The Netpreneur Blog » twitter

Ten Ways that HR Staff can get involved in Social Media

admin — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 03:19:47 +0000

On Wednesday 28 April 2010, I delivered a presentation to the Adelaide Chapter of the Australian Human Resources Institute, entitled ‘10 Ways that HR Staff can get involved in Social Media‘:

Ten ways that hr staff can get involved in social media

View more presentations from Clayton Wehner.

How to use social media and Web 2.0 in your small business – Slide Presentation

admin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 02:46:08 +0000

On Tuesday 2 March 2010, I delivered a breakfast presentation entitled ‘How to use social media and Web 2.0 in your small business’ to members of the Eastside Business Enterprise Centre in Adelaide.

Here are my slides from that presentation:

How to use social media and Web 2.0 tools in your business

View more presentations from Clayton Wehner.

Assorted Links and Stuff V

Netpreneur — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:41:36 +0000

Need a good feedback tool? Try Kampyle
Prezi – the zooming presentation editor
Qik – share live video from your mobile phone
Twitter to introduce new tools for business
Inside the new Google Search
Eyetrack – where do people look when they view your home page
25 places to find awesome stock photos – free and cheap
How do I get more people to view my YouTube videos?
99designs – run a crowdsourcing design competition online
10 Wordpress Plugins guaranteed to save you time
10 free digital tools for start-ups

Are you Tweeting?!

melissanorfolk — Wed, 13 May 2009 11:12:16 +0000

You’ve no doubt heard of Twitter!

For the benefit of any newbies, Twitter.com has been around for a couple of years now and is a micro-blogging tool. It allows you to post short answers of no more than 140 characters to the question “What are you doing?”. The idea is that you “follow” those who you want to keep in touch with and they in turn “follow” you so you end up with a followers/or friends list of people who can see your regular posts or tweets.

But what the heck for? You might ask ….

Well it is true that many people use it purely for personal purposes so their tweets may be something like “walking the dog” or “time for lunch” so many see twitter as a trivial waste of time.

So are there business uses for Twitter?

Yes, when used with a business goal in mind, twitter can help you build your network and reputation and promote your business.

Here are some examples:

774 ABC Melbourne radio use twitter mainly to give traffic updates which is great for commuters accessing twitter on their mobile phones. They also give updates of news headlines and upcoming programs. See: http://twitter.com/774melbourne

AMC Australasia use twitter to post job vacancies. See: http://twitter.com/amctopjobs

If you want to build your reputation in a particular topic area you could micro-blog about the topic in the same way you would on a blog but much shorter posts! You can also “retweet” which is pass other people’s relevant posts on to your followers.

Some Australian business tweeters :

Here are a couple of recent related articles if you’d like to do further reading:

Join the Twitterati, Sydney Morning Herald
Australian brands using Twitter listed by industry, Fanbloddytastic
Twittering chefs, Sydney Morning Herald
Australia’s Top 100 Influential Twitterers, Social Networking News Daily

I only jumped on the twitter band wagon very recently, see: http://twitter.com/melissanorfolk

Are you tweeting? See you in twitterville!

Twitter: friend or foe?

Netpreneur — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 06:26:29 +0000

My colleague Geoff Jennings posted this video on his blog last week and I thought it was appropriate for the Netpreneur audience. It reminds us about some of the underlying weaknesses of Twitter (and other social networking websites). Whilst Twitter might be the latest and greatest thing on the web, there are also negative elements of this social networking tool which suggest that it could be a short-term fad – specifically that it is addictive, that it creates ‘artificial’ interactions between people, and that it can be a huge waste of time if not employed wisely! Indeed, micro-blogging will never remove the need for good old fashioned face-to-face, human contact. That’s not to say that Twitter won’t be useful as a means of communication in your business….give it a try.

Action List: Secure your name on social networking sites

Netpreneur — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 06:16:58 +0000

It’s a good practice to secure your ‘name’ on the plethora of social networking sites on the web, if only to deny others from securing the name first.

The other day I tried to secure the username ‘boomerangbooks’ on MySpace, only to find that it has been taken already by a small bricks and mortar bookstore by the same name in Texas, USA. Doh! Not that I was intending to use the MySpace account anyway….but it did teach me a lesson and gave me an idea for a post!

At the very least, I recommend that you get out there and secure your name on the most popular services quicksmart - namely Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. If you have the time, then you might consider doing same for those listed on the Wikipedia list of social networking sites. And here’s another list of niche social networking sites for you to sign up to as well.

Ultimately, it may be worthwhile signing up to these sites for the SEO value alone: because many of them allow you to specify your website or blog URL on a profile page, which in turn is indexed by the search engines.

It won’t be physically possible to maintain an updated profile on every site, but Ping.fm is a good tool for ’syndicating’ your updates and blog posts to all of your social networking accounts at once.

A prediction: the growing popularity of Twitter and the ability to register multiple names/any name that you wish on that site will result in major stinks in the coming months….in the meantime, make sure you snap up the account names that will be useful for your business.

Assorted Links and Stuff III

Netpreneur — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 06:50:47 +0000

A collection of interesting articles, links and helpful stuff that I have come across recently:

WebEquity – a community site bringing together entrepreneurs with business ideas and anyone willing to work on an equity and/or revenue share basis to make them a reality.
Templates and examples for planning, analysing, designing and testing a website
How Twitter can help at work
Copyscape – a tool for finding plagiarism of your content on the web
A list of niche social networking sites
And another list of social networking sites on Wikipedia
How to write for the web by Jakob Nielsen and John Morkes – written over 10 years ago but still pertinent
Mofuse – create a mobile version of your website or blog
Google gears down for tough times - For much of its 10-year history, Google spent money at a pace that was the marvel of Silicon Valley. It hired by the thousands and dished out generous perks, including three free meals a day, free doctors, ski trips and laundry facilities, and subsidized personal trainers. But now the GFC is taking its toll.
Tubemogul.com - distribute online video to multiple websites
How to Friend Mum, Dad and the Boss on Facebook - Oh no! Your mom just joined Facebook and what’s even worse, she wants to be your friend. More and more people are finding themselves in this situation today and unsure of what to do. Friending mom and dad, the boss, or other work colleagues opens up the details of your private life for the whole world to see – and you might not be entirely comfortable with that. What’s to be done?
AddThis explanatory video
20 great online image editors
Mypunchbowl – free e-cards for Christmas, Valentines, etc.
Kiva – Loans that change lives. Loan money to African entrepreneurs.

Video: Twitter in Plain English

Netpreneur — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 06:00:42 +0000

For those of you who don’t ‘get’ Twitter, this might help:

Assorted Links and Stuff 2

Netpreneur — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 05:05:59 +0000

A collection of great links and tools that I have come across over the past few weeks:

30+ Apps for Doing Business on Facebook
Starting your own Blog? 29 Tips, Tutorials and Resources for New Bloggers
Twitterholic.com – the Twitter users with the most followers
Australia’s Top 50 Twitter Influencers
Where should I place (Google) Ads on my Pages?
OpenX – open source advertisement serving software
Email campaign case studies (one good, one bad) from Seth Godin
Getting ‘fast’ traffic to your Blog

Action List: Carry business cards

Netpreneur — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 01:40:37 +0000

Although you might be an internet entrepreneur who lives much of his/her life online, it doesn’t mean that you won’t ever interact with people in the ‘real world’ (and I encourage you to get out there and speak to ‘real people’). When you do, it’s important that you have a good quality business card to hand over.

Business cards are relatively inexpensive and you won’t need thousands of them – in fact, I have about 7-8 boxes of old business cards from previous jobs in a storage box at home that I never got round to giving out…I’m sure you do too. It seems that a minimum print run is never below 500!

It’s important that your card is well designed, is in keeping with the online nature of your business (ie. not staid and boring, as many business cards are), and mirrors the graphical elements that make up your website. Remember that branding needs to be uniform throughout your collateral – business cards, website, email signatures, advertisements, flyers, etc.

What ever you do – don’t opt for a templated business card – get one custom designed (try elance for inexpensive designers). Templated business cards look tacky and unprofessional.

The card should contain all of the necessary contact details and your website URL. If it’s appropriate to your business, consider including your Instant Messaging ID (eg. Skype, ICQ or MSN Messenger), as well as the standard telephone, fax, email and postal details. You might even consider adding your IDs for other networking sites, such as LinkedIn or Twitter, if you do business via these channels.

For printing, I recommend using a local printer. There are services online that provide printed business cards – like Vistaprint – but it’s not possible to gauge the quality of the print job beforehand – again, business cards printed on poor quality card look unprofessional. If you deal with a local printer you can request proofs of the work before having the entire print run done. That said, Vistaprint and others are good for small print runs of promotional material (eg Christmas cards).

When receiving business cards from others, always make notes about the individual on the back of the card, so that you don’t forget who they are – particularly if you are attending a networking event and you are meeting lots of different people. If appropriate, send a follow up email several days after meeting the person. This can often be a great source of business leads. Store all contact details in Microsoft Outlook or an online Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, and try to link to the person on LinkedIn.

I use a combination of LinkedIn, Outlook and Interspire’s Email Marketer, instead of maintaining a physical card file of every business card I’ve ever collected.