Social Media 101

Brenda’s Social Media 101 Slideshow from the Lunch & Learn Series sponsored by the Nevada County Association of Realtors.

Social Media 101 For Beginners

 

How Social Media and Twitter are changing the way we connect online

Last week I was dining at Centros in Sacramento with my 60+ year old friend. We talked quite a bit about social media. She works in the fund development department for a non-profit. She asked me to explain to her what all the fuss is about with regards to social media. She said that she did not understand why anyone would waste their day in front of a computer talking to people on line when relationships are most powerfully built in person. She felt overwhelmed with all the different online communities and she was clearly having a hard time wrapping her brain around Twitter. “I just don’t get it,” she kept saying. So, I gave her the highlights of how social media and Twitter are changing the way we connect online.

 

A brief history of Social Media

On a very basic fundamental level, humans have a great desire to connect and share with one another. When you understand that, then you will understand the power of social networking sites. It’s also important to understand that social media evolved from the early 80’s. People were connecting online via bulletin boards, forums and general chat rooms. My business partner built one of the first IBM PC bulletin boards which the Sacramento PC User group later adopted. The bulletin board (platform) allowed the users to share files, upload and download files, create forums and manage user registration.  Keep in mind there was no Internet at the time. Back then everyone had to dial in to him to connect. He was the “platform.” He was to the users of the PC user group what Twitter is to its users today. Later, came the live chat rooms where like-minded people connected via the Internet to discuss a specific subject matter, i.e.,politics, dogs, motorcycles, etc.

 

Make social media part of your marketing plan

Today, people are connecting online through platforms like Face Book, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter. These platforms facilitate getting a message, product, idea out to the masses in seconds. So, instead of having one person as the hub or platform that allow people to connect, we now have online platforms called social networking sites, which brings us to my friend’s question. “Why would anyone want to connect online when face-to-face is much more powerful?” Here is where the power of social networking sites like Twitter and Face Book are often misunderstood. Just because you are connecting with people online does not mean that you stop using the telephone and other means of communication tools. While having a face-to-face interaction with someone is absolutely the most powerful way to build, nurture, and cultivate relationships, it is also the most time and labor intensive.

With social networking sites, you are no longer limited to your local outreach marketing efforts, which are often expensive. Moreover, your online marketing strategies should not replace your face-to-face efforts of building relationships with your customers. It should be complementary and supplemental. Think of social media as a marketing strategy incorporated into your overall marketing plan and in today’s business environment it is vital to have a PLAN for your business.

 

Brenda Horton owns Hware, a software company that develops business tools for small businesses, entrepreneurs, non-profits, and start-ups. She is the membership co-chair of the Sacramento Social Media Club.

Brenda Horton will be teaching a beginners class on Social Media at the Nevada County Association of Realtors on Friday May 29th from 11:30 am-1:00 pm. For more information and registration call 530-272-2627.

 

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Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing & the Next Phase of Marketing on the Web

What Is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound Marketing is marketing focused on getting found by customers.

In traditional marketing (outbound marketing) companies focus on finding customers. They use techniques that are poorly targeted and that interrupt people. They use cold-calling, print advertising, T.V. advertising, junk mail, spam and trade shows.

Technology is making these techniques less effective and more expensive. Caller ID blocks cold calls, TiVo makes T.V. advertising less effective, spam filters block mass emails and tools like RSS are making print and display advertising less effective. It’s still possible to get a message out via these channels, but it costs more.

Inbound Marketers flip outbound marketing on its head.

Instead of interrupting people with television ads, they create videos that potential customers want to see. Instead of buying display ads in print publications, they create their own blog that people subscribe to and look forward to reading. Instead of cold calling, they create useful content and tools so that people call them looking for more information.

Instead of driving their message into a crowd over and over again like a sledgehammer, they attract highly qualified customers to their business like a magnet.

Place Independent Work

Place Independent Work

Work any place from any device. If you can connect to the Internet you can use smartphones, internet mobile devices, ultra mobile pcs, laptop computers, and desktop computers to access you data. Your computer systems should not require you to come to an office to get your work done. Instead your information should be accessable where ever you need to work. Be it home office, a local shared office, internet cafe, car, regional office, central office, client location, a job site, etc. Place Independent Work allows workers to get there job done where every it is most productive.

Examples

Envision Plan Act™ – Hware’s Internet based system for Strategic Planning, Business Planning and other types of plans.

GEMS-General Engineering Managment System – Hware’s Internet based system for Dispatch, Time, Mobilization, Equipment Service & Repair, and Job Safety for Heavy Construction industry.

Tools / Applications

LogMeIn.com – remote access and desktop control software for your computer. You can use LogMeIn to control your Windows or Mac PC from any computer that has a browser and Internet access.

Gmail.com – is a new kind of webmail, built on the idea that email can be more intuitive, efficient, and useful.  After all, Gmail has: less spam, mobile access and lots of space.

Google Apps – web applications for communication and colloboration. Google Apps includes Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs (share online documents, presentations, and spreadsheets), Google Sites (create websites and seure group wikis).

Zoho.com – is a suite of online applications (services) that you sign up for and access from our Website. The applications are free for individuals and some have a subscription fee for organizations. Our vision is to provide our customers (individuals, students, educators, non-profits, small and medium sized businesses) with the most comprehensive set of applications available anywhere (breadth); and for those applications to have enough features (depth) to make your user experience worthwhile.

Basecamp – project management and collaboration. Collaborate with your team and clients. Schedules, tasks, files, messages, and more. By 37signals

Highrise – online contact manager and simple CRM. Keep track of who your business talks to, what was said, and what to do next. By 37signals

Salesforce.com – easy-to-use Web-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution for sales, service, marketing, and call center operations that streamlines customer relationship management and boosts customer satisfaction.

SurveyMonkey – enable anyone to create professional online surveys quickly and easily.

Box.net – is the easiest way to share and manage your files online.

Internet Marketing

What is Internet Marketing

also referred to as web marketing, online marketing, or eMarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet.

The Internet has brought many unique benefits to marketing, one of which being lower costs for the distribution of information and media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both in terms of providing instant response and eliciting responses, is a unique quality of the medium. Internet marketing is sometimes considered to have a broader scope because it refers to digital media such as the Internet, e-mail, and wireless media; however, Internet marketing also includes management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management (ECRM) systems.

Internet marketing also refers to the placement of media along different stages of the customer engagement cycle through search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), banner ads on specific websites, e-mail marketing, and Web 2.0 strategies

Search engine marketing, or SEM

is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, SEM methods include: search engine optimization (or SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it “ranks,” the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. Go to www.netconcepts.com/learning-center/ for good articles on SEO. Go to www.seobook.com for SEO tools, learning modules.

A web banner or banner ad

is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking to the website of the advertiser. The advertisement is constructed from an image (GIF, JPEG, PNG), JavaScript program or multimedia object employing technologies such as Silverlight, Java, Shockwave or Flash, often employing animation, sound, or video to maximize presence. Images are usually in a high-aspect ratio shape (i.e. either wide and short, or tall and narrow) hence the reference to banners. These images are usually placed on web pages that have interesting content, such as a newspaper article or an opinion piece. Go to Yahoo.com for examples of banners ads.

E-mail marketing

is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. ConstantContact.com is a company that provides the tools for e-mail marketing.

Viral marketing

is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages. One of the most successful examples of viral marketing is the Will it Blend? campaign.

Web 2.0

describes the changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aim to enhance creativity, communications, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web culture communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies.

Open Source Software

What is Open Source Software

Free and open source software, also F/OSS, FOSS, or FLOSS (for Free/Libre/Open Source Software) is software which is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code. This approach has gained both momentum and acceptance as the potential benefits have been increasingly recognized by both individuals and corporate players.

‘F/OSS’ is an inclusive term generally synonymous with both free software and open source software which describe similar development models, but with differing cultures and philosophies. ‘Free software’ focuses on the philosophical freedoms it gives to users and ‘open source’ focuses on the perceived strengths of its peer-to-peer development model. Many people relate to both aspects and so ‘F/OSS’ is a term that can be used without particular bias towards either camp.

Free software licenses and Open-source licenses are used by many software packages. The licenses have important differences, which mirror the differences in the ways the two kinds of software can be used and distributed and reflect differences in the philosophy behind the two.

Our favorite Desktop Open Source Software

Ubuntu – Linux based operating system alternative to Windows and Mac OS. It can be used on desktop, laptop computer operating system or as a server operating system

OpenOffice – is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. You can use this instead of Microsoft Office

Mozilla Firefox - the premier free, open-source browser. Tabs, pop-up blocking, themes, and extensions. Considered by many to be the world’s best browser. Use this instead of Microsoft Internet Explorer or Apple Safari

Mozilla Thunderbird – email application is more powerful than ever. It’s now even easier to organize, secure and customize your mail. Use instead of Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail.

Our favorite Server Open Source Software

Ubuntu – Linux based operating system alternative to Windows and Mac OS. It can be used on desktop, laptop computer operating system or as a server operating system

Apache – open-source HTTP server for modern operating systems including UNIX, Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. The goal of this project is to provide a secure, efficient and extensible server that provides HTTP services in sync with the current HTTP standards. Apache has been the most popular web server on the Internet since April 1996

MySQL – a database server software that runs on Windows, Mac OS or Linux. Use this instead of Microsft SQL Server, Oracle, or Sybase

PHP – is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML

LAMP Server – Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP. Most common Web Hosting Server setup

Ruby on Rails – is an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language. It is often referred to as “Rails” or “RoR”. It is intended to be used with an Agile development methodology, which is often utilized by web developers for its suitability for short, client-driven projects.

WordPress.org - is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time. We use this for www.hware.com.