Archive for November, 2008
Harness Social Media
After seeing PowerPoints like this, I keep telling myself I’ll create better ones than I currently do. Until that fine day comes, here’s one I found from a lady I very much respect in the social-media space. This one really hits home about harnessing social media in the enterprise.
Today’s lesson: Giving up control. Sorry. Has to be done. (You’ll have to click on the link to see it – darn free WordPress.)
I don’t agree with absolutely everything here (main disagreement: I say even when a community exists around your product/brand/association, you can build a new community — you do need to do more work, though). But overall, Mel’s right on target.
Chew on this for you Thanksgiving holiday weekend (assuming you’re in the U.S. – Mel’s a Brit, so I feel like I should say that), and see you next week.
Social Media for Business
Take “commercial real estate” out and replace it with your own business type, and you’ll find yourself relating to my most recent post at our Sibdu Blog.
Really an “Online Professional/Social Networking 101” post, it details how you can get started in using social media to build your business. I’ve also included a PowerPoint presentation I gave earlier this week to a group of commercial real-estate brokers and business brokers (those who help people buy and sell companies).
It is amazing how a real professional/social networking group experience (like the one I was at Wednesday) is very similar to an online social network. There are advantages and disadvantages to each, of course. One of the aspects I like about online networking is the tools that are available to members that you just can’t .. er .. “do” .. in real-life situations. Like document storage. Like threaded conversations with different people. People who are across the country (or even the world).
Of course, you’d probably expect me to say all of this, being in enterprise social networking and all. I do believe there are advantages to the whole face-to-face (F2F) thing; I’d never suggest giving that up. But if you supplement F2F with online networking, you can keep in touch with people at any time of day or night .. you don’t need to drive to an event that only happens once a week/month/etc. Plus, you can meet people online that you’d never meet otherwise, because they’re across the country, don’t move in the same social/business circles, etc.
So read. Learn. And hopefully you’ll be interested and motivated enough to sign up for a LinkedIn or Facebook. Or Sibdu, if you’re in any aspect of commercial/investment real estate.
Feedfuze Has Launched!
We’re not publicly announcing this yet (beyond this blog and what we’re telling friends and others we know). But we’ve launched a new tool that lets blog publishers, Web site owners and others “broadcast” their interests through the use of widgets that can be placed at most any Web site.
It’s called Feedfuze – but you probably already knew that from the Feedfuze graphic in this post.
What Feedfuze does is let members mash up whatever RSS feeds they’re interested in, put them in Containers, and then place those containers within their Web sites. They can put them in as widgets in sidebars, place them in normal pages in their sites, and much more. Basically, it’s up to your imagination.
More details are available at the Feedfuze site. Check it out today, and sign up, too – it’s absolutely free to use.
One thing, though — we’re not able to put them in WordPress … yet. We’re workin’ on it, believe me. And we’re even working on a way to put them in your Facebook page – pretty cool stuff.
A Hold Up, and Making Time for Social Media
Well, we thought we were going to be moving our blog. And to be fair, we are. Just not yet.
Since I hadn’t planned for this little hiccup, I felt like I should have some kind of blog entry here. I couldn’t figure out what, though, until I looked at my Sibdu Blog and determined, “Hey, my latest blog post there could also work well for a blog post at the Portalfuze Blog.”
With that, I give you my “Time for Social Media?” blog post. While it is ostensibly targeted at commercial and investment real-estate pros, anyone can take the truly delicious info nuggets out of it and get just as much out of them as would real-estate types.
It’s all about making time for social media, and not getting trapped in social-media overload. It happens to the best of us, believe me. I know, because it happened to me.
So, go forth and consume.
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