Social Media & Business Technology » Tech Talk

Recipe for Tweet Success…

Nadine — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:32:12 +0000

ARE YOU-

WONDERING how to make the most out of Twitter as a Social Networking Tool for business or personal use? Are you curious about reaching your target audience and getting quality followers? Are you a Newbie who wants to look like a PRO? Do you want to combine your social networking efforts to have maximum impact using minimal time? If you answered yes to any of these questions this webinar is for YOU!

Recipe for Tweet Success is:

A 90 minute webinar designed to sharpen your Twitter skills and optimize your use of Twitter, for beginners and seasoned Twitterers alike.

This webinar will cover the following:

Getting Started, Statistics and Trends
What to Tweet About
Tips on Growing Followers
Twitter Tools
Integrating Twitter into Marketing Strategy
Twitter Case Study
Business Use
Q&A

**Space is limited – reserve your seat today!

Registered participants will receive a recording of the webinar and .pdf handouts.

To participate, sign up here for $49.99:

For more information contact: Nadine

Paperless Post

Nadine — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 18:24:20 +0000

Enjoy a clip from demogirl.com:

Today I’m going to show you another great service that deserves some attention – Paperless Post allows you to create online invitations that resemble actual stationary. The invites are highly customizable and your friends don’t need to sign up for anything in order to respond.

Twitter: Follow CDC Swine Flu Tweets

Nadine — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:50:51 +0000

Keep up to date with current health messages from the CDC related to Swine Flu.

http://twitter.com/cdcemergency

Another practical example of using Twitter.

Nadine

Twitter for Business… more tips for your tweets

Nadine — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 17:32:00 +0000

Here is an in-depth video on using Twitter for business. Set aside some time to view this or return frequently as time allows.

Ideas About WHAT to Tweet

adapted from: 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.
When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.
Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes us feel like you’re not “that guy.”
When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.
Don’t toot your own horn too much. (Man, I can’t believe I’m saying this. I do it all the time. – Side note: I’ve gotta stop tooting my own horn).
Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the heck out of others, too.

Twitter 101: Simple Tips for Your Tweets #1

Nadine — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 14:49:12 +0000

modified content by Terrence O’Brien, posted Mar 26th 2009 at 1:59PM

I thought I would blog a small series of posts on Twitter so all the NE Internet subscribers could be on the same page .

Since I am a visual person, I would like to begin this post with a short twitter video presentation from the University of YouTUBE.

I know that you have been hearing all about this new and growing service, but what exactly is it? Twitter? is this something I do after drinking too much coffee or what?

What is Twitter?

Twitter is what is known as a microblogging service, an online place where you can ‘post’ short messages, or ‘tweets’ of 140 characters (including spaces). These ‘tweets’ can be read by anyone who is ‘following’ you (essentially, subscribing to your tweets). Similarly, you can follow (subscribe) to the tweets of anyone you want, from friends and family to favorite celebrities, publications and Web sites (like Switched, which you can ‘follow’ on Twitter by clicking here). The tweets of your followees show up in a main feed right on Twitter’s main page, one after the other in chronological order.

At its most basic, Twitter is a dedicated status updating service à la Facebook (in fact, Facebook seems to have modeled its recent upgrade on Twitter), with which you can keep people up-to-date with your life — be it what you’re doing at a particular moment in time, a link to an interesting Web site, or something as mundane as what you had for lunch. In our profession you can market yourself using twitter and providing tweets about what you just had for lunch. Was it good, was it nutritional, was it something your peers or clients would find significant or useful? Do you want the whole twittering world to know about this restaurant and what are the particular features you want to shout in your tweet? Go for it!

Why You Should Use Twitter!

To increase your profile

Twitter is not just a fad. When very high profile folks begin evangelizing Twitter, it’s worth closer examination. Here’s what some of those gurus reported:

Duct Tape Marketing founder John Jantsch identified three big advantages of Twitter, “(1) I get great insight when I ask questions, (2) let’s face it, I get traffic and (3) people on Twitter spread my thoughts to new places.”

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com said, “We’ve found that Twitter has been a great way for us to connect on a more personal level with our employees and customers. We use it to help build our brand, not drive direct sales. It’d be like asking how does providing a telephone number for customer service translate into new business when they are mostly non-sales-related calls. In the long term, Twitter helps drive repeat customers and word of mouth, but we’re not looking to it as a way of driving immediate sales.”

Bestselling author David Meerman Scott said, “I have personally connected with hundreds of people I otherwise wouldn’t have, and I booked an interview on NPR and a big daily newspaper using Twitter.”

How do you get on Twitter?

You simply go to the twitter.com website register and sign up. Choose a username — something uniquely you, but not embarrassing. If it’s available, try to get your real name. The next step is to start following friends and family that you can find using Twitter’s contact importer, which searches your contacts on Gmail, Yahoo!, or other Web mail services for people on Twitter. If you just want to search by name, that’ll work, too. Following someone is as simple as pressing the ‘Follow’ button on their Twitter page.

Next, it’s time to create your profile. You get one image (so make it count) and 160 characters to explain who you are and what you do to the ‘Twitterverse.’ As you can see, we’re not in Facebook-land anymore. While Facebook and MySpace are filled with various ways to post information, pictures, and annoying applications, Twitter is a more controlled environment — just a name, location, Web site link, 160-character bio, and a picture. Therefore, it’s all about what you say in that 160-character space, especially since people are more likely to read your whole Twitter profile than they are the hard-to-wade-through, gargantuan tomes that end up on a typical Facebook or MySpace profile. In other words, yes, your Twitter profile can get you fired, so watch what you say here (and in your tweets, for that matter).

Stay tuned for more tips on your tweets….

Nadine

ICYOU – Health Related Video Community

Nadine — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:33:39 +0000

HEALTHCARE VIDEO ON DEMAND
Welcome to icyou, the Web’s only destination focused solely on bringing you the whole world of healthcare video. From important medical breakthroughs to the latest diets, from recipes for diabetics to vlogs from cancer patients, icyou is healthcare video. We make it simple to

FIND any health-oriented video you seek from hundreds of certified medical and health professionals, as well as regular people dealing with the same issues you are;

UPLOAD your own video and contribute to icyou’s ever-growing healthcare video community;

WATCH every video anytime, anywhere, as often as you like for free on your computer; and

COMMENT on anything you see, adding helpful tips, pointing out similar videos, or just lending support to others like yourself.

Whatever you want to know or share about healthcare, it’s here, it’s searchable, and it will change the way you think about healthcare information on the web.

Lessons Learned From Flood 2008

Nadine — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:01:45 +0000

As many of you know I live in Iowa City, Iowa,

home of the University of Iowa Hawkeyes and most recently a devastated area of flooding in the Midwest. In the last week Iowa City and Cedar Rapids (sister city) both experienced some very severe weather and flooding with the major impact felt by Cedar Rapids. Thousands of people here were forced to evacuate their homes and businesses regardless of their state of readiness.
This is my second experience with flooding in this area (previously experienced the flood in 2003) as well as a few other weather related events and I feel that this experience validates to me the importance of a few very key things related to technology, communications, and the web. I would like to share this with you so that in the event you run into a similar situation, you can rest assured that you have planned in advance and will be able to communicate and use your technology to the extent possible, not the extent that happens without planning.

Have a Back-Up Plan

and/or alternate place for Web Servers in a remote physical location.
I am a firm believer in copying information on jump and external drives, but if they are in the same physical location as the native files, they may also be lost, damaged, or destroyed. Seriously consider online back-up storeage in a separate geographical location. My web server is in California, so if I go down in Iowa my websites are unphased. If California goes down I have external storeage and can transfer to a local server.

Communication is Key:

Have several lines of communication available because chances are some will go down.
Include the following in your communication arsenal – internet, satellite, landline, GIS, VoIP, SMS or text messaging, and anything else that is available. Keep detailed lists with you of all your important numbers and access information and make sure its up to date!

Use Web 2.0 Technology to Provide Easily Accessible Information

If you haven’t planned ahead and your website goes down – open a blog at blogger and keep everyone up to date on what is going on. As the University of Iowa lost power in some of their buildings they jumped on the Web 2.0 bandwagon and opened a flood blog to keep everyone informed. They also opened a Flikr Photostream to upload daily photos of the action on campus.

Use an Email Management System and/or Electronic Mail Lists for Group Communication

ADA contacted IDA our state association to provide assistance and support. To reach our members we sent out messages using our Google lists, our website and our Constant Contact program. Members were pleased to hear our offer of support. Let your people know that you are concerned and can help!

Use Video to Stream & Record the Action

At one of the University of Iowa Engineering buildings there was a live webcam recording the flood action which allowed everyone to see the increasing river levels over the week. Opps… it went down when the building lost power. Refer to ” Have a back-up plan ” above.

Keep Your Sense of Humor

No technology required!

Nadine

French Chocolate Brownies – Use Online Communities to Blog Food Images

Nadine — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 14:01:09 +0000

french chocolate brownies
Web 2.0 is all about all about creating and sharing user generated content. Flickr is an online community where users generate image content and share it with their friends.

Flickr can be used in a variety of ways to provide interesting content and images on your blog. In addition to offering a number of great food and people images, you can configure photostreams and send blog content directly from the Flickr site.

Learn more here…

Tech Talk # 107 Navigating Nutrition Analysis – Calorie Counter Gadgets

Nadine — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 17:32:16 +0000

Have you noticed the increasing number of nutrition analysis programs appearing almost daily on the web?

Well I have and for the individual practitioner, it’s hard to keep up with all the new online and PC based nutrition analysis programs that are developing in our health conscious world. Let’s face it, people are concerned about their weight and they want a program to help them control it. Actually, they want a program that will do it for them, but we all know that is not going to happen. It’s great that many programs can be set up to assist you the expert in monitoring your clients, and many can be used for logging, tracking, and analyzing food intake and exercise data. The problem is which one do you use and where is the link you need to find it? Help!! Well today I am happy to introduce you to an downloadable online resource (extremely affordable) that will save you time and money. It will help you keep track of new and old programs, online tools, and nutrition communities that are health focused and looking for help from an expert like yourself. The best part is that it will be updated regularly over the year to include new programs and resources as they are developed. This is a no brainer. Learn more here…

I also want to introduce you to a fun new gadget for your Google page or your website or for your clients who like to play.

Track calories and manage meals quickly and easily

Monitor your daily calorie intake and easily manage your diet using this calorie counter. See each meal’s calorie details and sum up your daily total. Use the settings to see your recommended average daily intake.

Your source for the Coolest Gadgets on the Web! LabPixies is a free online directory for web gadgets. Our gadgets are available for personalized homepages like Google, Live.com, Netvibes and Pageflakes, and can also be embedded on most blogs and web pages. Simply click on the “add to” button of your favorite website and start personalizing your online experience!

Calorie Calculator
Calorie calculator, a simple way to monitor you daily calorie intake, easily manage your d… More Info >>

Tech Talk #105 Guidelines for Effective Online Meetings

Nadine — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:49:05 +0000

Tips for Effective Internet-based Meetings

With electronic meetings on the rise, it’s more important than ever to know how to make them as effective as possible. Here are some guidelines. For information on how to engage your clients using VoIP visit here.

	Prepare, prepare, prepare. When it comes to meeting productivity, a little extra prep time can go a long way. Preparation for an electronic meeting is just as important – if not more so – as when a group gathers face to face. It’s important to have a meeting agenda and distribute in advance (include meeting date, time and assigned phone number or pass code, if applicable).
	Keep it simple. Attention wanders during meetings – even more so in electronic meetings. Use the visual power of the Internet to reinforce key points and organize presentations into short segments so the audience can better retain information.
	Use audio to your advantage. With the absence of face-to-face contact, it’s important for the meeting facilitator to introduce himself and all meeting participants. Make transitions easy to follow by providing vocal cues to introduce new segments of the presentation.

Research findings suggest corporate America should pursue the following Internet policies and solutions:

	Executives should encourage corporate adoption of Internet conferencing to reduce costs and improve productivity.
	When implementing Web-based conferencing in your organization, begin with specific applications in functional areas. Businesses that implement Internet conferencing to address a specific need, with tangible goals, will be more successful. Identify applications that will reduce sales or product cycle time (remote training, staff meetings), help you reach customers and prospects more efficiently (Web seminars), facilitate communication within remote work groups (weekly project meetings) or improve investor relations (Web-based quarterly earnings updates, shareholder meetings).
	Organizations already using audio and videoconferencing should add Web-based conferencing to enhance meeting practices. Advances in Web-based technology now make it possible to meet with others via the Web to collaborate on projects, present information and reach new customers in ways never before imagined. The survey shows that employees are comfortable using the Internet and welcome new collaborative solutions.
	When selecting an Internet conferencing provider, companies should focus on quality as their chief criterion, choose a provider offering solutions that enhance the meeting experience and minimize technical obstacles. The underlying technology should be transparent to the participants. Other requirements, such as ease of use and secure transmission, rank lower on the list of user needs.
	Organizations should establish a policy that requires business travelers to consider audio, video or Web conferencing as an alternative. If travel is warranted, Internet use while on business trips will help employees manage professional and personal duties, while reducing the stress of travel. Remote access during travel helps professionals stay in touch with the office, manage travel plans, keep in touch with family and attend to personal tasks such as banking and shopping.
	Remember that technology is simply the means to an end – the real focus is collaboration. Web-based conferencing tools enable us to work in new ways. But collaboration is a process, not an automatic result of having people connected electronically. Organizations that invest in the technology without a commitment (training, executive-level endorsement, specific objectives, improvement in meeting skills) to new collaborative processes are not likely to reap the benefits of these promising new tools.