Thank you @chrisbrogan for the “20 Blog Topics to Get You Unstuck.”

I am constantly getting questions such as, “But if I had a blog, what would I write about?” and “Who would care?” The answer is simple:

Just write about things that would draw your target market to want to visit your website. If you sell hard wood floors, what do your customers need to know about choosing a wood… or cleaning them? 

Now, to divert you back to the post topic: Ways to Convince the Boss to Try Twitter:

1. Use Twitter

Use twitter for your company, I mean. Find your boss a new customer, or make a much needed connection! Once I was in a meeting with a client who had never used twitter… but wanted some training. During the meeting they said “I need a video editor.” So while sitting there, I used twitter to get him 5 or 6 leads. 

2. Stack articles about twitter’s effectiveness on their desk.

Here are a few stats to help you get started: 

A survey by Coleman-Parkes Research indicates that companies who currently use social media reported improved feedback, improved customer satisfaction, customer support, increased sales and improved public perception of the company. Need more stats? There are 1 trillion unique URLs in Google’s index, 2 billion Google searches per day, 70 million youtube videos as of March 2008, and over 1 billion tweets to date. 

3. Send them to the twitter yellow pages

Find people in your area or any category at twellow. Its better than a real phone book where you can make cold calls or do mailings… because twitter people want you to follow them! 

4. Talk about your twitter success

Talk about how easy it is and the connections and people you have met through twitter. Haven’t met people? Then you are doing it all wrong!!

5. Your suggestions welcome

Please leave your story of how you got a friend, coworker or your boss to try twitter!

1. An Infinite Puzzle Piece

It is hard to put together because the pieces are always changing… molding themselves into what they are becoming. If that sounds like a circular statement… it is. 

There are no rules in social media. It is an experiment… The sky is the limit.  via @Appomattox_News

2. An Organism

It is alive. I once asked a group of colleagues what social media would look like In Real Life. Infinite blocks of cubicles… sometimes the cube people pop up and say something. Or a billion people on a river at one time… you never step in the same river twice, right?

A couple months ago people were still using URLs to link to websites. Now they are linked to twitter tweeple. If I leave this article here, on my blog, it will stay here. But if I turn it loose in social media… I can no longer control it. It becomes a living thing. 

3. Tools for community

For sharing and discussing information on the web. 

A method of allowing groups of people to come together regardless of title to share ideas, information, perspectives and to drive positive change. via @JoeGerstandt

Activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. Social media are distinct from industrial media, such as newspapers, television, and film. While social media are relatively cheap tools that enable anyone (even private individuals) to publish or access information, industrial media generally require significant financial capital to publish information via Wikipedia. 

4. Another form of marketing

A method of gaining publicity through online communities and networks.

5. A revolution in human culture. 

It is fundamentally shifting every element of human society: business, media, government, the arts, education, religion, family life… It’s almost as if the social web has enabled an era where trust is the core value and everything outside of trust (via our relationships online and off) is irrelevant. Is it about friendships? Yes. Is it more than that? Infinitely yes. via @socialmediariver @wiselywoven 

There is a lot of talk about our social responsibility to social media tools like Facebook and Twitter. 

…what do you mean, “Social responsibility?” Don’t I only have a responsibility to MY organization, MY cause, and MY paycheck? 

And even I never really got past the fiscal goals of social media (costs less, increases sales), until I talked to @joegerstandt and @appomattox_news over the weekend at the Social Media Seminar. 

“The way we approach leadership is shifting and that part of the future and part of the crossroads we are at now is that we are shifting away from relying on the “experts” at the top of the organizational charts and relying more on groups of people coming together regardless of title to share ideas, information, perspectives and to drive positive change.” (via @joegerstand on the Social Media River)

Imagine if you could double your donor base in a year? Imagine how many people you could reach with your cause message if you had 1,000 twitter followers… who all had 1,000 followers. Imagine if you could rally all of those people and their friends around your cause and your message to drive that positive change you have been working so hard for? 

GuideStar gives us some more practical reasons, here.

 

 

Social Media Seminar 2009

Above, Joe Gerstandt @joegerstandt speaks about leadership and social media. 

Earlier I spoke about social media tools and how to use them. Here are some tools you can use:

Slides and YouTube videos from today’s workshop

Be Social on the Web in 5 hours/week: checklist

Other Notes and Resources from Today’s Workshop

If you aren’t a web designer, know nothing about HTML, or just haven’t been using WordPress very long… then it may not be a good idea for you to use a custom WordPress theme. Unless you follow some simple rules:

1. Hire an expert. Ok… I am not trying to promote myself here. But seriously, if you are going to use custom themes, plugins, bells & whistles… but don’t know how to maneuver WordPress CMS… then don’t touch it. Ask an expert to do it. Many experts will let you hire them on retainer so they can this “stuff” for you when you need it.

I get calls all the time… “Help! I broke my site!” 

A lot of you don’t have time to learn to fix it. So hire someone who can do it in a flash. 

2. Learn to use WordPress CMS. CMS means content management system. And really, its easy. You can never be prepared for every emergency that might happen – but if you know the basics, you can save a lot of money on retaining that expert. This means knowing some simple HTML, too. And knowing how to maneuver an FTP program like Dreamweaver or just SmartFTP. 

3. Check your site after every edit. EVERY. EDIT. If you make some changes to the image on your post… save it, then check it before doing any other edits. If you make some edits to a sidebar widget, check it every time you update. If you mess with the plugins, check it after each plugin update.

Some things to watch out for:

• Some plugins don’t work together and can break your site. 
• Some custom themes require a lot of FTP file editing.
• If you change from one theme to another – check all of your pages, some of the code might change. 
• Some themes have special “featured” articles on the homepage that use TimThumb and you will need to learn to use custom fields.