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Social Media: Life, the Universe and

HippopotamusesKaren Blakeman

RBA Information Services www.rba.co.uk

NWLP, 24th August 2011

Contacts details & links

Presentation and links to other resources are at http://www.rba.co.uk/web2

Feel free to reuse and share with colleagues with attribution. Bear in mind this stuff quickly becomes out of date so check the web page periodically for updates.

I can be contacted via:

karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk

http://www.twitter.com/karenblakeman

http://www.facebook.com/karenblakeman

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Plan for the day

• Talk from me

• Practical sessions - exercise sheets are provided but you can pick which ones you want to do and skip those that you know about already or are irrelevant to you... or you can do whatever you want.

• Towards the end of the afternoon think about how you are going to use social media when you get back to work (or at home) – 3 action points?

• Most important of all - ask questions as we go along

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Covering....

• Using social media for publicity, marketing, providing information

• Using social media for research, competitor intelligence, reputation monitoring

• Is it worth it? Is anybody out there?

• Backing up your ‘stuff’

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Is it worth it?

• Return on investment (ROI) impossible to measure accurately

• Most tools are free - your time is going to be the biggest expense

• Statistics measuring “hits”, views, downloads etc available for some social media but not comprehensive or always reliable

• Monitor the impact your social media strategy is having

– more visitors to your web site, blog, online store?

– greater awareness of you, your services, products, events?

– increased sales/income, more users?

– more productive discussions with users and customers?

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Whether you’re researching or marketing...

• People spend time and search in different places other than Google

• They ask questions within their personal and professional networks

• You need to find where the ‘conversation’ is taking place - people will not always come to you

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Where are the conversations happening?

• What are organisations similar to your own doing and is it working?

• Google Blog search, Videos, Discussions – use the Google results side bar

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Where are the conversations happening?

• Social media search tools, for example– Blogpulse http://www.blogpulse.com/

– Topsy http://www.topsy.com/

– Social mention http://www.socialmention.com/

– Twitter Search http://search.twitter.com/

– Icerocket http://www.icerocket.com/

• Search inside:– flickr.com, LinkedIn, Facebook, Youtube, Vimeo, Slideshare.net,

authorSTREAM.com, iTunes

– any other networks you can think of where your existing and potential users, clients or customers might be talking about you

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Topsy.com

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Socialmention.com

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Social media and personalised search results

• What you see on Google will not be what someone else is seeing especially if signed in to a Google account

• Past search and browsing activity taken into account

• Social and professional networks included in results

• Tweets, Google+, Friendfeed, Buzz, blogs, +1, shares etc. from people in your networks given extra weighting

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Getting started with social media

• It takes TIME and EFFORT!

• Think out your strategy – – research, marketing, user/customer communications?

– is anything already being done within your organisation?

– where are your existing and potential users and customers?

– look at what content you already have

• presentations, photos, videos, podcasts

– once your content is out there you can start looking at more options for sharing and embedding in other applications

• Technology constraints – old browser, web sites blocked

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10/04/23 www.rba.co.uk 13Photo: Footpath Closed, Karen Blakeman http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbainfo/5911913498/

Some general issues

• Make sure you know what is and what is not permitted within your organisation

• Decide on copyright license: all rights reserved or one of the Creative Commons licenses (http://www.creativecommons.org/)

• Tagging and descriptions: make sure you tag your content and add descriptions so that people can find your content more easily

• Do you want to allow others to embed, re-publish or download your material?

• Get a champion within and outside of the organisation

• Policies/guidelines on employee use of social media– keep them simple, please. No 20 page essays!

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Legal issues

• Check copyright of all the material that you use

• Laws of defamation and libel apply so be ready to deal with and take down suspect content

• Have an easy mechanism by which people can contact you if there is a problem with your content or a comment

• Quick take-down procedure in case of problems with content

• Moderate comments on your blog – you are responsible for the content of your blog even if it is hosted on Google’s Blogger

• It is NOT true that if you do not moderate comments you are not legally liable

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Images and Copyright

• giving credit… | pia jane bijkerk : – http://blog.piajanebijkerk.com/WordPress/2011/03/18/giving-cred

it/

– useful poster

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Flickr• Photos of events, launches, conferences, facilities etc,

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Flickr

• http://www.flickr.com/

• Put photos of your library’s or organisation’s events on Flickr

– decide on default copyright or Creative Commons licenses

– give your photos meaningful titles and fill in as many “boxes” as possible (tags, description, map location) so that they can be easily found

– organise them into sets

• Embed your photos in your web site, blog, Facebook page, Netvibes etc.

• Be careful about being too commercial or you’ll be blocked – talk to Flickr about guidelines and what is acceptable if your worried

• Flickr Pro account ($24.95/yr) gives you unlimited uploads and sets, and statistics

• Google alternative http://picasaweb.google.com/

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Flickr and image searching

• For images you can re-use– search categories on http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons

– http://www.flickr.com/search/, use the Advanced Search link and select a Creative Commons option

• Flickr: LlGC ~ NLW's Photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/llgc/

• Selection of other sources of public domain and Creative Commons images– Geograph Britain and Ireland - photograph every grid square!

http://www.geograph.org.uk/

– morgueFile - free photos for creatives by creatives http://morguefile.com/

– Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page (use with caution)

– NASA http://www.nasa.gov/

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Flickr stats• Number of views always available

• Detailed stats available only for last month (pro account)

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Flickr Stats

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• For all of your photos (last month only and pro account)

Flickr stats – last month

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Flickr backup

• Mirror of folders and files on your computer but ...– Flickr comments, contacts, favourites, groups etc will not be in your

archive

• Flickr http://sunkencity.org/flickredit - uses Java and has to be downloaded onto your computer

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Picasaweb and Google+ – warning!

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You never know what a photo can lead to

This photo was instrumental in landing me a lucrative, long term contract!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbainfo/2536686370/

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Presentations

• Presentations lying around and which you and your organisation are willing to share?

• New developments, research, demonstrations of your skills, conference presentations

• Check copyright of images, videos, music you have used in your presentation

• Upload files to

– Slideshare.net

– authorSTREAM.com (maintains transitions on slides and feedback is that it is the easiest if you have a spoken narrative with the presentation)

– Slideboom.com

• Slideshare is often blocked, authorSTREAM often OK

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Presentations

• Decide on your copyright license

• Fill in the tags, categories, description boxes

• Do you want to restrict viewing or allow anyone to look at it?

• Do you want to allow embeds?

• Are you prepared to allow others to download the original PowerPoint file?

• Think about managing them over time

– do you want to remove them after a specified time period?

– do you want to leave them as an historical record?

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Presentations

• Once uploaded to the presentation sharing site tell the world about it!

• Get the embed code so that you can display it within your web page/ blog or use the “widgets” in Facebook and LinkedIn to automatically display it

• Tweet it

• Blog it

• Put it on your Facebook wall

• Put it on your Netvibes pages

• Monitor number of views, embeds, downloads.

• Who has “favourited” it

• Get a Slideshare “presentation pack” to show off your current and previous work

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Slidesharehttp://www.slideshare.net/ltechbangor/bangor-bilingual-blackboard

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Slideshare Presentation

packBlog with embedded

presentation

Tweet

Presentations – who’s been looking?

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Twitter

Slideboom

Slideshare

authorSTREAM

Searching for presentations

• Overviews of topics and subjects, expert opinions, identifying experts, conference presentations, statistics, company information........

• Google advanced search – file format ppt

• http://www.slideshare.net/ most commonly used– has option to search for more content from the same person or

presentations similar in content

– internal search erratic – can also Google site:slideshare.net keyword e.g. site:slideshare.net Hubble telescope

• http://www.authorstream.com/

• Slidefinder http://www.slidefinder.net/ by default looks for your terms on a single slide rather than dotted throughout the whole presentation

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Videos

• Educational, marketing, conference presentations, information on services, reporting on events

• Youtube.com - often blocked so also try...• Vimeo.com• Dailymotion.com• Animoto.com - but can only link to the presentation on their

web site– http://animoto.com/play/xYsNgcyV4eY0l01MC2FQ7A

• Check copyright of all material – especially music - that you use in a video

• Official YouTube Channel?• Fill in all the “boxes” when you upload a video• Announce it to the world• Link to and/or embed video in your web page, blog, Facebook,

Netvibes etc.

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Deeside College YouTube Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/deesidecollege

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YouTube.com

• Definitely, totally, absolutely must monitor YouTube for what is being said about your organisation.

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Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey stuff

Video on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HECUTJ-BCpY

Embedded on http://digicmb.blogspot.com/2011/05/dr-who-and-libraries-11-resources.html

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‘Embeds’ help spread the word!

Blogs

• Many blogs look like ordinary web sites

• Instead of or in addition to a printed, emailed or static web

based newsletter; what’s new, marketing tool inside and

outside of the organisation

• Search and monitor blogs for information and competitor

intelligence

• Used by many organisations, publishers, scientists,

researchers

• Very quick and easy to publish

• Search engines pick up and index blog postings within seconds of publication

• Automatic generation of mobile friendly version

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http://www.gladstoneslibrary.org/blog/2011/08/15/gladstones-library-appear-100-lle/

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Mobile friendly blogs• Google Blogger

– e.g. http://ergobalance.blogspot.com/ – standard web page vs mobile version

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Mobile friendly blogs

• Blogs hosted on Wordpress.com

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Monitoring usage

• Depends on how you have set up your blog and the service/software you are using

• Visitor stats offered by the blogging service

• Your own web site stats

• Google analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics)

• Sitemeter (http://www.sitemeter.com/)

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Google Blogger stats

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Back up your blog

• Both Wordpress and Blogger have options for backing up your content – USE THEM!

• Wordpress – under Tools, Export

• Blogger – under Settings, Basic, Blog Tools

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Netvibes

• http://www.netvibes.com/

• Sometimes referred to as “start pages”

• Collect your feeds, alerts, library guides, web site links, photos, presentations, ‘stuff’ in one place

• Often used by organisations and companies where Facebook, blogs and wikis are blocked

• Make sure you link to it on your web page or blog – not easily picked up by the search engines

• Use Google site search to find pages e.g. site:Netvibes.com “Yale College”

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http://www.netvibes.com/yalecollegelrc#Welcome

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Dublin City Public Librarieshttp://www.netvibes.com/dublincitypubliclibraries#Home

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Facebook

• Facebook creates an automatic page using Wikipedia content for organisations that do not have a page

• Think seriously about your potential audience (if any) on Facebook

• Think about what is likely to be of interest or affecting your Facebook audience

• Is there scope to develop campaigns or reach new audiences or do you just need to make sure you have a “place holder” page to stake your claim for the name

• Think carefully before automatically sending tweets, blog headlines, Slideshare, Flickr content etc. to your status – may not be relevant

– better format and presentation if post directly within Facebook

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Updating your Facebook status

• Via an external service e.g. Tweetdeck

• Directly in Facebook

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http://www.facebook.com/BangorUniversity?sk=wall

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Facebook instead of a web page?

• Great for events, campaigns, projects, products

• No overheads of setting up and maintaining a web site

• May work if part of your audience is on Facebook (but what about the rest?)

• Still have to get people “liking” your page

• Updates and news can get lost in their feed

• Pages not picked up by Google very quickly and not highly ranked in searches

• Still need somewhere else if you want an e-store

• FaceGov - Carl's Notepad http://carlhaggerty.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/facegov/ [why Facebook may not be a good idea]

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Hippy the Happy Hippopotamus on Facebook

• Children’s story written bymy husband (Chris Rhodes)and illustrated by our friendJeanette Cole

• Jeanette already has an online store where she can sell it (Folksy) so web site not urgent

• Decided to set up a Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hippy-the-Happy-Hippopotamus/129079097187687?sk=

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Hippy the Happy Hippopotamus• Progress so far

– setting up the basic page fairly straight forward– information page links to the Folksy store– 6 ‘Likes’ (unfortunately includes me, the author and illustrator!)– must market it more within Facebook– but sold 5 copies!!– also set up a Twitter account (http://twitter.com/#!/HippyBrushytail)

• Five days later and Google still hasn’t picked it up– a blog would have been picked up immediately (way to go for the

future?)

• Statistics for pages available on Facebook - View Insights

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Pagemodo.com for more interesting Welcome page?

• Some free templates and guides you through the process of designing a snazzy Welcome page

• This is as far as I’ve got.....

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LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/

• Professional network

• Information on individuals and organisations

• Profiles picked up in Google searches

• Search from within LinkedIn or use Google site: search– site:linkedin.com "RTC North“

• Some organisations encourage staff to set up profiles– advertises skills, expertise, services

– guidelines on keywords and descriptions to use in personal profiles

• Groups may be useful but, again, think about the audience you are aiming for

• The Ultimate Guide To “LinkedIn Today” & How To Optimize Your Presence On It : http://searchengineland.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-linkedin-today-how-to-optimize-your-presence-on-it-84029

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LinkedIn – Gladstone’s Library

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Google site search of LinkedIn

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Twitter

• 140 character tweets that are by default public• People choose whether or not to follow you• General chat, what’s happening at conferences, what

people are saying about companies, products, services, and about you

• Retweets and mentions by followers and their followers expand your audience

• Tweet blog postings, events, news, photos, comments on what’s happening

• Be interactive: respond to questions, monitor @mentions, set up alerts for your organisation

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Twitter Lists

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Organising your tweets

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Backup your Tweets

• Twinbox plugin for Outlook– http://www.techhit.com/TwInbox/twitter_plugin_outlook.html

• The Archivist– Desktop http://visitmix.com/labs/archivist-desktop/

– Web http://archivist.visitmix.com/

– keyword search (could be a hashtag or a person)

• Twapper Keeper– http://twapperkeeper.com/

– hashtag, keyword or @person search

– only two free archives per person and must be set up in advance

• Tweetake – http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/tweetake-twitter-data/

– Download and backup all of your Twitter data as CSV file or select Followers, Friends, Favourites, Tweets etc.

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Backup your Tweets

• Backup my tweets– http://backupmy.net/

– backs up only your tweets

• Tweetdoc– http://www.tweetdoc.org/

– produces a PDF of your search (keyword, hashtag, person)

– specify a date range

– tweets listed in ascending or descending order

– maximum of 500 tweets per document

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The Archivist - desktop

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Archivist - Web

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Twapper Keeper

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Paper.li

• http://paper.li/

• “Read Twitter as a daily newspaper”

• “organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy to read newspaper-style format. Newspapers can be created for any Twitter user, Facebook keywords, list or #tag!”

• Don’t use the option to automatically tweet when your own “daily” is available

– link to it manually from your blog, web page, Facebook page

– or perhaps manually tweet that “our summary of the latest news on [insert your subject here] is available at....”

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Paper.li

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Paper.li

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Share bars and buttons

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Some blog templates include them automaticallySeveral services can be used to add them to blogs and web sites e.g. http://addthis.com/

Automate your sharing?

• Using automation and combined feeds sounds tempting to send same content to different services is tempting but.....– different audiences

– different restrictions e.g. Twitter 140 characters

– different presentation e.g. appearance of status update directly entered in Facebook vs Tweetdeck

• Don’t rely solely on automated feeds e.g. blog headlines to Twitter to publish your content– doesn’t always work

– delays

– need control over when and where you publish

• Need to monitor networks for comments and questions

• You can get tied up in knots – where is everything going?

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Ever decreasing circles? Draw a map!

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Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbainfo/5633975305/

Google+

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A Google ‘Project’ and, at present, individuals only. No ‘brands’, companies, or organisations. Very much experimental.

Issues over privacy and public/private/limited postings

And finally......

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@careersinfo aka Hazel Edmunds http://www.adsetsinformationweblog.blogspot.com/

References to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/) and The Hippopotamus Song - YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN0WPwFD9is