Monitor your brand

June 15, 2009 · Posted in Free Tools, Reputation, Social Tools · View Comments

Carie Lewis has a great guide to monitoring your brand using iGoogle, it’s easy, free and most of us already have a Google account, plus it pulls all the information into one place.

She includes 5 different categories:

Brand – mentions of your name, including acronyms, misspellings, etc

Current – issues that people are talking about that involve you right now

Detractors – people you know don’t like you but talk about you

Competition – people in the same space as you

Staff – prominent people in your org, like your CEO

And includes a great list of places you should monitoring:

Google Alerts – I hope you know what they are and are already using them!

Filtrbox – a paid monitoring service to make sure we catch everything

Tweetmeme – tells you the most popular tweets about a subject

Twitter Search – shows tweets containing a certain keyword (we don’t use this anymore because we use Tweetdeck separately)

Technorati – shows blogs that mention certain keywords

Blogpulse – another blog monitoring tool

Digg – shows most popular articles on the web

Boardreader – shows forum posts by keyword

Some additional readings

Tags: brand, company, competition, competitors, customers, issues, monitor, monitoring, patrons, Reputation

10 Golden Rules of Social Media

June 1, 2009 · Posted in Social Media, Social Networking Sites, Social Tools · View Comments

Webworker Daily has a great post on the 10 Golden Rules of Social Media Read the full post to get defitions of each

Respect the Spirit of the ‘Net

Listen

Add Value

Respond

Do Good Things

Share the Wealth

Give Kudos

Don’t Spam

Be Real

Collaborate

Social media tools are only that — tools. The real energy, spirit and power of social media is people. We are social media.

Tags: behavior, guidelines, rules, Social Media, social netowrking, social web

Eternal September: be ready to repeat yourself, again

May 28, 2009 · Posted in Learning, Social Media, Social Networking Sites, Social Tools, Training, Web 2.0 · View Comments

Last week I read this post on Seth Godin’s blog and loved it. I tweeted it hoping other people would pick it up. After reading Stephen Abrams post – What is Cloud Computing where he states

I’ve given a few talks lately and I was surprised to get a few questions about “what is cloud computing?” I guess I really do live in the bubble. Then again I have had my share of what is YouTube? eBay? iTunes? questions lately too.

I decided to devote a blog post to Eternal September, its the idea that every fall new freshmen show up and you need to teach them the ropes, rules, guidelines, etiquette all over again. New people show up on the internet everyday. People who don’t understand how blogs work or what Twitter is or why they would use an aggregator & RSS. It can be easy when talking amongst your cohorts to get caught in a bubble, when most of the people you interact with know what the cloud is and use Twitter everyday (or almost every day) you can forget that the majority of people don’t. If you’re like me, you like (or even love) the web and all the awesome things it can do. You probably want other people to do them too. It can be easy to forget how much you’ve learned, how far you’ve come and how much you know that others don’t. What you take for granted can be amazing, intimidating, daunting, foreign or just plain scary to new people. When you’re talking about the web, stop and explain The Cloud or Twitter, even if you think everyone already knows what it is and how to use it. People often feel dumb for asking. Do it with patience and understanding. Don’t just say how awesome it is, explain it in terms that matter to them, how they can use it, how it will save them time, how it will make their life better.

If you’re a leader or an expert or a presenter or even just a blogger you need to be prepared to teach the freshmen. They are looking to you for explanations and guidance. After all you are a senior.

Tags: eternal september, freshmen, Learning, teaching, the bubble, Training

My Problem with LinkedIn

May 11, 2009 · Posted in Reputation, Social Networking Sites, Social Tools · View Comments

and online reputations in general.

I have a profile on LinkedIn (as I do on many social websites) because many people and blogs I think highly of have recommended it. Now I’ll be the first to admit I’m probably not using it right and therefore not taking advantage of it properly. Here is something I noticed recently while updating my profile.

This is a section of my profile showing my position at MRRL. Three people wrote me recommendations (which I appreciate but I’m not sure what good they do)

After these kind people wrote wonderful things about me I can change my position anyway I like. In this case I made myself Princess of Georgia.

I know what you’re thinking, there is no Princess of Georgia and if there were it certainly wouldn’t be me. ;-) That isn’t the point. I can change my job description, title or any part of the position at any point on LinkedIn and those recommendations stay right there.

This is my problem with online reputations. As more of us establish an online identity, we interact more with others we meet online and we base our opinion of them on who they are telling us they are. Why does this matter? Because people have always been dishonest from the small tweaking of facts to outright lies. There is no one following me around the web ensuring I’m not fabricating facts. Even if someone suspected I was not the Princess of Georgia, what could they do? Maybe blog, maybe contact me, maybe tell their friends but those are pretty aggressive and don’t necessarily put the person doing it in the best light and most people just aren’t going to do it.

Because more professional opportunities are based on online reputations, this is important. We come to think of the people we interact with as colleagues and friends and we make recommendations or offer opportunities based on this relationship. Unfortunately there are some things you just can not know about someone unless you’ve worked with them.

I’ve received recommendations on my reputation and I’ve given them too. I’m not saying don’t do it and everyone you meet online is lying to you. I’m just reminding you of the old saying – “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog“.

Tags: identity, linkedin, online, Reputation, social networking