happykatie :: katie rocks out the interwebs

Blogging for Business - Sweeter than cupcakes?

Blogging for Business - Sweet for all sizes

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: business small)

This is a recent presentation I did for an Internet Marketing for Small Business class at the UHSBDC last week.  It's always a challenge to know exactly what a varied audience is looking for when discussing Blogging for Business 101, so this presentation gave a wide overview of companies making a success of it in different ways and the tools they use to get there.

This particular presentation has a few general points on defining a Blog's success (the message primarily being that you need to be creative, pro-active and diligent in finding a definition of success and measuring it - lots of pre-launch evaluation action):

• What are you specifically telling your visitors to do?
  • Eyeball those driven hits to specific areas of your Blog, your services/products page, a special landing page on your main Web site, etc.
• Action in your comments area
  • Try www.intensedebate.com for a more social approach to commenting
• Are you getting talked about, linked to or visited by Influencers?
  • Prolific Bloggers vs. Influential Bloggers - use Technorati or IceRocket rankings to determine who is who influence-wise (you want Influential btw)
• Pick your reader's brains with polls (like www.polldaddy.com)
• Get people signing up for your newsletter (www.mailchimp.com)
• Raise funds (www.chipin.com) and track your campaign goals

Not a comprehensive list, of course - but a basic starting-out kind of thing.  I look forward to running classes where the Social Media training is more hands one versus example-driven and theoretical.  Fun to really get your hands dirty, whether with clients or passionate marketers diving into the Social Media world.

noneck shines the light on China with Qik / live video streaming

Continuing on the power of Qik motif (see Congressman Culberson's live video activity here), Noel Hidalgo (aka:  @noneck) has been off changing the world again, this time stirring up trouble (in all the best ways) in China during the Olympics.

He and John Hocevar (founder of Students for a Free Tibet) were interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now about their experiences as citizen journalists during the Olympics in Beijing -- and their consequent deportation:

AMY GOODMAN: And when did the authorities catch you, deport you? Or did they stop you each time, at each protest?

NOEL HIDALGO: I was not stopped. I was actually—I was harassed by local Chinese every single time. I was told that I was a demon, I was a devil, for showing China in this particular light, because they saw me capturing this footage. On the third protest, where the students unfurled their banner at the ticket office where John and I were both detained, I just happened to have a high-definition consumer camera, and I was thrown up against the wall, my arm was twisted behind my back, and I was subsequently detained for being a Westerner who was capturing this footage. I wanted to show the rest of the world what exactly was going on in China.   

Also, be sure to check out Noel's live video of a Free Tibet protest in Tianamen Square.  I heart Social Media.

Social Media and You - A Schipul Instructional Film

I present to you the latest and greatest from the Schipul Instructional Films series:

Crazy mad props to Jaymac and all of the Schipul crew.  Hands down some of the coolest people I know.  UPDATE:  This Social Media video was based on a 1950's PSA video here (it's even funnier if you watch this one too...)

How to customize your Typepad design (even when you're a slacker like me)

I have to brag on my company's Creative Director Tim Newton, as he has pumped out a couple of really killer tutorials in the last week.

First it was How to Design Email Newsletters for Outlook 2007 and more recently he threw up a super-easy Typepad Blog design customization tutorial.  As long as I have been using Typepad (since back in 7/2003... how the years do fly) I have consistently gone the easy route and used the standard layout with a random happykatie header.

Actually, I kept the exact same look and happykatie header for years and years and years - you remember the one, the 50's diner-esque with hipster kids in cool sneakers hanging out?  Good times.  Now I'm stuck with 2006's autumn theme (my plan was to change seasonally like the always adorable ljc and other fave blogs), but my how seasonal I look now!!  Right?  Right?  Anyone?

Sooo...  check out Tim's great Typepad design tutorial.  And don't judge me for last year's Fall colors.   Mmmmkay?

'Fact checking your ass in a heartbeat' - blogging Social Media with Josh Hallet

Josh Hallett, a social media consultant from Florida, held a workshop with PRSA Houston on the basics of Social Media in the PR and communications industry.  Hi Josh and PRSA Houston :)

Read on for some of Josh's commentary:

The 4 C's of Blogging

 Always a sucker for visuals, check out the 4 C's of Blogging at Logic & Emotion - a site I absolutely adore.

1. Community
2. Content
3. Clarity
4. Consistency

RSS in Plain English

Click To Play

I am addicted to RSS, but you or someone you love may not be.  This might be because you are smoking the crack or enjoy living under a rock (I kid, I kid).  Perhaps this video will help clear the air a bit.

Thanks to Kelsey for the heads up!

Social Media Learnin' 101 (Intro) - The cannonball conundrum

Diving Board Feet, originally uploaded by Canadian Veggie.

Remember that feeling standing on top of the highest diving board at the swimming pool for the first time?  Toes hanging off the gritty edge and the pressure of 4 kids behind you in line hanging off slippery metal ladder rungs mentally and verbally willing you to GO!! before they bake in the summer sun?

You've been watching all the other kids cannonball all afternoon and desperately want to take the plunge into that cold blue water.  But when it's your turn, it's so very hard.  You want to make a splash, but fear a belly flop and the ridicule that comes with that (painful) failure.  But now it's time to hold your breath and 1,2,3... JUMP!

New social media adopters go through the same diving board conflict.  To jump or not to jump?  Treading water in the pool is safe after all, but sometimes a jacknife-tripletwist-halfflip diving
combo is just the thing to get you on the swim team.

Keep in touch for upcoming posts on Social Media Learnin' 101 over the next month.   Next time around we'll talk about the Social Media Mindset and learn how to fit our brains around the online conversational paradigm.

You can subscribe to my RSS feed for automatic updates or email me for when I get-around-to-it updates at happykatie at gmail dot com.  Thanks to Canadian Veggie for the Flickr pic!