Social Media 101

Rotary PR Workshop Module 2: Social Media 101 Tips on using social media to raise the profile of your club, attract new members and start conversations By Julian Matthews, Trinetizen Media www.trinetizen.com

What’s next • • • • • • • •

7 Case studies 10 tips on Google search 23 tips on blogging 5 steps to post audio online 5 tips on photos 5 tips on posting videos on YouTube 10 tips on Facebook 5 tips on microblogging: Twitter

Social media and the banana leaf

Digital banana leaf

1 Multimedia President st

Case study 1: Using Flickr.com Memories come alive in photos • The Star, Sept 19, 2007: The 1957 Photo Album project organised by StarMetro together with Federal Hotel Kuala Lumpur received close to 150 photographs. • Launched in June ’07 it was held for over 12 weeks. • The photo album was available for viewing at the Federal Hotel Kuala Lumpur or by visiting www.flickr.com/photos/the1957album

Case study 2: http://www.chevroncarsblog.com/

Case study 3: http://www.adoptapilot.blogs.com

Case study 4: Southwest Airlines viral video contest 1. US airlines Southwest asked people to post a 20second clip of something embarrassing or humiliating happening to them, with the winning video to be used in Southwest's official "Wanna Get Away" campaign. 3. Contestants signed up and posted video at http://www.youtube.com/group/Southwestcontest 5. Winning videos and honourable mentions were cross-posted at www.southwestwannagetaway.com.

Case study 5: Doritos chips • Doritos’ “Crash the Super Bowl” contest encouraged wanna directors to produce an ad that would be aired during Super Bowl 2007. • More than 1,000 submissions were uploaded to Yahoo! Video and Jumpcut, and voted on by consumers at CrashTheSuperBowl.com • Two winners were aired: ‘Live The Flavor’ and ‘Check Out Girl’.

Production cost: US$12 Dale Backus, 21, and Wes Phillips, 22, shot the 30-second spot, featuring Dale’s wife Cori, with borrowed equipment, a skateboard and total expenditure of 12 dollars. They were awarded a prize of $10,000 and a trip to the Super Bowl in Miami, where the winning entry was announced and aired during the game for est. US$1.25m. http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/

Google

10 Google Tips •

Capitalization and quotation marks: Google searches are NOT case sensitive. Searches for abdullah badawi, Abdullah Badawi, and aBdUlLAh BaDaWi will all return the same results. Use “quotes” or + or - sign to include/exclude words. Eg: “rotary ampang”, rotary +ampang, rotary -ampang

2. Limit to .my sites Example 1: rotary site:org.my Example 2: “abdullah badawi” site: gov.my •

Either OR. If you want to include either this or that in result list, use the OR operator (must be upper-case): Example: "siti nurhaliza" OR "datuk khalid” site:my (Leave out the OR, Google returns pages that include both terms)

1. Try searching Groups, Images, Blogs 3. Finding specific Filetypes Go to Google > Advanced Search. Try finding Acrobat (pdf), Powerpoint (pps), Word (doc) Excel spreadsheet (xls) files. Eg: grants filetype:pdf site:rotary.org 8. Older stuff Try Google Cached, or www.archive.org •

Alternate query types: info: link: related: (no space)

1. Tools: Calculator, Dictionary, Metric/Currency Conversion Metric system. Eg 1: 233 square feet in square meter OR 233 sq ft =? sq m Eg 2: define: dodecagon Eg 3: currency of Brazil in Malaysian money Eg 4 :3.578 USD in MYR Eg 5: 5.6 million British pounds in MYR Eg 6: half a cup in teaspoons 10. Movie, music finder Eg: movie: clooney OR music: “norah jones” 12. Phonebook Eg: Brad, Pitt, LA OR rphonebook: Brad Pitt LA

#Bonus tip Monitor specific keyword with Alerts • Google Alerts: http://www.google.com/alerts • Yahoo Alerts: http://alerts.yahoo.com Eg: Yahoo sends pop-up alerts if you are on Messenger + email

RSS • Rich Site Summary/Really Simple Syndication is a method to syndicate your web content out to users. • Using RSS files, you can create a feed that supplies headlines, news, blog posts, comments, forum threads, photos, audio files, and even video to your “subscribers”. • Subscribers can use a dedicated software called an RSS reader or aggregator to “pull in” all their favourite web content into one location and scan quickly. Current browsers come with integrated RSS readers. • Users can also use a web-based aggregator to pull-in feeds that are constantly updated and view a web page of feeds. Eg: Bloglines, Google Reader, Netvibes

Needs of website

FEED ME!

Blogging

Create a free blog

Set up your own blog

8 Blogging tips #1. Frequency: Once weekly Rule of thumb is to blog at least once a week. Do it tag team style, so you can keep it fresh and updated.

#2. RSS: Make it easy to subscribe

#3. Track visitors: Blogger: Use Google Analytics tracker to track number of blog visitors WordPress: Stats on Dashboard, or use independent tracker eg: http://extremetracking.com or Google: “free trackers”

8 Blogging tips #4. Promote, promote, promote Use Facebook My Blog app to automate blog post updates, use Twitter, heads-up to other bloggers.

#5. Link out Link to related articles within, link to articles you are commenting about, link your pics to the article you refer, link to major news sites, A-list bloggers, update your blogroll.

#6. Track popular posts, subscribe to feeds Use Digg, delicious, slashdot.org, Alltop, uClue.de

#7. Moderate comments, respond, thank visitors Delete the nasties, banish trolls and spammers

#8. Blogging takes time and effort Don’t give it up so easily. Be patient.

15 Blog post ideas 1. Archive weekly newsletter 2. Do profile on “Member of the Month”. 3. Do event promo on project of the month 4. List 5 or 10 ideas, trends, or thoughts 5. Link bait: Publish a list of links on a specific subject 6. Relate a recent experience, or anecdotal story 7. Answer questions you received recently 8. Comment on other blog posts

1. Turn a press release into a blog post, eg: the insider view of a project 2. Trade guest posts with other Rotary clubs 3. Post pictures or video of recent event 4. Record audio of speaker, or speech and post 5. Embed presentation 6. Embed Rotary video from YouTube 7. Post slideshow of recent project or event

Podcasting A podcast is a web feed of audio or video files placed on the Internet for anyone to download or subscribe.

HOW TO PODCAST: Five easy steps •

Plug a headset with earphone and microphone into your computer. • Install the free Audacity MP3 recorder from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ • Download LAME from http://lame.buanzo.com.ar/ Unzip it and note where the file lame_enc.dll is on your computer. 5. Make a recording, then save it as an MP3 file 6. Create an RSS feed using a Podcast RSS Feed Generator* and upload to your website or post to a podcast host. *http://podcastgen.sourceforge.net http://www.tdscripts.com/webmaster_utilities/podcast-generator.php

Podcast catchers • iTunes http://www.apple.com/itunes/ • Juice http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/ • Doppler http://www.dopplerradio.net • Basic podcasting software http://www.how-to-podcast-tutorial.com/13basic-podcasting-software.htm

Podcast links • http://www.how-to-podcast-tutorial.com • • • • • • • • • • •

http://podcast.thestar.com.my http://audio.weblogs.com http://www.podcast.net http://www.odeo.com http://www.podcastingnews.com http://www.itconversations.com http://thisweekintech.com http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts http://penanghokkien.com http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/waystolisten/podcasts/guide http://www.audblog.com

Case Study 6 : Robert Scoble "He has succeeded where small armies of more conventional publicrelations types have been failing abjectly for years; he has made Microsoft, with its history of monopolistic bullying, appear marginally but noticeably less evil to the outside world,“ The Economist

Case study 6: Scobleizer

• Posted 700 videos of employees in 60,000staff company • Videos shot with US$750 camera without any scripting, little preparation, editing • Posted at channel9.msdn.com

Case study 7: Viral videos http://www.willitblend.com

• Blendtec, little-known blender company spends US$50 to make unusual video • 6 million views in 5 days • Was 3rd most viewed video on YouTube • 2006 revenue up 43%

Start a YouTube channel

http://www.youtube.com/t/ngo_tips

The Pope’s on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/rotaryinternational

Tips on posting video on YouTube • Keep it short: 3 minutes max. • Homemade is fine: be creative. • Title and tags must have descriptive keywords that pull-in viewers. • Resize to 640x480 res: QuickTime .mov, Windows .avi, .mpg, .3gp or mpeg4 (Divx, Xvid) with mp3 audio. • Try making slideshows using MS Photostory: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/ PhotoStory/default.mspx

Useful YouTube links • General help http://www.google.com/support/youtube/ • YouTube Help videos http://www.youtube.com/user/YouTubeHelp • Ten Ways You Can Use YouTube To Promote Your Online Content http://www.masternewmedia.org • YouTube Marketing http://www.youtubemarketing.net • 50 YouTube tricks and tips http://chris.pirillo.com/50-youtube-and-online-videotips-and-tricks

Tips on Photos • People like seeing people online. • Buy a decent digital camera • Always upload in smaller sizes: 800x600 or smaller, 150KB or smaller, unless you plan to allow users to print • Use Picasa to edit: http://picasa.google.com, picasaweb.google.com (Caveat: Picasa automatically makes duplicates of your pics, so if you have many pics in hard-disk, empty My Pictures folder, and manually import)

• Use free sites: Flickr, Fotki, Photobucket, Facebook. Or pay minimum annual: Eg: SmugMug:US$40/year, Fotki: US$25/year

10 Facebook Tips • Start a group or fan group: Keep it public, you have option to kick out members • Leverage on members, existing friends, use app to invite Yahoo Mail, Gmail friends. • Promote events, projects, meetings, your blog, your website. • Use apps to automate stuff: blogposts, Twitter updates, invites. • Tag all photos and videos, encourage others to tag their photos with “Rotary ABC”. Divide photos into albums.

Facebook Tips • Don’t overdo the silly things or clog up your wall with funny YouTube videos • Address new non-Rotarian friends with personal messages • Have two or three admins as backups • Link to like-minded groups: eg Breast Cancer Awareness, Eradicate Polio. • Use privacy settings to divide group once you have mastered various apps Link: http://social-media-university-global.org/

Twitter

Breaking news before news media

#bushfires on Twitter

Incoming president

Sample tweets from Obama

Mumbai Attacks: 960 tweets/min

First photos were posted on Flickr by a citizen journalist

Sample tweets during Mumbai attacks

www.twitter.com/rotary

Twitter tips • • • •

Listen: Follow popular tweeters first Share: Find great stuff to share Be authentic Be active! No one is interested if your last tweet was from several months ago. • Don’t hard sell: If you are plugging your own product or service, say so

1. Messages are not conversations.

2. Participate.

Hint: Share some stuff.

3. Start conversations.

Attribution: Some of the material used here was taken from a presentations by Martha Z Kagan and Shantanu Adhicary

Julian Matthews e: [email protected] w: trinetizen.com b: trinetizen.com/blog t: twitter.com/trinetizen m: +60-12-915-9528