Events – Create, Publicize, and Promote – Part III

Disclaimer: As with everything on this site, the following is representative of my best assessment of the tools discussed and their features and functions. As such, it is recommended that you not take my word as “being law” (smile).

Before we get started on Part III, here are links to Part I and Part II. If nothing else, reading these first might give you a little better feel for the conversation. Continuing ……

FaceBook: FaceBook creates some very interesting possibilities for creating and publicizing events. You first have to look at two things…even more enormous numbers in terms of members than LinkedIn (a plus) and a much more open network than LinkedIn (also a plus). Then you need to evaluate those areas on FaceBook that will allow you to create events. I count three. They are: your own profile page, FaceBook Group Pages, and FaceBook Fan Pages. If it is your goal to promote your business in addition to your event, I am going to suggest that you use Fan Pages for this purpose. Fan Pages, you see, are maybe more often used as Business Pages.

The events application is really very nice. It does allow you to broadcast your event to your friends in your network, email to contacts outside of FaceBook, and update your event to your profile. While folks who do not belong to FaceBook will be able to see your event, they must join the network in order to be able to RSVP. Speaking of RSVP, FaceBook does a nice job with that also. If you want to allow for on-line registration for a fee based event, you will want to use something like EventBrite or Constant Contact or your own website. Important Note: I  have never been entirely comfortable with FaceBook. Nothing against FaceBook mind you. I’m just not a FaceBook kinda’ guy. However, and this goes the same for LinkedIn, if you are wanting to be active in putting on events, there is not a better case than this for making as many damn friends on this site as you possibly can (smile).

Your Website or Blog: If you have a website and do not have the capability to create events and have attendees register on-line and pay on-line, I can just about guarantee that this oversight can be corrected. Call your web geek if that is not you. WordPress.org blogs can use a variety of third-party plug-ins to accomplish this task. This is a WordPress.com blog so that is a little more limited but even I could easily create an event or events on this site and then provide a link to a third-party source for on-line registration and payment and could use something as simple as an email with a link to direct folks to the event. Pretty easy.

iContact: If you have made the decision that emailing links to your event will at least be a part of your promotion efforts, but you would like a nice looking invitation to be a part of that email, consider iContact. For starting at $9.95 per month you will have access to over 200 templates and an email newsletter program to boot. Not too shabby.

Constant Contact: Constant Contact is very similar to iContact in terms of features and what it can do for you. A little bit more expensive, however, and this may also be an additional fee, it also has a product specifically designed for events, on-line registration, and on-line payment in one neat package. Definitely worth a look.

EventBrite: There are an awful lot of folks using this service so you had best take a look. Certainly would be a site to link to from your event invitation if that service did not provide for on-line registration and fee pay. Whereas iContact and Constant Contact charge flat monthly fees, EventBrite charges a per attendee fee based on a percent of the admission and a small service fee.

Evite: I have never heard of this service but just received an email invitation to an event via this. What’s better is it appears to be a free service. If it’s free, it’s for me, I’ll take three (smile).

Publishing and Promoting: Here’s where it can get fun and adventurous (smile). Use Twitter to post URL links to your events. Use Ping.fm to post these same links to multiple sites including Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, and many others. Allow Twitterfeed to automatically post new events created in Ning (from the resident “events” RSS feed) to Twitter, FaceBook, and Ping.fm. The “Share on FaceBook” bookmarklet will allow you to capture the URL to any website that you are viewing, say your event on either Ning or EventBrite, and post that to your FaceBook profile. The Hootlet bookmarklet from Hootsuite will do the same thing for Twitter or Ping.fm. SocialOomph (formerly TweetLater) will allow you to schedule tweets ahead of time and could then, therefore, give you the ability to repeat tweets regarding your event. A word of caution on that though. Apparently Twitter has banned repeating Tweets so you may be risking account suspension or worse. Am I missing any? Probably but that should be enough for you to have some fun.

I’m stickin’ a fork in this topic. I’m done. Ain’t gonna’ be no Part IV (smile). Thanks for visiting and best of luck with your events!

Craig

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My Top 12 Choices For Social Media Productivity

search1x.com

When it comes to Social Media, I devote a lot of attention toward making the time I spend as productive as possible. Being active in this medium is, I believe, essential. Trying to do so without taking advantage of the myriad of tools that are available … well, that’s just plain dumb.

Mind you, there are literally 100′s of these apps and, certainly, there are some really great ones that I am either not using or, quite likely, not even aware of. Got to go with what I know and here are my top 12. Today (smile).

iGoogle: This is my home page and this is my command center. Many of the tools that we are going to discuss are found right on this page. Google has a tremendous selection of gadgets that you can bring onto your iGoogle page and what this allows me to do is communicate and coordinate with Twitter, FaceBook, and even LinkedIn without ever having to open a new tab unless I wish to.

Gmail Gadget: Until I find someone to “Wave” to, email remains king. Maybe even after Wave becomes widely adopted which is, for that matter, still a question very much remaining to be answered. The gadget does reside on my iGoogle page. Google has many to choose from including those for hosted Gmail accounts as I have. Yesterday, the look and feel of this app was updated making it even more functional in its ability to allow me to conduct, if I wish, all email activities without even going to my Gmail page.

TwitterGadget: Also on my iGoogle page. This is actually a very functional Twitter client much like TweetDeck, Seesmic, or HootSuite. Not as sophisticated, mind you, and it does not have the added capability to post to or monitor FaceBook but, it’s a great little gizmo none the less.

Google Reader: Again, you guessed it, on my home page (smile). I probably subscribe to 15-20 news sources and blogs that I find to have consistently interesting articles. Whenever a new article is posted on one of these sites, it gets added to my reader which I can them peruse at my convenience. My iGoogle gadget allows me to get a quick look at all items in my reader by title and source, drill down to get a synopsis of the article, or click to go to the original source. If I wish, I can go to my full reader and check articles based on everything that is in there or by folders that I have established for each to be filed under. I also have the ability to, right from within Reader, share any article to Twitter, FaceBook, Posterous, or many other sites. Pretty cool.

Google Alerts: I am using Google Alerts to scan the internet for articles that may be of interest to me. Alerts are generated based on keywords that I have specified. All articles pulled by alerts are fed to …. my Google Reader.

ReadTwit: This is a very cool little tool! One of the frustrating things about Twitter is that you have all of these folks posting links and 99% of these are in a url shortened format which makes it impossible for you to determine what that particular link might be about, or might take you to, without having to click on it. On top of that, folks are tweeting so fast that there is an excellent chance that you will miss that one really cool link that could make or break your day. ReadTwit monitors the tweets of those folks that I follow on Twitter, grabs the links from each tweet, moves them into my Reader, and actually gives me the title and a synopsis of each. Very cool (smile).

PowerTwitter: This is a FireFox add-on that actually installs itself as an overlay onto your Twitter home page. I know it does a number of things but what I really like is that it takes those shortened urls and translates them and actually shows me the source and the title of the link. When I go to somebody else’s Twitter page it does the same. It also allows me to re-tweet that article from that person’s page if I so desire. I find this invaluable combined with my Reader and ReadTwit. When I view an article on my Reader that was generated by a Tweet, I follow that article back to the Tweeter, find that tweet, and then re-tweet as opposed to just sharing that article. Credit where credit is due. I have also discovered that re-tweeting is scoring me big points in the Twitter community and is also increasing visits to this blog. A win-win.

HootSuite: Hootsuite is a very powerful Twitter client that is gaining an increasingly wide following. There are many out there that prefer it to any Twitter client that is available. I use it for the Hootlet bookmarklet. The Hootlet is a little button that sits on my browser toolbar. When I am looking at an article that I would like to share on Twitter, I just click on the Hootlet. A tweet is prepared along with a shortened link. I can add my comments if I wish and based on space available and then ………. I can send it now or schedule to send it later. As I like to say … HootSweet! (smile).

Ping.fm: This app also sits on my iGoogle page. It allows me to send updates to one or a multiple of sites with one single post. I use it when I want to send an update not only to Twitter but also maybe to FaceBook and/or LinkedIn. By the way, Ping.fm can also integrate with HootSuite. HootSuite is pretty much a Twitter client only. Combined with Ping.fm it can become much more.

Share On FaceBook: Also a button on my toolbar. If I am reading an article I like, I can share that directly to FaceBook along with the link, an article synopsis, an image I can choose for the article, and my comments.

TwitterFeed: I am using TwitterFeed to automatically post to Twitter new articles that I have written along with the new articles that some other special folks (ones that I trust to be consistently good and appropriate) have written. At this time, it is the only auto-post tool that I am using.

SocialScope: Twitter and FaceBook for my BlackBerry Curve 8900. Only available, at this time and as far as I know, for the BlackBerry. May not have yet been generally released. I had to request an invitation to a closed beta launch. These invitations, incidentally, appear to be quite easy to get. You may have to wait a day or two for yours but no biggie. Sweet, very sweet, app. I’ve looked at other Twitter clients for the BlackBerry and, in my opinion, the others don’t even come close!

Whoa! I can, and do, drone on (smile). Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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TwitterFeed – Auto-Feed Your Favorite Posts To Twitter

I’ve been using TwitterFeed for some time now. What I first started using it for was to auto-feed my new blog posts directly to Twitter. It is incredibly easy to set up and use. TwitterFeed allows you to specify your RSS feed URL (note that this is typically not the same as your web page address but you can get it by clicking on the RSS feed icon on your page) and then it tests the feed to make sure that it works. From there, you have a number of options:

1. Choose to post to your Twitter account or to Ping.fm or to Hello.txt. Ping.fm may be of special interest as you can then use that account to forward it to multiple sites including FaceBook and LinkedIn. You could use Hello.txt, in this interface, to post to a specific site from many to choose from.
2. Specify how often you wish to have TwitterFeed check for new post updates.
3. Include title only, description only, or title and description
4. Specify how you wish the URL’s to be shortened. I use bit.ly
5. Add up to 20 characters that will start the post out, close it off, or both.
6. And, if you have any concerns about making sure that any post that goes out is appropriate, you can have TwitterFeed search the post for keywords prior to approval.
7. Finally, TwitterFeed will provide stats on clicked links that you send.

If I am posting my own new articles, why would I worry about keyword authorization? You probably would not. However, you can set TwitterFeed to monitor and send multiple feeds from multiple sources and none of those have to be yours. I see a lot of folks who are sending out posts from Mashable via TwitterFeed. Myself, I have chosen 4-5 blogs that I am very fond of and set them up through TwitterFeed. These are blogs that most folks will not run across with any frequency. The result is that I have a vehicle to share fresh content and I am also able to give props and links to my favorite writers. It’s a win win!

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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Bookmarklets – Sharing Content Via Your Toolbar

dixietrend.com

I was looking at my iGoogle Home Page yesterday and realized that I have a least 10 different ways to share updates and content to the sites I frequent and can do so without every having to leave that page with the exception of when I am visiting a specific website. Even then, my browser toolbars remain stationary. For my purposes, I am pretty much strictly on three social networking sites: Twitter, FaceBook, and LinkedIn. However, at least one of the tools that I am going to discuss on this post will allow me to post to a large variety of other sites if I so desired. Today, we’ll talk about 7 and each is a bookmarklet, or button, on my browser toolbar. For the record, I am still using FireFox 3.1 as 3.5 was causing stability issues with some gadgets and flat out was not compatible with others. A colleague of mine found that he had to delete toolbars altogether to get by similar issues with FireFox 3.5. Having done that, he tells me that it runs flawlessly. Not ready to go that route … yet (smile). Moving from left to right on my FireFox toolbar we have:

Share on LinkedIn: The link to load this bookmarklet can be found at the bottom of your LinkedIn home page. FYI, at the time that I first upgraded to FireFox 3.5, this tool was not compatible and was, therefore, disabled. At any rate, should you see an article that you wish to share on LinkedIn, from the article page itself, click on the bookmarklet and away you go. Please note that sharing articles on LinkedIn is not the same as changing your update. When sharing an article you are actually either posting it to a group page or sending a notice out to your first degree contacts that they may wish to see the article. However, it’s perfect for this task and does allow you to also provide your comments regarding the post.

Hootlet: This button is provided by HootSuite. It is designed to be primarily a Twitter tool. When I say “primarily”, HootSuite will integrate with Ping.fm which gives you the ability to post to multiple sites so you could also use it for that. For Twitter purposes, however, once again from the website page you wish to share, click on the Hootlet button and a Tweet is prepared for you complete with a HootSuite shortened URL (ow.ly format) and the article title. You can also add your comments within the 140 character limit. What is very cool about this tool is that I can choose to send the Tweet now or schedule it to go out later by date and time in 5 minute increments.

Share on Posterous: I’m going to be doing a fairly sizeable post on Posterous maybe later this week but this button is great for posting content directly to your Posterous blog which can then, incidentally, be auto posted (forwarded) to a variety of sites.

Searching For My Perfect “Sharing App”

allpositiveoptions.com

I’ll admit it. I’m more than a little frustrated about now. I have spent a considerable amount of time looking for the perfect application, widget, gadget, or whatever else you might want to call it that will allow me to easily share what I want, and how I want to do it, on the specific social media sites of my choosing. I still can’t seem to find it and I am hoping somebody will comment on this post with the solution I seek. Primarily through trial and error, here’s my established criteria:

1. I want to be able to selectively share on Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, or simultaneously on up to all three. One pass and one click. Check the boxes you want to share on.
2. I want to be able to share content to include links, photos, videos, whatever, and all with one click from the web page that I may be reading.
3. I will want this app to fill in the content name, provide a shortened link if applicable, and allow me to comment on the post.
4. When I share content to FaceBook, FaceBook recognizes the link and does that “content conversion” thing to show what the post was about.
5. This application will also provide me with a way to easily send just a written update to any or all three of these services.
6. I am not interested in something that will also allow me to monitor feeds from these sites. I have other apps that already do that well and don’t need, or want, another.
7. I’m looking for a magic “button” that resides on my browser.

Here’s what I am using and why they do not meet these criteria. Please note that, for the areas listed, if these apps do in fact have these capabilities, I sure as hell can’t figure out how to do it (smile). Your corrections and advice will be highly appreciated!

1. TweetDeck or Seesmic: You need to cut and paste link info into the Tweet. Will also update to FaceBook but not to LinkedIn. Need to open the full client.
2. SocialScope: This is a BlackBerry app. It is, without question, the best Twitter app out there for the BlackBerry. IMHO. It comes close to meeting my needs as a sharing platform, however, my BlackBerry is painfully slow on web page loads and I want a desktop app. This will also not update to LinkedIn.
3. HootSuite: A great app and the Hootlet button is fab for grabbing content but, will not update to LinkedIn or FaceBook.
4. Streamy: May be the closest thing on a desktop but will not update to LinkedIn and is a full blown Twitter / FaceBook client. It also includes, however, a great reader and you can import feeds straight from your Google Reader account if desired.
5. Google Reader: They have just added a “send to” feature in Google Reader but it only works from within Reader itself and does not include LinkedIn. No way to send plain text updates.
6. Digsby: I looked at this yesterday and had high hopes. It will share to all three sites and does so nicely. It is also a full client that seems to run in the background. However, it just did not seem completely polished and my computer speed seemed to slow down substantially. Maybe just me? FYI. This was the only app I saw that actually will monitor update feeds from LinkedIn.
7. ShareThis: Works with all three sites and is a simple button on my browser. You do have to send different posts for all three sites, however. And, it does force you to send content to both FaceBook and LinkedIn. No simple text updates.
8. GizaPage: If all you are interested in is having one page where you can go and tab click to each of your actual social media sites, look at GizaPage. This site is actually designed as a place for you to send folks to learn more about you and connect to you. One link on your signature line. However, if you go to the page it will recognize you as the owner (at least from your desktop) and then you can go to any of your sites and operate them just as you would if you went to them directly.

Here seem to be the two best for what I want to do:

1. Hellotxt: This does not meet my exact specifications but it does allow you to update simultaneously to multiple sites, including LinkedIn, and include content on the updates. It’s really pretty cool. Check it out.
2. Ping.fm: Very similar to Hellotxt. Practically a twin. Also has some interesting apps including HootSuite and I had noticed previously that these two have some sort of relationship.

Ultimately, all of this comes down to specific needs and applications. Each of these tools excels in different areas. You will probably settle on selecting a few.

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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