Its Tuesday night again

You know, I quite like Tuesday nights. I get to show off new things to people who are actually interested in social media.

So tonight, Chris asks how to set up an interactive calendar and for a look at Delicious again. We can do that! I reckon Google Calendar is pretty useful, and is very easy to get it together, add multiple users, subscribe to its RSS feed, and embed it on your website. So let's check that out.

And we really must check out Delicious - especially now that Chris is finally using Firefox. (yep, its TwitterFox you need Chris. Nice to see Veronique being social, dunno where all the others are?).

Veronique points to the unstoppable Sue Waters over in Australia (I taught her everything she knows ;).. she'll love that.. let's see if she finds us with that mention..
See Veronique's post with a link to Sue's tips for new bloggers.

So, hope to see some of you tonight.. we have some more tools to learn. We'll start with a chat first as usual, and then its over to a computer with a new blog post entry at the ready.

New videos worth watching

I picked up a few new videos about social media worth watching:

Linking Lebanon: Activists Experiment with Social Media

Eight minute video documenting the development of digital activism in Lebanon as a tool for organizing, facilitating outreach, encouraging dialogue and raising money. It also sets the stage for more experimenting with Social Media for social change.

Using Social Media for Internal Communication

Abi Signorelli, Director of Internal Communications at Virgin Media talks to James Bennett, Online Managing Editor at Melcrum about the use of social media for internal communication.

How To Use Social Media To Get A Job (embedding disabled!)

The credits crunched, the recession is biting and certain jobs are getting harder and harder to come by, especially by the traditional means of finding employment. To get ahead of the game you need to utilize the social media world in your quest for another job. That's right, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin can all help you to find that next pay-check... here's how!

The Company as Wiki

A fast paced over view of how a US company called Best Buy is using social technology to improve store communication and productivity. Some interesting approaches in this - if you can see past the hype and blue skies.

The social media playlist

As always, these videos are added to the Social Media playlist where you can see lots of pretty interesting videos about social media and related topics.

Moblogging

Felicity arrives, and all plans change. We are now loading photos to Flickr from our mobile phones.

This sort of funny bizness is called moblogging. This is what Wikipedia editors have to say about moblogging:

Mobile blogging (moblogging) is a form of blogging in which the user publishes blog entries directly to the web from a mobile phone or other mobile device. A moblog helps habitual bloggers to post write-ups directly from their cell phone even when on the move. Mobile blogging is popular among people with camera-enabled cellphones which allow them to e-mail/MMS or SMS photos and video that then appear as entries on a web site, or use mobile browsers to publish content directly to any blogging platform with Mobile Posting compatibility.^{[1] [2]}

Tonight, we will be using Flickr and our mobile phones to moblog photos.

1. Create and account with Flickr
2. Scroll to the bottom of your flickr page and click the link to tools
3. To the right of the Tools page, there is a section about uploading to Flickr by email. Click the link that says "upload using your own private email upload address"
4. Create a new contact in your phone and add the email address that flickr has given you
5. Take a photo and send it to that email address (NB. Sometimes, phone providers do not give you a phone with the settings in it to send email.. if this is you, contact your provider and ask them fore the settings)
6. View your photo on your flickr page, and click the link in the right that says "add tag", and type a word that will file this photo with other photos like it.

1, 2 skip a few: RSS, Delicious, and Widgets

I expect tonight we will have only a few - seeing as the snow day saw us skipping last week, breaking our rythm.

Speaking on snow day! Check out what I did that day:



So what about tonight!

Let's review RSS, look at Delicious and add widgets to our blogs. Chris Labes has been going great guns on her blog, making it fancy and taking the opportunity to requests demonstrations on the Tuesday nights. Veronique is right there with her, going further and offering back how to based on Chris' questions! Great Job V. Remember to post requests to your blog in the week before the workshops, so we make sure we're helping YOU develop social media skills.

Workshops and seminars

On Tuesday evenings between 6 and 8pm we meet in The Common Room (A cafe and computer suite on the corner of Bath and George St Dunedin CBD) where beginner and experienced alike come together to share know-how and discover new things about social media.

To start the evening we meet in the cafe and talk about things we'd like to know more about. When we have 2 or 3 things to look at, we move to the computers and follow along as someone demonstrates on a projector.

The beginners really appreciate the pace in these demonstrations, and the experts follow along while updating their twitter and blogs, and taking a new thing further. There is always something new to try and discuss.

If you would like to organise a workshop or have someone explain the opportunities of social media to you and your organisation, feel free to call Leigh on +64(0)21736539 or email leighblackall@gmail.com

Useful information - a good way to sell

This video gives a lot of useful insights about the use of social media in a PR sense. The short and sharp sell line was in the back, with the info up front. This method works, especially in the social media sphere, where most people are actively engaged in looking for information and entertainment. But don't forget the 2 way. Anyone could leave a video response, or make a sharp critique of your work, and there it will be sitting right along side you. So be authentic, and give lots.



The smart thing about this ad, is not only is it on Youtube where it gets linked to all the other videos about Social Media, but that it has identified a story that relates to its product and produced a genuinely informative video. The sell is not too up front, although I would have put it even further back, ie.. not in the video where it to easily gets dismissed as just another push.

Imagine you're in the tourism business, lets say a heliskiing business.. Find a story that you know all your most likely customers will want to know about.. like, what's the best way to find the cheapest air ticket to NZ.. there's probably a better example, but that's just off the top of my head. Make an informative video about that, and see how many views it gets. It doesn't have to have top quality production values, especially if there isn't any other videos to compete with.. it just has to be there, ready to answer the search query, and ready to relate to other videos remotely like it.

You could make a video on how to powder ski, but then yours would be one of a thousand, and is probably getting viewed mostly by people who aren't even considering heliskiing in NZ.

How bad do you want it Chuck!?

You gotta hand it to the Yanks. They sure know how to talk it up!



More social media videos here.