $368 billion marketers plan to spend this year, 32.5% will go toward digital; 30.3% to print. Digital spending includes e-mail, video advertising, display ads and search marketing. “It’s a watershed moment,” says the study’s lead author, Outsell vice president Chuck Richard.
I, like every other website owner, welcome this news. Particularly since I am focusing on leveraging the wide reach of the AG Communications Group (AGCG) Advertising Network. The AGCG Advertising Network includes 8 websites that focus on black women, and expatriates. Specifically these websites focus on black women in Europe, women of the African Diaspora, black expatriates and expatriates in Stockholm and other parts of Sweden.
Niche is in, especially when spending money on advertising. Advertisers want to be sure that they are getting their message out in front of the right people.
The Coca-Cola Company is sending a team made up of three young explorers on a quest to find out what makes people happy. The team will visit 206 countries in the world where Coca-Cola is sold within 365 days. The journey begins in January 2010.
The big mission is to discover an answer to the proverbial question of what makes people happy around the world. From meeting new people, seeing amazing places, experiencing different cultures and attending local events, the team will be taking part in all kinds of experiences–some planned, some unplanned. They’ll be blogging, uploading videos and photos along the way.
I did a brief stint in the Public Affairs office of Ford Motor company before social media exploded in society. I am very impressed with Ford’s use of social media. For example, their social media director (first of all they have an executive position slotted for social media) was at Blog World!
A dear friend has an incredible talent for creating beautiful works of art in stained glass.
I offered to create a social media campaign to help get the word out about the holiday ornaments he is now creating.
He’s leery of too much private information being made public via social media so I convinced him to let me create a Facebook gift application so that I could give all of my Facebook friends a piece of his art best suited to their taste.
WASHINGTON—After a year in which Twitter and Facebook catalyzed protest movements in Iran and Moldova and authoritarian regimes around the world unleashed new tools of Internet control, Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD), Chairman of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (U.S. Helsinki Commission), and Co-Chairman Congressman Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL) will hold a public briefing:
“Twitter against Tyrants: New Media in Authoritarian Regimes”
Thursday, October 22, 2009, 2:00 p.m.
1539 Longworth House Office Building
This briefing will consider the ways in which new media and Internet communication technologies affect the balance of power between human rights activists and authoritarian governments. Panelists will focus on new media’s role in protests and elections, the ways in which it empowers civil society activists, and the darker side: how dictators use new technology to control and repress their citizens.
The following panelists are scheduled to speak:
· Daniel Calingaert, Deputy Director of Programs, Freedom House
· Nathan Freitas, Adjunct Professor, New York University Interactive Telecom Program; developer of
groundbreaking technology for protests
· Evgeny Morozov, Yahoo! Fellow at Georgetown University’s E.A. Walsh School of Foreign Service;
contributing editor, Foreign Policy
· Chris Spence, Chief Technology Officer, National Democratic Institute
###
The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the U.S. Helsinki Commission, is an independent agency of the Federal Government charged with monitoring compliance with the Helsinki Accords and advancing comprehensive security through promotion of human rights, democracy, and economic, environmental and military cooperation in 56 countries. The Commission consists of nine members from the U.S. Senate, nine from the House of Representatives, and one member each from the Departments of State, Defense, and Commerce.
Here is a great example of using social media to not only reach your audience but affect their behavior. The social media used in this case was YouTube which has the power of viral marketing.
