So, my argument can pretty much be summed up in 3 letters: TMI (too much information).  If you autopost all of your locations from Foursquare, especially without any additional information, 9 times out of 10 your are posting something people don’t care to know.  

Do we really want to know about someones trip to the gas station or every time they arrive at work?  Here are some other indications you might be over sharing:  Checking in at your OB-GYN or at a funeral is probably not a good idea.

Another concern is safety; if your tweets are public, you are broadcasting your exact location at all times.  People may know the perfect time to break in to your Lamborghini.

Overall, the main reason you should not autopost foursquare checkins to Twitter is that they are different platforms designed for different purposes.  With Twitter, as with most social media platforms,you want to avoid broadcasting and focus on engagement.  I’m not saying never tweet your location; but before posting each check in, I think you should first ask yourself:  “Is this relevant to my followers?  Will this spark conversation or is this annoying content which will clog up their Twitter feed?”

Follow me on Twitter @joannacr and @newmediabuilder.

Have you ever seen an ad or website with a great font and wanted to know what it is?  You can submit a file or URL to this website and it will return the closest match.

Here is what the site suggests for the New Media Builder logo:

2. ZipCast

One of the best free web conferencing sites, Zipcast was created by Slideshare.  The website easily allows you to upload your youtube video, slideshare presentation, or powerpoint.  You can then start a presentation using your webcam and invite guests with Facebook or Twitter.  Very simple and easy to use.

3. K7.net

A very useful tool for small businesses just starting out, K7 provides a free voice mail and fax delivery system with messages being sent directly to your email.   The website provides you with a free telephone number which can be used for fax or voice mail.  You can even customize your greeting by dialing the number and using your 4 digit security code.  (To send a free fax you can use FaxZero)
Image courtesy of Minor Prophet

You can also follow Serial Startups on Facebook and Twitter

Expanding a business can be the most challenging stage in a small business.  Why?

• Your business needs to have “expansion capital” – money dedicated primarily to hiring additional staff, marketing campaigns, and/or to open additional geographic locations
• The owner of the company or top management may find it difficult to focus on business as usual during expansion
• Your business may need to completely update the technological systems used to keep track of sales, inventory, and accounting

You will find the following four expansion strategies useful in planning your business growth:

1.  Grow sales This is the most obvious strategy – but not always the easiest.  In order to grow your sales, you have to make sure that you have the infrastructure in place within your company that can withstand the pressure of increasing sales.

• Develop a sales process and make sure that your staff is knowledgeable on how to use it.
• If you are not using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, now might be time to implement one.
• Take a look at your cost structure.  If you are planning to see a big increase in sales, this might be an opportunity to negotiate lower prices with your suppliers.  Also, is your product priced correctly?  Don’t undervalue your products or services.

2. Expand menu of products or services This strategy can work really well for some companies.  In fact, there may be additional products or services that your customers would actually already want to buy from your company.

• What do your customers want?  What kind of changes are occurring in your market?
• Examine the services that you can begin to provide that are related to the products that you already offer.
• What kind of add-ons can you provide?  An example would be a service plan for a product that you already sell.

3. Move into another geographical area This could mean selling online in another part of the world, opening up another office, or even franchising your business.

• The lowest cost way to do this would be to offer your product or service via the internet – with some creativity, you may be surprised by the results.
• If you are considering a new location, be sure that you know the local challenges, do market research, and understand local staffing costs.
• Franchising is not for the weak of heart – this may have heavy initial costs, but if you are a good, organized manager and you have the right type of business, it may work very well for your company.

4. Acquisition This is a great strategy for moving into a new area or gaining market share.  Many companies have expanded their product offering or have moved into new areas by buying their smaller competitors.

• Thoroughly analyze the company’s accounting records.  Spend the money to hire an auditor to help you with this.
• Understand the company’s existing obligations to suppliers and customers
• Take a look at the business’s “culture”.  Will it be a good fit with your business or will it be a challenge to integrate?

These strategies can be combined to design the best plan to move your business forward.  Happy growing!

Editor’s Note: This is a Guest Post from Naomi Tapia, owner and primary contributor to the content of SerialStartUps.com, a wonderful resource for small businesses and entrepreneurs.  To learn more about Ms. Tapia click here and be sure to follow her on Twitter at @naomitapia, LinkedIn: naomibrons, and like Serial Startups on Facebook.

CopyPasteCharacter.com

Do you have a hard time finding the symbol you are looking for in Micrsoft Word?  Or do you ever want an easy way to add a smiley face, musical note, or other fun symbol to your facebook or twitter posts?  This website makes it simple!  Simply click the symbol to copy it to your clipboard then paste it wherever you like.  I ♥ this website ✌ery much!  Just try not to get carried away☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺

MeasureIt Add on for Firefox

If you are a firefox user, this is a great add on.  Measure it allows you to take a virtual ruler and measure the size in pixels of objects on a webpage.  This is amazing for designers!  To add the plugin go to MeasureIt and click add to firefox.  Download and install the add on then restart Firefox.  The tool will not automatically appear you will first need to right-click on a toolbar then choose “Customize”. Look for the ruler icon in the popup that appears and drag it where ever you’d like it to appear.  Now simply click the icon and start measuring!

TinEye.com

According to their website, TinEye is: a reverse image search engine. It finds out where an image came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or if there is a higher resolution version.  Simply upload your image or input a URL.  You can sort the resulting images by size, amount of alteration, and relevance.   Try it!  It is amazing how many places one image can end up.

What websites do you find useful?  Leave a comment below!  For more useful tips check out newmediabuilder.com and like our page on Facebook! ]]> http://newmediabuilder.com/tuesdays-top-3-useful-tips-for-the-week/feed/ 0 http://newmediabuilder.com/use-your-website-to-help-japan/ http://newmediabuilder.com/use-your-website-to-help-japan/#comments Mon, 14 Mar 2011 23:09:26 +0000 Joanna Randazzo http://newmediabuilder.com/?p=336 We have all seen the devastation in Japan and many are looking for ways to get involved.  If you own a website or blog, here is a simple way you can help. 

Hello Bar has made it simple to add a custom toolbar to your website or blog soliciting donations for the charity of your choice.   Here is an example of what it will look like on your page.  Read more for the quick howto guide to get started.

Basic Website:

You can simply add this code within the <body> tag of your website to solicit donations for the Red Cross:
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”//www.hellobar.com/hellobar.js”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
new HelloBar(1,9126);
</script>
<noscript>Help The Victims of the 8.9 Earthquake in Japan by Spreading Awareness and Aid. Visit http://goo.gl/wjZQz to donate.
</noscript>

Or visit Hello Bar’s Webpage and sign up for an account using the Invite Code “helpjapan” to customize the message and charity.

Blogging Platforms:

Tumblr:

In order to add the Hello Bar to Tumblr, you will need to follow some additional steps.

First, you will need to create an account with HelloBar using the “helpjapan” invite code.  Follow the link sent to your email to access your code.

Next. click on settings in the right hand corner of your screen.

You will then need to select “Left side of the window” in the Tab Display field.  Click Save to get your embed code.

Copy your embed code then login to your Tumblr Dashboard and select Customize

Select Info from your navigation Bar and paste your Hello Bar code into the description tab.

WordPress

The simplest way to add the plain or customized Hello Bar embed code into your WordPress.org site is to use the Hello Bar Plug In.

Simply Login to your WordPress Dashboard and Select Plugins> Add New.

Search for and Install the Hello Bar Plugin.

Paste your embed code into the Hello Bar for WordPress Plugin

If you have any questions feel free to contact us at New Media Builder or contact Hello Bar’s staff directly: HERE

Find out more about how you can help Japan by visiting the American Red Cross.

Don’t fret; we are here to help!  Below are New Media Builder’s questions of the week:

1. If someone set up a Facebook personal profile as their business by mistake, what are ways to get the “friends” to move over to their new business page?

It is hard to get fans to convert from one profile to another. Inevitably, you will lose a few in the transition. You can post the link on your wall, send a direct message to your friends, or wait until facebook fixes the suggest to friends option on the business page. Another option is to use the business page to create an event and invite your personal page’s friends to the event asking them to like your business page. However, the most effective way of getting more fans would probably be to pay for a personalized facebook ad which recommends to your current friends to like your page and shows other people who they are connected to who have already done so themselves.

2. Where do you find your LinkedIn URL?

You can find and customize the URL of your Public Profile by taking the following steps:  Click on “Edit Profile” under the Profile tab on your homepage. Click on “Edit” next to the URL listed on the “Public Profile” line. Click on “Edit” in the “Your Public Profile URL” section at the top of page. This will take you to a page that will show you your current URL and will allow you to update that address. Most custom URLs begin with www.linkedin.com/in/. You are able to add a custom ending to what will appear after the “linkedin.com/in/”. For example, Jane Doyle could customize her URL to read “www.linkedin.com/in/janedoyle”.  Click on the “Set Address” button once you have entered your custom URL.  Now, add this customized url to your email signature, business cards, and other new media sites.

3. I can’t control the way linksalpha wordpress plugin publishes my blog posts. Linksalpha publishes a blog post to LinkedIn twice, FaceBook twice and Twitter once, then Twitter sends it to LinkedIn. I’m so confused.

Have you set up automatic posting from your other social accounts previously? For example, your tweets automatically post on facebook or linkedin? If I were you I would go to each separate site>settings>applications and remove all of them. Then try re-enabling your plugin. That might help.

Do you have questions about social media?  New Media Builder can help!  Submit your questions HERE or simply leave a comment below.

Social Media Interview Series - HARO/Casting Words
Reuben Rail from FireStarter Consulting suggests “A fun and effective to use social media is to conduct a Social Media Interview Series with ‘experts’ that your clients will find of value. It offers a triple win in that you get provide your clients with value, make new relationships with interviewees (and help them out), and get traffic for your blog.  As far as choosing your interviewees you can either think of certain people ahead of time, and then approach them (wanting to build that relationship), or you can broadcast for experts.  When I did this for a B2B Consulting Firm I used Help A Reporter (HARO), and sent out a request for experts in the needed area. WARNING – you will get a lot of responses, but we definitely found some QUALITY interviewees (CXO @ big companies).   As for your content you can do email interviews, video, podcast, or an ebook resulting from either of the three. I am a big fan of recycling content into other formats for consumption. If you do video or podcast you can use a service like Casting Words to help reformat the content.”

Free GiveAways
Erica Friedman from ALC Publishing found look using free giveaways: “We gave away copies of our last publication to people who posted/tweeted/facebooked about it. We assigned a point value to links, full posts and video embeds, and when someone made a certain point amount, they got a copy of the book for free, no catches. We ended up giving away a few dozen books and selling hundreds more as a result”

Providing Value to Clients
Brett Fleckinger advises: “We are a CPA firm and we have used social media to help match our business owner clients with our charity clients who are seeking donors for their programs. Everyone wins. Our business clients feel good and get tax deductions. Our nonprofit clienst get the money they desparately need and our clients appreciate our involvement.

Game Based Marketing
Tabatha Jones from Avante Garde Media “We have been using a lot of game based marketing strategies with social media. This is just a way to keep things upbeat. We are currently running a logo contest which we have business submit their logo to us and at the end of the month we will post an open voting poll on Facebook featuring the logos that were submitted to us for people to vote on. The logo with the most votes will get a featured spotlight on our website showcasing their company.”

Group Discounts
Tiffany Twist from ManeMaxx had a great idea “I added to one of my companies website, an incentive which offers potential customers discounts on “group orders.” And, how would one look for others who may want to take part in a group order? Through their social networks, of course, and places where others with similar interests meet up.  The page has only been up this week so no results to report yet but it seems like it certainly won’t hurt =) The page just sits there pretty pain free. We’ll see. I have a product many of my customers like to be discreet about. So maybe it will be a feature someone reading this will use which will really help spread the word about their product or service. Like your site’s own little Groupon program =) “  Check out their page here

Generating Buzz
Duncan Williams of I-5 Designs generated buzz through social media.  He says  “We just re-designed our website and changed the coding and keywords to be more search engine friendly. Also, tweeting, Linked-In, and company blog activity helps to create a buzz around your company.”

Twitter/Blogging Twitter @slow2pro
Slow 2 Pro utilized twitter, social networks, and blogging to help a triathlete gain sponsorship.  Check out their blog for some ideas on how you can collaborate with others to increase awareness and draw traffic.

#1 on LinkedIn
Dave Maskin of wirenames.com utilizes LinkedIn Answers and Groups to gain new clients.   He says: “By participating in the various groups I own and are a part of, it’s lead to many one on one conversations that have lead to many new clients…”

I hope these responses have given you some ideas for your company.  Contact us at www.newmediabuilder.com for a free consultation on how to jump start your social media strategy!

Step 1:  Apologize and Warn Your Friends

If you were tricked into clicking on a link,  chances are your friends may make the same mistake.  Post a quick status update letting your friends know what is going on.  You may have inadvertently already sent hundreds of messages/posts.  It’s good manners to let people know what is going on.

Step 2: Remove Suspicious Applications

Often these spam attacks are fueled by application scams.  User will give applications access to their account expecting to receive quiz results or prizes.  In a split second, many find they have instead given the application permission to post the offending link to their wall and hundreds of their friends.

Select Privacy Settings from the upper right hand corner of your screen. 

Scroll Down to Apps and Websites in the lower right hand corner.  Select Edit Your Settings .

Select Remove Unwanted or Spammy Apps.

Select Remove next to suspicious and/or recently activated apps.

Step 3: Report any remaining posts

If you find any lingering posts, linking to the offending application delete them and make sure to select “Mark as Spam”.

Step 4: Be Careful!

If something sounds too good to be true, 99% of the time it is.  Many of us have become accustomed to trusting links posted by our friends on Facebook.  Try to keep in mind, that just like email, users need to be wary of unfamiliar links.

If you are still having problems after following these steps, contact Facebook’s Help Service for assistance.

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