Tag: social media

Blogging for Big Kids

kids

Blogging for Big Kids

Small Business Social Media Mentoring Tele-class | Nov. 23, 2009

How to take your blog to the next level with more sophisticated, low cost features like web video, photo slideshows, free Google apps, social media integration and ways to have fun with it while jamming some traffic to your site. This is how you create a place for customers, clients and friends to know what you’re offering, how to get it, why they need it and make it look good for low cost. [Description here]

You can also download this as a PDF here.

Outline

A. Introductions

  1. What’s your 30-second introduction?
  2. I’ll pull up some of your WordPress sites you built since the previous session
  3. Why I’m worth your time — I’ll give a quick intro, so you don’t think I’m making everything up

B. What you’ll leave tonight with

  1. A clear understanding of why a small business might blog and how
  2. Tools to automate and promote your blog
  3. Tools to liven up your blog content

C. Rehash last week’s session

  1. Domain=Address; Hosting=Land; Platform=House
  2. Small businesses should use blogging to build relationships and authority
  3. You should only be blogging if you’re passionate (brief and easy to read)

D. Evangelical Embed

  • Use the existing multimedia world (i.e. Every minute, 20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.)
  • Slide.com for photo slideshows on WordPress.com or Flickr.com otherwise
  • Youtube for video on WordPress.com [youtube Video URL here] or Viddler otherwise

E. Learn to hug RSS

  1. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a chronological feed of your content (Often “YourSite.com/feed”)
  2. Plop that on your Facebook page
  3. Automate those pretty little sidebars with links to social media accounts and content

F. [If time] Give in to Google

  1. Gmail account
  2. Feedburner
  3. Google Calendar

G. Take Aways

  1. Small businesses blog to create connections, build authority and share information
  2. Tools to liven up your blog content: existing video and photos or your own
  3. Tools to automate and promote your blog: RSS feeds with social media and others on your site
  4. If you need any additional help, contact me and maybe we can work together on this stuff.

Audience building with social media: Speaking at the PA Women’s Press Association

On Aug. 30, 2009, we addressed a small assembly of the Southeastern chapter of PWPA on building an audience using social media.

Using examples from the audience, we shared some of our thoughts on using those tools for bringing traffic to political and freelance writing operations. Below see our presentation notes.

Technically Philly vies for Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism

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Update: We lost.

Grant money in journalism is flowing freely in a tightened economy and a historic juncture in print media.

Seems like an opportunity.

So, my two partners and I, who founded Technically Philly, applied for the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, a $10,000 grant to support new ideas in news. See our submission here.

We thought bringing together two niches — the geography of Philadelphia and the industry of technology and innovation — and diversifying revenue streams — going beyond advertising — was a new enough model that it might catch the eye of a judge or two.

We walked into a meaningful business, social and startup community in a major metro region’s creative economies and began reporting, relying on our interests in social media, community reporting and professional and ethical journalism.

We recently introduced advertising — a small first step in monetization –and feel that a grant for $10,000 could afford the three of us an opportunity to work full time for perhaps as much two months or more. Considering how pleased we are with our traffic growth and the response from the community, we’re thrilled by even the chance at the opportunity to give full time to a project none of us have been able to offer even part time thus far.

Unfortunately and entirely unsurprisingly, there is some stiff competition from the nearly 100 submissions that were entered.  Below I share some of the more interesting submissions I saw and my thoughts on our viability.

Continue reading Technically Philly vies for Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism

Despite declining traffic, @ArthurKade is a story, what that means for media

If you leave your car door unlocked, with the keys in the ignition, and your car is stolen, I don’t believe the crime is any less heinous.

Stealing is wrong, no matter the level of difficulty.

I read that somewhere recently and it resonated with me, reminding me of a Philadelphia story that speaks to the importance of old media, the power of social media and the future of them both.

Former Center City financial planner and current aspiring actor Arthur Kade has become a story. Since February, he has been chronicling the throes of his plight charging toward the spotlight through long, personally-involved and mildly misogynistic missives on his blog and in YouTube vidoes of increasingly cartoonish self-admiration.

He’ll lead posts with things like “My game with girls is so sick, but even I couldn’t get through the situation that I had to deal with last night…” and is getting attention for his Kade Scale for rating women.

HOW HE GOT HERE

Whether Joey Sweeney likes it or not, the brains behind Philadelphia culture blog Philebrity first gave the world Kade and has continued covering Kade. That led to Kade, who grew up in the Rhawnhurst neighborhood of Northeast Philadelphia, taking the virtual tour of the Jersey Turnpike when New York’s Gawker took notice. As you might have guessed, a flood of other blogs then followed, yes including popular Hot Chicks with Douche Bags, though the site doesn’t have permalinks. He spent 45 minutes on the Danny Bonaduce nationally syndicated radio show.

What thrust him from Web 2.0 quasi fame to a degree of Philly regional mainstream attention was the profile of him and his plight in this month’s Philadelphia magazine — broken by freelance writer Brian Hickey, who himself had quite a tale in the mag.

Last week, he was an attention grabber for an otherwise anonymous fashion show in a city not known for its fashion shows, and then he was the focus of a rather aggressively named Q&A with the popular city blog Phawker. The final regional touch came with an appearance on a smaller TV news outlet — though it, too, proved critical.

But, what, pray, does this all mean?

Continue reading Despite declining traffic, @ArthurKade is a story, what that means for media

What Twitter is really for

Get your twitter mosaic here.

Oh man, how done are you with Twitter news reports?

Mostly, news stories on Twitter include a nut graf that looks something like the following passage from a recent piece in the New York Times near-obsessive coverage on the social medium:

In its short history, Twitter — a microblogging tool that uses 140 characters in bursts of text — has become an important marketing tool for celebrities, politicians and businesses, promising a level of intimacy never before approached online, as well as giving the public the ability to speak directly to people and institutions once comfortably on a pedestal [Source].

Many media are still reveling in introducing Twitter, in which they take a local user of new media and play their explanation with clever puns or skeptical variations of Twitter, tweeting, twittering, etc. Other pubs are trying their own new takes on the service, to the point that plenty of snarky bloggers and even news hounds are tired of the stories.

Rightly so, considering Twitter just turned three, hardly a new phenomenon. But all these folks joining the game, following that common nut graf, I think, are missing the point, particularly journalists.

Continue reading What Twitter is really for