training, twitter and seminars
It’s been a busy few weeks here, with lots of training courses we’ve run on and off site and a visit to London for Internet World ’09.
I’ve also found that I’m using twitter more as a micro-blog and using this less, so if you wan’t to keep up to date with articles I think are worth sharing and other useful stuff, make sure you’re following me on twitter.
There are 2 things from all of this travelling and time away from the office I do want to write about:
1) I was asked during one of my sessions if twitter was “just the current thing”. Yes, Twitter may be a fad, micro-blogging / the real-time web / status updating is not. For this reason, I make sure that any training is focussed on use of the tool and less on the tool itself. Understanding why the way we use the internet is changing and how to utilise that, is far more valuable than a how-to twitter session.
2) Please remember that presentations are visual. I sat through a couple of talks at Internet World 09 and I have to say I was mostly dis-appointed (only one, on an exhibitor stand was the exception) – One session seemed to be behind the times, mentioning a technology that will “probably become available in the next year or so”… that I already use and in another the presenter just read off his slides (and people left during the talk). I won’t write an essay here on good presentation, but this is a basic point – DON’T READ OFF SLIDES! Slides should be used to re-inforce what you’re talking about, to offer visual interpretation of a concept or to entertain… not to mirror your speech, people read faster than they speak so your audience will finish before you’ve explained it.
Read Moretwitter favourites
A great tip for sharing the wheat and not the chaff from your twitter feed is to make use of the favourites feed – anything of interest I see on twitter, I’ll click the star to add it to my favourites.
My favourites are then published as an RSS feed, which I’ve added to the side of my blog under my twitter updates – have a look, you’ll find some interesting stuff.
I’ll add to this post a diagram of how all my RSS/twitter stuff floats around the interwebs later
Read More3 great ways to fail in social media
We’re giving away 3 TOP TIPS exclusive to the site, just for you… follow these 3 grrrrrreat ways to fail in social media and we GUARANTEE your business will suffer… so what you waiting for? Read on…
1) Create sock puppets – Copy the example of Cllr ben Grower , caught out today for creating an anonymous username to post comments on the Daily Echo website and then using this account to praise himself and fellow councillors.
Special deals on reduced honesty – whip up your very own social media storm by getting caught out, what are you waiting for?
(Ed: Not only was he caught because he used an email address with his name in it (duuuh), he then denied he was involved – his dishonesty is really quite shocking.)
2) Place you fingers in your ears and sceam “la la la la la” – A sure fire way of failing to market yourself and your business online is not to listen.
Follow the lead of industry giants like Sony, ignore the build up of sentiment by just sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming… you’ll feel grrrreat and if you’re really lucky and you continue doing this long enough, you too could have a class action law suit!
3) Boast boast boast! Want to be the envy of everyone? Don’t bother actually being the best, just tell everyone you’re the best… boasting, worked great for Matt Bacak.
(Ed: actually he has got a lot of press…)
But wait… we’ll throw in one more bonus never-fails to fail tidbit for FREE, yes FREE
4) SPAM SPAM SPAM – Don’t bother engaging with your audience, just shout at them enough – never fails to fail.
Social Tech Solutions is an ethical Social Media Marketer – terms and conditions apply – things in this post may be satirical, if in doubt you should consult your nearest village idiot.
Read MoreSocial Engineering
I received an email today, from a well-intentioned friend that I knew instantly was a hoax that they had forwarded.
We’ve all had them at some point in time “Send this to Bill Gates and 20 friends, he’ll send you a million dollars” for example, they may seem harmless and the opinion is often, well I’ll forward it in case… This kind of ‘too good to be true’ scenario is just that.
But why would anyone bother going to the trouble of starting this kind of chain mail?
Think about the bandwidth that gets wasted, let alone the time for people to click delete or the extra split-second to retrieve your email.
But more importantly, you are enabling thousands of personal emails (often including valuable information like a person’s workplace and telephone number) to potentially get into the hands of internet fraudsters.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant from Sophos warned last year: ‘I would advise users intent on sharing these chain emails to check the website of the company apparently making the offer to determine its authenticity, before deciding to click the ‘forward’ button.’
Simple logical advice.
But this is just chain emails and for most of you (I hope) preaching to the converted… what this lead me onto was to consider some of the “harmless” apps that are available on sites like facebook.
Remember the school yard “What is your pornstar name?” lets imagine there is a Facebook app that shows you my “pornstar name” and asks you for yours… not sure what yours is? Well, its your mothers maiden name and your first pet…
…hold on a minute…
…what would be two key security questions you might need to retrieve a lost password? How many profiles include an email address on facebook – combine the two by “allowing this application to access data about you” and an innocent app suddenly has very real and valuable information.
Social Engineering is about exploiting your very human desire to share, in clever ways to extract information about you and those around you.
The most successful viruses of recent times, have been the most simple – sending an infected zip file with a title that entices you to open it. No amount of clever protection can save you from yourself!
Read MoreFacebook and working from home- can they co-exist?
The way I have structured my business means that I can work from anywhere and at any time, so long as I have a web connection. Everything from my CRM (via Highrise) to project management (Basecamp), even my accounts package, is all online. I log into my VOIP, my 0845 number is active and I’m ready for business. Right now I mostly work from home, and when I started my business I began to track my time. I tend to spend a lot of spare time on the web anyway, and work and social tend to get mixed together. It’s really easy to get chatting to someone, or check Facebook now and again, or get on a load of random forums. I started to find it quite a struggle not to get distracted, and simply demarcating the time didn’t work for me. All that ended up happening was that I’d be in this work/social blend all day and all evening.
The key for me in the end was simple- I loaded up another browser (Flock, lovely for social networking addicts), and transfered everything personal onto that, all my bookmarks, my email, my social networking logins, all my RSS feeds (so many blogs so little time). I then crafted my orignial browser into a work powerhouse- I sorted out all my bookmarks, loaded up work-related RSS feeds and spent some time just getting the browser to feel like I was “at work”. And equally, my Flock browser has no end of stupid add-ons, fun stuff and time wasting opportunities. The simple act of doing this, and loading up the work browser during work time, and the social browser during out of work time has seen my productivity rocket. In fact I would go so far as to say that I spend less time on social networking than I did when I was employed by someone else. It’s gone a long way to separate work and play and has made me far less stressed in the process. It’s worked so well that i’ve done the same on my laptop, and have even used Foxmarks to synch my bookmarks for both browsers across each machine. Now, wherever I am, if I feel the need to chill out, I close work and open play. It’s clear to my mind that this is non-worktime, so I’m so much more inclined after a few minutes so log out, close Flock and load up work.
Simple but effective!
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