Posted by Gabe on November 30, 2010 under Kids are Heroes, Social Media | 
Many people (including myself) believe that social media is an excellent vehicle to connect with people in a way that would be impossible without it. I firmly believe that both non-profits and businesses who ignore it will be left out in the cold. Time and time again I have listed ways how it has helped our cause. So then if kids are performing charitable acts and forming non-profits, then it clearly follows that they too should embrace social media, right? Well I would say maybe so, but not without caution.
The people on the other side of the social media fence believe it’s just another way for nerds to not meet up face-to-face, that is discourages personal interaction and if left unchecked we will soon not be able to distinguish the virtual world from the real one. I am happy I am not in that camp. But I’m sure their argument would be that kids should be outside playing, interacting with each other, reading, imagining — there are far more activities to list that outweigh the benefits of being on a computer.
For me the answer is not cut and dried because I see valid points from both sides. However, I do think that there is much benefit to be had by having kids be social in any way they can. Social interaction is by far the most important factor in becoming successful in life. That is not to say that things like education are unimportant. Obviously that is critical as well. But to be a well rounded individual and to get the most out of life it is difficult to accomplish this if you are social outcast even if you have a doctorate degree.
Kids Are Heroes was established in 2008 and since then we have had four major events where we have invited children from the web site to come together to celebrate what they do. When kids started traveling from out of town, we thought it would be nice to have an after-party to thank them for coming. We quickly discovered that the kids bonded naturally even though they had just met and we now make a point of it to continue this tradition each time we get them together. These are the leaders of tomorrow and leaders are successful because of their strong networks. So why not help them build it now? Personal interaction is the ultimate goal and the best vehicle for them to bond with each other — no question.
Sadly we have had several heroes indicate to us their desire to come to these events but they could not as they could ill afford the travel expenses. Hopefully in the future we will be able to assist with that, but in the mean time what can they do? Having recognized the need, we decided to create a chat room just for the heroes on our site so they can interact whenever they want from anywhere on the planet. We have also provided a way for them to exchange Twitter, Facebook, Skype and all other forms of electronic interaction accounts they might have so that they can communicate in whatever way suits them best. We are just getting it off the ground but for those who are taking advantage they are really enjoying themselves. My daughter MaryMargaret was Skypeing with Wesley from Canada last night and must have chatted for over an hour. The new challenges I now face are teaching her basic manners, like when you have a video phone call on Skype you are not to interact with your other friends on Chat at the same time unless the other person is also participating.
What About Safety?
So many parents are scared to death of getting their kids involved in things like this. We hear about children meeting new “friends” on the internet and later becoming abducted by them. My take on that is to just be careful. We have no internet connection in my daughter’s room. When she is on the computer she is either within earshot in the living room or in the kitchen where all the activity is. Many times she has introduced us to her Skype friends to us and we have even met her friends’ parents that way. I told MaryMargaret that I would give her a Facebook account and not only would I friend her, but I would have access to the account whenever I wanted to. She had absolutely no problem with that, as she has nothing to hide. (She is 12 years old now — we’ll see how long that attitude holds up. ) If someone tries to friend her and she doesn’t know them, she asks me if it’s OK as it is possible they are one of my contacts. For the most part I only want her Facebook friends to be of a similar age, be someone that she already knows and/or a hero on our web site. Sometimes others can post things on an adult friend’s wall that may not be appropriate for young eyes and ears. For Twitter we protect her account so that a follower must request to see her tweets. If it turns out she does see something inappropriate, she just blocks the person, unfriends them, closes the web page, or takes whatever other action necessary to get rid of it as she has no interest in it.
All in all I think this social media is great for kids as long as they still get out and interact with their friends in real time. MaryMargaret has just been unleashed into Facebook and Skype and she does spend a good deal of time on it right now but I trust as the novelty wears off she will still use it but spend a more reasonable amount of time there. If not we will step in to help make a better balance.
I bet there are all kinds of thoughts out there on this subject. I’d love to hear yours in the comments.
Posted by Gabe on November 21, 2010 under Facebook, Social Media, Twitter |
If you look at the bottom of this post, you will see a Share button. If you open it, you will see no less than 306 platforms you can share this post to. WOW!! Honestly, many of them I have never heard of. So how are you supposed to know which platform(s) is/are best and right for you?
If I answered that question definitively, and the proponents of all 306 platforms read this post, the comment would be endless and I would probably have to censor most of them. People get very defensive about the platforms they are on and rightly so as they spend a lot of time on them. So how I will answer this is how I think things have worked best for me.
Some platforms are better depending where your interests and goals lie. Flickr, for example, is a great platform if you are a photographer. If you are looking to connect professionally for future job opportunities, LinkedIn might be best for that.
Of the platforms that are represented in the above picture, I have an account on seven of them. I m going to list them, tell you how much I participate in each and give my reasons for the level of participation.
Twitter: This is the platform I am most active in. I write a lot about it and work on my “methods” of using it every day. When I say methods I mean social methods (as opposed to technical), and how I can use them to become a better networker. I personally have seen a lot of success from our involvement in this and that is why I continue to be so active in it. In my opinion, this is the platform that gives you the best chance of reaching more people in the shortest amount of time. I may have just opened up a debate, but this has been my experience.
Facebook: In the beginning I got on Facebook and started a Kids Are Heroes Group. This was in the time before fan pages were available. I got people to join the group, but because people actually have to go there to see what’s going on my experience is that groups tend to die out. In the middle of 2009 fan pages came out. This is much more like Twitter where the material from your page is streamed directly in the user’s timeline. This is much more effective way of distributing material and since then I became much more active. I try and post at least two or three times a day. I purposely don’t use it as much as I do Twitter as I have an innate feeling that people do not want to see as many updates on Facebook as they do Twitter.
YouTube: We do have a YouTube account and are somewhat active. We certainly do not update it every day, but we upload videos whenever we have an appropriate one and also try and showcase those of our heroes from the Kids Are Heroes web site.
WordPress: As you may have guessed this is my blogging method of choice. I can’t say it’s better than the others but it is widely supported and does what I need it to do.
Skype: When people think of Skype they usually think of face-to-face connecting via webcams. It actually has much more capability than that. I have had an account for a long time but do not use it much. However, I see that changing in the near future. When I had a recent Skype session with my friend Rebecca she was sending me files, URLs and all kinds of things that showed me how useful it can be. So I keep my account active. And now that I am involved in social media coaching this is a great venue for one on one interaction. Yesterday I got a message on Skype asking me for some blogging help. It turns out my wife had “tooted my horn” to a ladies group she spoke to recently. This lady used Skype to reach out to me. This taught me a very important lesson. If you want to connect with as many people as possible, you need to be where they are. Of all the messaging platforms, this lady chose Skype to reach out to me. Maybe that’s all she uses. Now does that mean I’m going to create accounts in all the other 298 platforms I spoke of earlier? No, but I will at least be accessible by each of the platforms I mention here.
FriendFeed: There was a time when the talk was that Twitter may not be able to survive its own popularity. It scared me into thinking about what would happen if the platform actually went away. This made me create a Friendfeed account which is very similar to Twitter. In fact, you can have your tweets imported directly to it automatically. Since I never found an added value, and also because I found the platform more difficult to use, I basically abandoned it yet still let my tweets to go through my account. If Twitter ever does vanish I will have a fallback solution.
Flickr: This is a social platform where you can share your photos with others and also comment on them. I created an account there, but realized I’m not as big as a photography fan as I think you need to be to use this site on a regular basis.
LinkedIn: I do have an account there but have never really put any effort into managing this account. This is a great resource for professionals who want to connect withe people who may help them find future employment. This may be the one platform I misunderstand the most, and one that I personally should be more involved with, but for some reason it doesn’t interest me. All that should tell you is that it’s something I think you should take a close look at if you feel it may be appropriate for you.
If you want my two cents, here it is. If you want to promote your non-profit or business, I would recommend having an active account on Facebook and Twitter. There are some people that use Facebook exclusively and others who use only Twitter. That’s why you need both. If you have great videos that support what you are doing then add YouTube to the mix. People use platforms where they feel most comfortable. Maybe a friend got them started on one. They are all good if they help you connect with people. I think the bottom line is people use the platforms that benefit them most, whether it be for special interest, purely social, business or hobby.
I’d love to hear why you do or do not use some of these platforms and which ones I did not mention that you find valuable and why.
UPDATE 12/01/10: Well the CEO of Facebook has gone and created another social media network. This is just for non-profits and is called Jumo (www.jumo.com). So I guess you all think that it is a no-brainer that non-profits should be visible on it, right? Well I’m not so sure about that. We did create our profile but I can’t say I will jump in with both feet to update our status every day. I think if you have an interest there are plenty of non-profits on Facebook and Twitter (@nonprofitorgs follows over 32,000 of them) and both those platforms have lots of other subject areas to follow as well. I’m not sure that people will limit themselves by frequenting a platform just for non-profits. Only time will tell. However after looking at our profile I noticed something. Some of our Facebook fan page status updates were coming through to our Jumo account. I don’t think it updates in real time, and I think it has to do with a ‘Jumo Reader’ setting which you can set for once a day, so this feature might be valuable. Be careful though – it loves to automatically update your Facebook status so if you don’y t want it to turn off that setting.
Posted by Gabe on November 19, 2010 under Social Media, Twitter |
Hi. I’m Gabe. I’m a social media coach. You should pay me to coach you because I’ve had a lot of experience and was mentioned by Mashable. Come look at my great web site. Connect with me on Facebook too. People are always telling me how great I am. I have a whole lot to offer because blah blah blah blah blah blah….
Now, after having read the above diatribe who’s interested? Nobody. I knew the answer before I asked. So why do so many people still market this way on Twitter? I guess it’s because they truly don’t get it.
This entire social media journey is a perpetual learning experience for me. Since I began this trek in 2008 with the @KidsAreHeroes account I have evolved in so many ways. The minute I think I have arrived, that I finally understand everything, is the minute I realize how little I truly know. Yesterday I read a post by @skooloflife entitled “Why 150 Followers is All You Really Need.” It speaks of the fascination with numbers in Twitter and craving more and more followers. It also shares that having more followers is not the answer to being successful with social media. It is responding to and interacting with people. I am always preaching this concept but have felt as of late that my @KidsAreHeroes account was going a bit flat. Sure I have lots of followers but it felt sometimes that no one was listening. Maybe I was talking too much instead of interacting. Well again, I am still learning so I am making a concerted effort to interact more with both of my Twitter accounts. And it does work. I received a tweet this morning and looked up the person’s bio, found something interesting and the long and short of it is that we are going to chat over the phone about it later today. That is connecting.
I’m sure this person won’t mind me mentioning her. Her name is Dana Nelson (@DanaMNelson) and her web site (www.danamnelson.com) lists an education advisory board that is “focused on improving the quality of social media education in universities…” I found this very interesting . This looks like a person I can learn from. Since I like to keep up with all things new and exciting in social media, Dana is going to tell me about the iZigg logo on her web site and what it s all about.
Another person I learn from on a regular basis is Scott Stratten. You may know him better as @unmarketing. If you don’t take yourself too seriously and are willing to share ideas, you are OK in my book.
So let’s start really connecting. Let’s see if we can start a little network here by having you mention in the comments who you have learned from and how they have helped you. Are you game?
UPDATE: Ok since this morning I had a long conversation with Dana and she (so far) connected me with Chris. We had a long discussion on how I can use new technology to further my non-profit goals. Nothing less than awesome. Before today I knew neither individual. Turns out Dana had been following @KidsAreHeroes for a while but didn’t have a clear concept of what it was. Now she does. Sound familiar? Just make the jump into being more social and watch the results!!
UPDATE: Here’s a very unscientific experiment for you. If you try this, I think you will see immediate results. Yes there are variables, but here is what I did. This morning (the day after this post was written) I went on tweetgrid.com and searched for mentions in the @GabeONeill account. I wanted to see if there was a difference. I wrote this post (and made the effort to be more social) on Friday. Here are the number of mentions I received the days prior: Mon: 7; Tue: 12; Wed: 8; Thu: 5. Now for the day I made the effort: 54!! That’s almost double the count of the rest of the week!! This comes from simply making an effort to be more social. The common belief is that the number of followers you have determines how important or influential you are. When it comes right down to it, followers in and of themselves mean nothing. It’s the interaction you have with them that is key. I’d love it if you tried this experiment and reported back the results in the comments.
Posted by Gabe on November 18, 2010 under Social Media, Twitter |
I read a post the other day from Tech Crunch entitled “The Phone Call is Dead“. While it actually states that it is not really dead, at least not yet, they make a point about how kids are texting more and how we are using Google voice, Skype and other tools to get around the traditional phone call. I won’t argue these points, but even though I have been a technical person for quite a few years, I have always felt that technology should be used only when it improves on the alternative. Technology should never be used for the sake of technology alone.
I have heard the argument that “Twitter is for nerds — just another excuse not to meet someone in person.” Of course those who understand its value will argue that face to face networking is an optimal situation but social networking offers something that is unique: the opportunity to meet people that one would never have met any other way. This can sometimes lead to face to face networking with these same people thus expanding one’s network very nicely. The phone call is an easy convenient way to get to know that online person just a little better. Printed words have no voice tone to accompany them thus can sometimes be misunderstood. As we get older I think our age prevents our thumbs to text as adroitly as our younger counterparts. Skype can be spotty at best sometimes with calls often dropped. This is incredibly annoying to me. I use Skype when I must, but until the technology gets to the point where we can see and hear each other in real-time with no glitches, I will still be using the traditional phone call.
The point to this post however is not to argue about technology. It is more to remind people that technology should be used as a bridge to connect people in meaningful ways. Yes you can connect on Facebook and Twitter. The phone call can take that one step further. Now you know what that person’s voice sounds like and you have made that connection stronger. All I’m saying is don’t throw away your landline just yet.
This post is an excerpt from “Social Media – A Straightforward Approach”, an ebook I give out with each Social Media Makeover Session.
Posted by Gabe on November 10, 2010 under Twitter |
If you have been active on Twitter over the last few months you have probably noticed it. You have seen tweets like “The ‘My Paper Is Awesome’ Daily is Out. Top stories by @OpieTaylor @AuntBee @BarneyFife.” Of course this is a fictitious example but you get the idea. This is a service that converts tweets of people you follow, lists or hash tags into a newspaper type format (see paper.li). At first after taking a cursory look at it I thought it was kind of neat. I didn’t know how it worked, but assumed people took an effort to select the “headlines” that they liked. Since we were recognized by Mashable we have been featured in many of these posts as of late. One of my followers even featured the same link for three straight days. I started taking a closer look at these posts, and saw that in the media section our Twitter EBook (PDF) was also being featured almost every time. Wow, I thought. People are really taking an interest in my stuff!
Then I started taking a closer look. I didn’t go so far as to create a paper myself because as I learned, it’s automated. To what degree, I’m actually not sure but I assume that it grabs tweets that happen to be in the creator’s list or hashtag’s timeline of when the paper is published and picks videos, pdfs, links to publish in an automated fashion. (If a reader has a better explanation please add in the comments.) Why I think this is true is because I had not tweeted the ebook link this morning and it was not showing up in the media links. As soon as I did I found it in the next “paper”.
I won’t attempt to describe myself exactly how it works but I will offer a post written by someone else on the subject.
I am still deciphering in my mind what to think about all this. Here I had been thanking people for including me when they never personally selected anything I wrote. That I guess is part of the attraction to have a daily paper. It’s kind of urging me to tweet videos and our ebook more often as I now know it has a better chance of showing up in someone’s paper. I guess that’s good for me but I really don’t think this will work in the long run. So many people are using it the novelty has now worn off. I also I think that my followers will certainly get tired of me tweeting the same links over and over.
Regular readers of my blog will note that as of late I have not been writing about Twitter. All these posts have gone “straight to DVD” or as in my case our ebook. The reason why I didn’t do it this time is because I feel that within a few short months this Paper service will fade away. Now that I know how it works I have less interest in other “papers”. If I sent out a link every day that read, “Here’s a random sample of what my followers are saying” would you click on it each day?
So I guess I should be thankful for people at least including me in their lists to be eligible. I think of this service as a sophisticated retweet. Since I am pretty discerning as to what posts I retweet I will not be creating a paper. But that doesn’t mean I will not send out a few extra links to take advantage of the craze while I can. Would love to hear what you think of this new service.
