Ning, the do-it-yourself social network, has taken a hint from Apple and Facebook by announcing the availability of Ning Apps. This is a big deal because now every Ning social network, whether they’re for personal groups or professional organizations, will be able to install many useful apps in no time at all.
There are approximately 90 Ning Apps already available in the directory. Everything will be managed by the Tab Manager, which will allow you to control the navigational structure of your Ning network as well as the layout of your shiny new Ning Apps. Read the rest of this entry »
Whenever I use social media tools, I find myself communicating in two languages: English and Tagalog. I use the former to talk to international contacts, and the latter for local contacts. It’s not a strict rule, since I prefer to use English, but there are some cases where sending updates in Tagalog is preferable or unavoidable.
For bilingual web workers, social networking can be a juggling act. How can we interact in one language without alienating part of our audience? Read the rest of this entry »
Nothing will motivate you to achieve your goals like making other people aware of the specifics of what you’re aiming to accomplish. At least for me, the threat of public shame is a great tool you can use to prevent yourself from giving up on your dreams. Making others aware of your plans also has the added benefit of potentially providing you with great feedback about how you might best go about carrying through with them, too. The web is a great place to publicize your professional goals, especially if that’s where you do the bulk of your work. But just tweeting your aim doesn’t mean it’ll come through. As with most things, a plan will help increase your chances of success.
Step 1: Alert the People You Trust
If you’re worried about the feasibility of your goals, bouncing them off of your closest friends and relatives is a sure way of getting some invaluable early feedback. You probably have some good friends who aren’t afraid to make you look foolish (and, in fact, might relish the opportunity), so you don’t have to worry that they’ll pull punches to spare your feelings. Conversely, if you have a good idea, they won’t summarily cut you down, like some of your more trollish online contacts might. Read the rest of this entry »
Generally speaking, when I’m sharing recently discovered web tools, I try to organize them along a common theme, or a goal that they can be used to achieve. This time around, I just wanted to share three somewhat unusual, but genuinely useful, web tools with you. Trying to fit them into a specific theme or goal would only detract from their myriad possible applications, so without further ado, here they are:
printfriendly — Make Any Site Printer-Friendly
Many sites nowadays will have a “printer-friendly” button, which often just strips the web page of any fancy CSS and gives you a bare-bones text document that won’t eat up too much of your precious ink or toner. I know that for all the recent web site work I’ve done for clients, I always make sure to include just such a version. Unfortunately, not everyone does the same. Read the rest of this entry »
Given the vast and growing number of online tools available to web workers, choosing which to use can seem overwhelming. This makes it easy to obsess more about the tools themselves rather than the strategy for using them, as if by choosing the perfect tools you can guarantee the success of your ventures. Of course, that is hardly ever the case. Even great tools, used with very little planning, will seem mediocre at best.
I often give advice to people who are interested in starting online businesses. One of my “pupils” (so to speak) is new to social media, but after the recent media Twitter craze, he decided that he was going to use it to promote his site because, “that’s where everyone is.” A couple of days later, he emailed me and said that he wasn’t satisfied with his results, so he decided to follow the advice he read on a blog and try Facebook instead. Again, after only a minimal increase in his traffic, he wrote to me asking, “Have you ever tried StumbleUpon?” My immediate reaction was, “Social media marketing: you’re doing it wrong.”
This problem of constantly flipping tools doesn’t just happen with social media. I’ve had several clients who’ve spent weeks obsessing about Movable Type vs. Blogger vs. Joomla, for example.
So what should you be doing instead of obsessing about the choice of tools? Read the rest of this entry »
Recently, on the OStatic blog, we covered ConvoTrack, an easy-to-use free web app that allows you to track online conversations on social media sites related to content that you post or read. (Hat tip to TechCrunch for calling it out.) There is no download required to use it, just a simple adjustment to the prefix of any URL you are interested in tracking online conversations about. I’ve been using it on a daily basis, and I especially recommend it for anyone who writes online.
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Although it may not be a new concept, indirect marketing has experienced tremendous gains in popularity in recent years. Chalk this up to the growing influence of the social network as a culture-shaping force. That said, does marketing through these channels in an indirect fashion actually pay off? Is there even a way to accurately measure the influence of that kind of promotional effort?
As web workers, we’re no strangers to social networks. In fact, they’re probably part and parcel of what you consider your active working time every day. But how do you use them? Take Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki), for instance. He’s fairly direct when it comes to marketing via those channels. In fact, he’s often accused of spamming because of his approach.
The indirect approach, which one might attribute to someone like John Hodgman (@hodgman), basically involves being so interesting, funny, useful, or bizarre that people can’t help but try to find out more about you, and, as a result, the products or services you offer. Key success factors for indirect marketing include not looking like you’re trying to actually sell anything, the art of which is described well in this article at Babeloon.com.
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As a web worker, I have clients who are always looking for new and more affordable ways to market what they do. I’m also faced with the constant need to better promote what I’m doing to continue to grow my business. The landscape on the web is undergoing a deep and vast transformation because of social media, and it is affecting the way we market what we do. Public relations will never be the same.
Two years ago, a company called Shift Communications introduced the concept of social media releases that incorporated social networks, microblogs, audio and video elements into text releases. A year later, they expanded their concept to include social media newsrooms, spiffing up the traditional text-heavy online newsroom with more multimedia bells and whistles. PitchEngine is a freemium Web app and hosting service that helps non-techies – and even non-PR-types – to build their own social media releases and social media newsrooms.
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Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
