Twitter

5 Signs You Suck at Twitter

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

I’ve been playing around with Friend Or Follow over the last few days, and I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of people suck at Twitter.

Friend Or Follow is a Twitter tool that shows people you’re following, but aren’t following you; people who follow you, but you’re not following; and people you have a mutual followship with.

I dumped over 500 people from my Twitter account this week with FOF. I checked out each account I unfollowed, and frankly, some of you people are just doing it wrong. That’s why I unfollowed you. Not sure if this includes you? Then check out the…

Five signs you suck at Twitter.

You claim to be a social media consultant/pro/expert/guru (CPEG), but your following to follower ratio is 10:1. That is, you’re followed by 5,000 or more people, but only following 500. Social media consultants looove to say “have conversations with people.” But shouldn’t people who truly value conversation be willing to, I don’t know, have them?. Or at least fake like you are? If you’re a CPEG, you should have a ratio fairly close to 1:1. This is not to say that everyone should have a 1:1 ratio. Just the CPEGs. (Pro tip: you’ll also have more than 200 followers. I’m just sayin’.)
Nearly every one of your tweets is some motivational or inspirational message. Why do I need to get ten motivational messages peppered throughout the day? If it didn’t help me at 8:30 — 29 minutes after your HootSuite-scheduled “Good morning, my tweeps! Make this an excellent day!” — then it’s not going to help me at 9:30, 10:30, and so on. Don’t regurgitate someone else’s cleverness, show me yours. If you really want to motivate me, tell me about the cool stuff you’re doing.
You’re trying to amass as many followers as you can. If you’re a celebrity, a public figure, or someone who’s really, really interesting, that’s great. If you grew your network through hard work and earned those followers, more power to you. But if you resort to computer scripts, trickery, and joining follower-building networks to boost your rankings, then stick with being a LinkedIn LION. Twitter is not a competitive sport. Despite what you’re already doing to LinkedIn and Facebook, Twitter isn’t just one more race to the bottom of mediocrity and uselessness.
Your Twitter bio has the words “money,” “fast,” and “make” in it. I spam-block every single person whose bio says they have some money making system they want to share with me. Stick to peddling penis drugs and fake watches by email.
Your time between tweets can be measured with a calendar. You don’t have to tweet many times a day, but at least once a day wouldn’t kill you. Even every other day would be fine. But when you’re only tweeting every 3 – 4 weeks on a regular basis, then Twitter isn’t a communication tool, it’s an afterthought, like calling your mom the day after Mother’s Day.

What is your Twitter pet peeve? What sort of annoying behavior have you seen?

About the Author: Erik Deckers
Erik is the VP of Operations & Creative Services for Pro Blog Service. He has been blogging since 1998, and has been a published writer for more than 22 years. He has written humor newspaper columns, business articles, radio and stage plays, and is currently working on a novel. He helped write Twitter Marketing for Dummies, and is writing two other books on social media and networking. Erik frequently speaks on blogging and social media.

Tags: facebook, linkedin, social networking, social networks, twitter
Posted in Networking, Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter | View Comments

4 Ideas for Travel & Tourism Destinations to Get Started in Social Media

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

This week, I’ve been focusing on how travel and tourism destinations can get started in social media.

(See “5 Reasons Why Travel & Tourism Destinations Need Social Media” and “5 Photo & Video Sharing Sites Travel Destinations Should Use.”)

I probably jumped the gun a little bit by diving into the photo and video sharing sites before I told you how to actually use social media, but that’s okay. For one thing, social networks are created to be soooo easy for everyone to use that you don’t need me to tell you how to get started. Second, you can start these all in a matter of a couple hours, and then start working to integrate them all together. (We’ll discuss that in a future post.)

Vevay, IN Facebook page

Facebook

What it is: It’s the largest social network in the world with 500 million members. If it was a country, it would be the 3rd largest in the world, behind China and India. Basically, if there is an online place where your guests and customers gather, this is it.
Get started: Start out by setting up your own personal profile, and connect with friends and family. Keep this separate from your business or organization. You don’t want to combine your business with your personal life on here.
Strategy: Once you’re comfortable with Facebook, set up a separate business page (what used to be called a “Fan Page”) for your business or destination, and then upload your business email database — you have been saving your guests’ emails, haven’t you? — to build your network. Ask these people to “Like” your page. Start communicating with your page’s network about things going on at your place through status updates, telling people about new photos and videos, new blog posts, and new specials.
Why? The whole foundation of social media is building relationships with people. You want to evoke a positive emotional response in people when the visit your place, and you want to remind them of that emotional response when they see the latest news or photos. If you remind them of the good feelings they had while they were there, they’ll want to experience them again, and will return again.

What it is: It’s a 140 character message that is sent out to your followers (people who have started “following” your messages, because they want to see what you have to say). Twitter is like Facebook’s “Status Updates” but without everything else.
Get started: Go to Twitter.com and sign up for an account, and add your customer list (see Gmail below). Next, download TweetDeck from TweetDeck.com.
Strategy: Communicate the same information you send out on Facebook and your blog by tweeting your headlines and links to events or new posts.
Why? Because not everyone is on Facebook at the same time. Because some people prefer Twitter over Facebook. Because with TweetDeck you can update both Twitter and Facebook at the same time. Because there are a lot of other reasons I will cover in a future post.

Blogging

What it is: Blogging is a way to publish information, like articles and stories, for other people to read and for search engines to find. It’s a way to share photos and videos, without sending people off to Picasa and YouTube (see yesterday’s post, “5 Photo & Video Sharing Sites Travel Destinations Should Use.”)
Get started: Visit Blogger.com or WordPress.com and follow the instructions. You won’t need to upload an address book to find connections.
Strategy: Blog on a regular basis — at least once a week, but preferably more — about what’s going on at your destination or business. Show photos and videos of the fun stuff other people are doing. Talk about any special events or festivals, both before and after they take place. Share testimonials from your guests.
Why? For two reasons: 1) you can rank high in the search engines with a lot of interesting content like this, and 2) it helps your guests feel more connected if they can visit your site and feel like they’re visiting your location. (See the Facebook section above.)

Gmail

What it is: A free email network owned by the folks at Google.
Get started: Set up an account at Gmail.com, and import all of your addresses from your different email profiles, whether it’s Yahoo, Hotmail, your local cable provider, or the address book on your computer. Next, clean it up by eliminating duplicates, deleting out of date entries, and adding missing information.
Strategy: You won’t use this for social networking. You’ll use it for uploading all the addresses of your guests to the other networks. Any new social network you join will let you “see if your friends are on here!” And every social network will plug into Gmail with ease, so this makes it so much easier to build your network in just a couple minutes.
Why? Because you want to have a master list of all your email addresses somewhere other than your computer, in case your computer breaks down.

I was recently in a contest to become the “Inn-Bedded Resorter” at the Balsams Grand Resort Hotel in New Hampshire, and had a chance to be their social media specialist for two months. This was a novel approach, because the Resorter was going to be a guest, do all the guest activities, and then report it via social media. They were starting to use all of these technologies to communicate with their fans and guests, and have seen some great success with these technologies. You ought to give them a try and see what you can do with it.

Tags: blogging, facebook, Gmail, photo sharing, tourism, travel, twitter, video sharing
Posted in Blogging, Facebook, Lead Generation, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media, Tools, Twitter | View Comments

5 Reasons Why Travel & Tourism Destinations Need Social Media

Monday, July 19th, 2010

I speak to a lot of travel and tourism destinations about social media, and often answer the same question, “why do we even need social media?” There are several reasons, so before I ever start talking about how you can do social media, let’s focus on the why first.

Photo of marina at Patoka Lake, taken by Erik Deckers

Patoka Lake in southern Indiana

Generation Y loooooves social media. Last year, Gen Y outnumbered Boomers 81 million to 78 million in this country. And while Gen Y doesn’t buy as many vacations as Boomers, they ARE responsible for about $2 – $3 billion in spending each year. They influence things like the family’s car purchase, where the family goes to eat, and of course, where the family goes on vacation. Combine that with the fact that nearly 96% of Generation Y is on a social network of some kind, and you start to see who you need to reach.
Boomers are huge consumers of social media too. While Generation Y is the biggest demographic on Facebook (which will tip the scales at 500 million members in the next couple of weeks), the fastest growing demographic is women between the ages of 50 – 60. And they’re on the network telling their friends about their kids and grandkids, catching up with old friends, sharing glimpses of their lives, and of course, telling their friends where they went on vacation. And they’re sharing photos and videos of those memories.
Social Media is free. All of the major social networks are free to join, and free to use. You can join Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube right now, and get started. Of course, there’s a significant amount of time involved, but if you can find even 30 minutes a day to do your social media marketing, you’ll make a huge dent in your campaign, and be miles ahead of your competition. We’ll talk about how to do this in a future post.
Social media lets others do the work for you Facebook, YouTube (video sharing), and Flickr and Picasa (photo sharing) are all considered social networks. And they make it easy for people to share information about their vacation. They upload photos and videos to their sites, and share them on Facebook. As their friends see where they went, they think about going there too. So they’re doing your marketing for you via word-of-mouth. Cost to you? Nothing
Social media is about telling a story. People don’t want to see newspaper ads or read brochures. They want stories. They want proof. They want to know what other people are doing at your place. Don’t just tell people you offer water skiing or horseback riding, show them other guests who are riding horses or water skiing. Let your other guests tell stories about how much they enjoyed it. Tell people your stories, let your guests tell their own stories, and then share them through your social network. Again, cost to you? Nothing.

Social media is fast becoming the way people share information and news about themselves. We are becoming a society that values the opinions of our friends — and even online strangers — more than we value the marketers’ opinions. Social media lets you do all of that quickly and easily. We’ll show you how in the coming days and weeks.

Tags: Social Media, tourism, travel, travel destinations
Posted in Communication, Facebook, Lead Generation, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter, Video | View Comments

5 Reasons Email Is NOT Going Away. I Don’t Care What Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg Says

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Email is NOT going away.

South African blogger Arthur Charles Van Wyk thinks Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg is just a bit crazy when she says that email is going to die off, because only 11% of teens are using email these days. (You can watch the video below.)

Email is not obsolete. Not yet, anyway.

The premise is an interesting one: if you want to figure out what kind of consumer technology we’ll be using in several years, look at what the teens are using right now. And the teens aren’t using email, they’re using SMS on cell phones, or they’re using social networks like Facebook.

Does this mean that we will all write in text speak? Will sexting become an appropriate form of communication?

I don’t care what anyone says. Email is not, NOT NOT going to die off. Here are 5 reasons email is not going away:

Email is widely used in the business world. We’ve got so many companies using it, it’s never going to be dislodged, at least not in my lifetime. Until someone finds an easier way to transfer large documents and files only to specific individuals, it’s going to be the communication tool of choice. Can you see corporations — many of whom were reluctant to start letting people get email addresses and Internet access in the first place — dropping a tool that they fought against adopting? They’re still using fax machines, for God’s sake! So, sure teenagers aren’t using it now, but wait until they get assimilated into the corporate collective. They’ll be forced to use it whether they want to or not.
How do you get notified when you get a new friend, get tagged in a photo, have someone comment on your status update? Right now it’s by email. Do you really want your phone to buzz every time someone wants to be your Farmville friend on Facebook, or responds to someone else’s status update? While everyone likes their mobile phones, getting buzzed by an abundance of social network messages is going to get tiresome.
Our mobile phones can only hold so many texts. I have emails from 5 years ago that I still need to keep, but I can’t say the same for text messages. But if I did what happens if my cell phone gets too full? And then what if I lose it? Sure, those things can be saved in the cloud, but that’s where my email messages are anyway. Plus, my emails are easier to organize and search for.
Mobile phones and text messages are not ideal for important communications. While email may be less formal than, say, a certified letter, it’s more formal than a text message. What kind of damage are you doing to your personal brand if you tell a potential employer, “just text me,” especially if you’re someone who got a cell number that spells a naughty word? Or what if you got a job offer (or didn’t)? Do you want to get “Dude, u r not hired. Sry. Better luck nxt time” from an employer? Communicating with people who will be important to your life needs to be done in a way that’s more dignified than a cell phone.
Email is free, text messaging is not. I have to pay $10 every month to get unlimited texting, but my Gmail account is free. Admittedly neither cell phones nor computers are in every home in this country, but while text messages still cost money — even though they cost the cell carriers nothing to send (don’t get me started on that!) — it’s going to be a barrier for people to adopt it wholesale around the country

Email may not be the communication tool of choice, but it’s not going anywhere. And while SMS will become more prevalent in this country, I don’t believe it’s going to kill email, and I think people who say so are doing it for shock. We haven’t even killed postal mail, and yet the hip thing to do is to declare the death of free mail?

Kill off postal mail first, and then I’m more likely to believe you.

Photo credit: Jparise (Flickr)

Tags: Communication, email, social networks
Posted in Communication, Facebook, Networking, Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter | View Comments

5 Ways to Build Your Online Personal Brand Without Being Boring

Monday, July 12th, 2010

I was having lunch with a friend last week, and he posed an interesting question: “how do you build your personal brand without evoking a ‘who cares’ attitude?”

Unfortunately, as people start growing their personal brand via social media, they’re just boring the bejeezus out of the rest of us. Here are five things you should be doing to avoid boring your network, and earning the reputation of “oh jeez, not this yawn-fest.”

Dude, you're boring!

Post things as they are happening. Give your content stream a sense of immediacy, to help people feel they are really there. Don’t tweet that you got stuck in traffic two hours after you got home; send a tweet that traffic is bad on a particular road (only if you’re completely stopped, please). Tweet about your experiences at a conference as they happen, not afterward.
Blend your personal and your work life. Rather than limiting yourself to being all work or all play, be both. No one truly expects you to only focus on work things, or expects you to only play and spend time with your family. Anyone who gets annoyed that you’re merging the other into your social media stream has unrealistic expectations, and is probably not worth staying connected to. It’s okay to tell your work friends when you have a personal victory you want to tell them about, and it’s okay to tell your social friends when something great happened at work. By blending the two parts of your life, you’re showing you’re a whole person.
Don’t focus strictly on one issue. If you decide not to do the work-life blend, at least make sure you’re not talking about the same thing over and over. We like that you’re sharing the joys of your new child, but we don’t want to see every single photo you take, to hear about everything the baby did, or how much you love your new bundle of joy. Similarly, don’t tell us about that one work or industry issue, every single meeting you have about it, or every journal and blog article you read about it. If you tell us about your personal life, tell us more than what your children are doing. If you tell us about work, tell us more than that one big issue you’ve been dealing with for six months.
Share, share, share. While it may seem easy to promote yourself and all the cool things you’re doing, if you spend all your time doing that, then you’re just as boring as that date you went on when the other person kept talking about themselves. Instead talk about other people, share what they’re doing, promote their ideas and their blog posts, and retweet the interesting articles they’re reading (retweet this article while you’re at it). Tell us what you think is cool, what you find interesting. The people you’re talking about will take notice and do the same for you.
Just accept the fact that you’re always going to bore somebody. I’d love to think that people hang on my every word, and eagerly await every tweet, blog post, and Facebook update, but they don’t. My personal friends don’t care about my work content, and my work friends don’t care what I do with my kids on the weekend.

Photo credit: Samael Trip (Flickr)

Tags: personal branding, Reputation Management, Social Media
Posted in Communication, Facebook, Networking, Reputation Management, Social Media, Twitter | View Comments

New ebook Available: Social Media and Crisis Communication for Government Communicators

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

I just published a new ebook, Social Media and Crisis Communication for Government Communicators. I wrote it after giving a presentation to a public health conference, and realizing that many of them did not even have access to the different social media tools.

So I based it on several blog posts I’ve posted here, as well as some new information. The ebook is free, and there is both a PDF version and a Kindle version available.

Tags: Crisis Communication, ebook, government agencies, Social Media
Posted in Blogging, Communication, Crisis Communication, Public Health, Public Relations, Social Media, Tools, Twitter | View Comments

5 Questions To Ask After Your Social Media “Expert” Has Started

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

We’d all like to think our social media consultants — any of our consultants, actually — know what they’re doing, and have our organization’s best interests at heart. But there are times that, despite all the good they promised, things don’t go the way we had hoped or were led to believe.

Too often, organizations don’t realize they were sold a bill of goods until after the campaign has ended, and they try to figure out what the ROI on the entire project was. That’s when they have the horrible realization they just spent thousands of dollars on a project and got almost nothing for it in return.

Measuring ROI is important, even in the middle of the campaign. But about a month after your campaign has kicked off, start asking these questions:

Does your social media consultant avoid using Twitter or other social media tools? Ask what they think about these tools. If you hear “I don’t use _____ because I think it’s stupid” or “because no one uses it,” ask them for data to back up their statement, and a better explanation than “it’s stupid.” The question is not whether they think it’s stupid, it’s whether your customers do. If your customers are on there, then it doesn’t matter what the consultant thinks.
Who are your social media followers? Are they your target audience, or are they filler followers? (Filler-wers?) Some disreputable social media consultants will fill a company’s follower ranks with spammers, high school students, or offshore account holders, none of whom are your target audience (unless you’re selling stuff to spammers, high school students, or offshore outsourced workers). Pay close attention to your followers, and see if they’re the kinds of people you normally do business with. Ask yourself the likelihood of being followed by several hundred high school students, when you normally sell stuff to their parents. Or by computer experts from the Philippines, when your customer base lives within three miles of your store.
Does your social media company have a strategy, a look, a campaign that is unique to you? Or does it look exactly the same as everyone else’s? Does it involve some new thinking and challenges for you, as a way to reach a new audience, or is it just an online version of what you’re doing offline? While a social media campaign won’t reinvent the wheel, it shouldn’t just be a retread of your old campaign. It’s also a good idea to avoid the “everyone else is doing it” type of program, like free giveaways to site visitors. While that may bring in visitors, they may not really be potential customers (see the previous point).
What do you know about the business or the people at the business that you have entrusted with the reputation of your company? What is their reputation around the community? Do they hold to your business ethics, or do they do some things that you disagree with? While you can expect some disagreements politically — that sort of thing just happens, and is a poor excuse to not do business with someone — you should make sure that the person’s personal brand and reputation matches your own. For example, would you want an avid hunter representing your animal rights organization? Should a mixed martial arts fighter be a spokesperson for your pacifist organization? And do you want someone who tells racist or sexist jokes to represent your third world relief organization? You can find things like this on someone’s Facebook page or blog, and they should be a serious cause for concern.
Would you hand your social media consultant a microphone and let them tell the world they are representing you? In essence, are you comfortable saying, “this is our employee. We trust her enough to give her money and speak on our behalf.”
If you’re having problems answering the first four questions, the answer to this question, I hope, is “no.” Your consultant is an employee, albeit a temporary, part-time contract employee, but they are your representative nevertheless. And if you can’t trust them with little things like not hiring a bunch of offshore freelancers to create hundreds of fake social media accounts, you can’t trust them with big things, like telling members of your community that you hired them.

I realize I’m picking on my own industry, but it’s necessary to be proactive, and to point out some of the scams and poor practices that exist. Most real social media professionals do everything we can to help our clients, and do what we promised them in the spirit of the agreement, not just the letter of the agreement (that is, when we say we’ll grow their network, we grow it with likely, real customers, not people with a pulse).

We make sure we do it ethically, and that our own personal and corporate brand is something another company is pleased to be associated with.

So it’s incumbent upon the social media industry to police ourselves, so charlatans and snake-oil salesmen don’t ruin it for those of us who are actually doing it correctly. All it takes is for one person to smear the industry’s reputation by totally screwing a small company out of thousands of dollars. Then the honest professionals suffer for it.

If you find you’re being given bad information by your consultant, speak with another social media professional you trust, and get a second opinion. Find out what questions you should be asking, and what answers you should be getting. Then, double-check your information, speak to your hired consultant, listen carefully, and be prepared to cancel the contract if need be.

Yes, it’s harsh, but it’s your organization’s budget, reputation, and brand on the line. They’re counting on you to not tell anyone else about it, so they can continue to leech off your community or your industry. Protect yourself first, and make sure you’re getting what you should be.

Tags: facebook, followers, Social Media, social media campaign, social media expert, twitter
Posted in Blogging, Facebook, Reputation Management, Social Media, Social Networks, Twitter | View Comments

Social Media Is NOT Socially Isolating

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

A friend recently sent me a link to Tom Wright’s response to blogging and social media, wherein Wright called the two movements “cultural masturbation.” In it, he warned against the social isolationism of social media and blogging.

Blogging? Seriously? How is blogging any more socially isolating than just plain old writing? Writing a book, writing in your journal, writing a short story, writing a poem. Yes, these are all socially isolating in and of themselves, but what makes blogging soooo much different from every other form of writing?

(Hint: it doesn’t. It’s only believed to be a problem by people who don’t fully understand that blogging is just one more form of publishing.)

NT Wright on Blogging/Social Media from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.

Bah!

It’s easy to say something creates isolationism. Tom Wright says it about blogging and social media, that it will somehow keep people from interacting with other people. He worries that if we spend too much time in front of a computer screen, we will lose regular face-to-face contact with real people. We will substitute computer time for real time, and completely ruin society.

Double Bah!

This is nothing new. Experts have been wringing their hands about something making us lose touch with our humanity for years.

“Experts” said it about email and the Internet in the mid-90s.
“Experts” said it about television in the 40s and 50s.
“Experts” said it about movies in the 20s and 30s.
“Experts” said it about radio in the 20s.
“Experts” said it about the telephone at the turn of the century.
“Experts” said it about the automobile at the turn of the century.

I think the only thing who are isolated from society are the experts.

Tom Wright admits he doesn’t use social media, doesn’t know how to use it, and this somehow qualifies him to speak about the social and relational ramifications of social media? (He does admit to being an avid texter and emailer though; so is he socially isolated?)

For one thing, if he used social media to any degree, he would also know that many social media users — at least in the business setting — turn their online contacts into real-world contacts. I have personally drunk gallons of coffee with people I’ve met online. I’ve had conversations with them, done business with them, become friends with them. All people I never would have met if it hadn’t been for social media.

And I’m not the only one. My entire industry is rife with people who use social media to enhance and even create their careers.

Social Media is Not the Bad Guy, Human Behavior Is

Anything can be a detriment to human relationships: food, sex, exercise, fashion, sports, shopping, work, play, sleep, collecting, hobbies, cooking. You name it, and I can find someone obsessed with it, and then say that __________ is a detriment to human relationships, because someone took it too far.

There are always people who will take something too far. But to look at the outlier, that one in a million person, and extrapolate a calamitous end for anyone and everyone who uses it is just being a sensationalist.

Wright assumes that the people who spend all this time in front of a computer screen don’t work or go to school, and are already teetering on the brink of being a hermit, when they were tipped over the edge into complete solitude by the siren call of the online relationship.

If you’re doing social media right, you’re using it to create relationships that expand and extend into the real world. If you’re not doing it right, well, you probably spend too much time indoors with your eight cats already.

Tags: blogging, NT Wright, social isolationism, Social Media
Posted in Communication, Facebook, Networking, Social Media, Twitter, Video, Writing | View Comments

7 Ways to Use Blogging to Promote Events

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

We’ve often used blogging to promote special events for ourselves and our clients. I’m even a blogger for VisitIndiana, the website and blog for Indiana Tourism, our state government’s tourism department.

Pre-event promotion: This is the one thing most people think of. But don’t limit yourself to a single blog post about the event coming up. Tie every blog post into your event. Blog about topics that tie into the event. For example, if you sell tradeshow displays, talk about the upcoming social media and tradeshow marketing panel discussion you’re going to host on June 9 at the Hilton Garden Inn. (By the way, I’m speaking at a panel discussion on social media and tradeshow marketing on June 9 for Skyline Exhibits – Indianapolis).

Live blogging: This can be challenging, but it can also be fun, because it draws people into the energy of the event, especially if they’re not able to attend with you. I have live blogged at two sporting events. One was the 2009 Indianapolis 500. I had also spent several days in May on the track, blogging about different things I saw, which helped build up my readership for the big day. I also live-blogged from an Indiana Fever game, which I will never do again. As I was writing about a play, something cool would happen, and I would miss it. Now I just tweet the highlights and enjoy the game. The easiest way to do live blogging is to use the Email to Post feature on WordPress or Blogger, or set up a blog at Posterous.com. I especially like Posterous, because I can attach photos and they’ll automatically be placed into each post.
Post-event wrap-up: You want to remind people of the good time they had, or tell them about the good time they missed so they’ll be sure to come back next year. Use this time to talk about what worked well, what could have been better, funny stories, traditions you might start, and photos of the great time people had. Ask attendees for suggestions about what they would like to see changed or kept the same.
Photo blogging: Set up some slideshows on Flickr or Picasa, and paste the embed code into a blog post. You can show photos you’ve already taken, or embed the code early, and then add photos as you take them, which will expand the slideshow. This is especially great for live blogging. Just use a photo uploader on your smart phone, get an EyeFi card for your digital camera, or make sure you have a way to quickly download photos from your camera and then upload them to your photo sharing site. You will need to do some tweaking on your account, but you can start sharing the photos right away.
Video blogging: The same techniques and ideas that you can use for photo blogging work for video blogging. I’m not talking about producing pre-written and edited videos. Rather, take some videos and upload them via your smart phone’s uploader, or YouTube. Take some quick interviews of event attendees, show some speakers/music/events/games, and post them as quick as you can. I especially like Posterous.com for photo and video blogging, because you can set up your account to automatically forward all photos and videos to their respective services when you email them to Posterous.
Get other bloggers: Ask other people to blog about your event in all three stages, pre, during, and post. Give them free admission or tickets to come to your event and write about it. You want to find bloggers in that niche or industry, but don’t limit yourself to only finding the most popular ones. The ones who don’t have a lot of readers can still be valuable. For one thing, they’re reaching a group of people that the bigger bloggers might not. For another, any links they make back to your website help your search engine optimization (see #7), which makes it easier for people to find your event for next year.
It’s all for Search Engine Optimization: It doesn’t matter if you got a lot of people to read about your event this year, or if only a few dozen people were following your blog at the time of the event. All this blogging does one additional thing for you: it builds your content out for search engine placement. If you’re going to hold your event next year, all the work you did this year will help you rank higher on the search engines for next year. This is true whether you’re hosting your own event, or whether you’re participating in someone else’s event. For example, if you’re taking photos, videos, and blogging about your participating at an arts festival, you’ll be one of the first names to pop up when people start searching for it again for next year.

Just remember, blogging is for the long haul too, not a just quick burst of publicity. It’s the marathon, not the spring. But it doesn’t hurt to have a fast start to get out in front of your competition either.

Photo credit: MattIndy77 (Flickr)

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If We Used FourSquare for Sex

Friday, May 7th, 2010

There can sometimes be a little too much sharing about our personal lives.

Back in October, I wrote about how 36% of people under 35 had tweeted or status updated after sex.

That is, 36 percent of the 35-and-under crowd have not only tweeted or given status updates after sex, they were updates that they’d just had sex.

Now that FourSquare is getting more and more popular with the Twitterati, I’m worried what it’s going to look like if people start using FourSquare to check in after sex.

	Just checking in on my honeymoon. Hey, I scored the Newbie badge for scoring my first check-in! My new bride didn’t get one. I’ll have to ask her about that later.
	I just got the Local badge. FourSquare says that means I’ve been to the same place 3 times in one week. Wow, FourSquare is fun. So is being married.
	Woo-hoo! The Bender badge. That’s 4 nights in a row for me. Man, this honeymoon is awesome!
	Kelli has been crying for a couple hours. Apparently some guy named Trevor is now the mayor of 12 different places.
	The Crunked badge. 4 stops in one night? I need some Gatorade. And a nap.
	Whew, it took me three months, but I finally just became the mayor of my wife! I thought I saw that I “ousted” someone else (ousted? Is that the right word? Wonder what that means), but Kelli grabbed my iPhone before I could read it and smashed it on the nightstand.
	Kelli went to SXSW2010, and I saw she got the hookup badge for visiting two different hotels. So did that guy, Trevor. She must be attending a lot of parties. Also, she’s staying up awfully late. How else would she have gotten this at 3:00 in the morning. Also, what does it mean if I’m “ousted” as the mayor of something?