Lisa Harris introduced me to Slideshare via Linked In, and I have found it an extremely helpful tool in linking me to a number of presentations that others have put up, providing great material which when pulled from a variety of sources, can provide great material for lectures – and more specifically – for putting forward the pedagogical rationale for Blended Learning/the use of technology in learning (I’m a big fan of making the technology as invisible as possible, and looking for ways to remove the barriers, but sometimes there’s a learning curve, and we have to decide if the outcomes are worth it).

For businesses, investing (time, often, rather than visible finance) is key, and leads to positive outcomes. Here is one of Lisa’s many enlightening presentations:

I look forward to meeting Lisa face-to-face again soon, before too long! We met at Winchester Web Scene.

“Blended or hybrid learning, an instructional delivery mode in which instruction is conducted partly online and partly face-to-face, has emerged as one of the fastest-growing and most successful instructional models to deliver flexible learning options for today’s learners. Its ability to be customized to fit learners’ diverse needs and to be designed to accommodate a variety of content places blended learning courses and programs in high demand. Developing a comprehensive faculty development program on how to design, develop, deliver, and evaluate blended learning programs is challenging yet critical to supporting faculty members and students in this teaching and learning model. This comprehensive blended learning workshop guide contains a resource list and eight workshop modules intended to reduce some of the extensive work involved in assembling the components and curriculum for such a program. Each of the modules contains topical guidelines, content, resources, and best practices, and each can be easily customized to fit the needs of your institution, department, or unit.”

Visit the site.

We are all familiar with the term “Blogging”. By now there are millions of Blogs online covering all matter of subjects and industries. If you can think it, there is probably a Blog about it.

Blogging has become so popular…

It now extends far beyond the “online diary of my cat”, and into the business world. Blogging has become a great knowledgebase resource for business, both to educate the world on your products or services, and to establish your presence as an expert in your industry.

While these advantages are useful and of great benefit to every business, the SEO benefit of Blogging for your corporate website should not to be overlooked. This article will differentiate Blogs from websites and talk about how owning a Blog as well as contributing to other Blogs “Blogging” can increase your web traffic, thus lead flow and sales should also increase.

Read the full article.

Jake Ross answers questions on informal learning. Is it real? Does it benefit small companies? How does it relate to the web? An interesting video which gives an idea as to why didactic learning no longer works.

“Founded in February 2005, YouTube is the leader in online video and the premier destination for you to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on uk.YouTube.com and across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs and email.

Everyone can watch videos on YouTube. People can see first-hand accounts of current events, find videos about their hobbies and interests and discover the quirky and unusual. As more people capture special moments on video, YouTube is empowering them to become the broadcasters of tomorrow.”

http://www.youtube.com/user/drbexl

“Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free to use over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees.” (Wikipedia)

I manage a number of Twitter accounts:

• http://www.twitter.com/drbexl (general tweets)
• http://www.twitter.com/digitalfprint (social media tweets)
• http://www.twitter.com/ww2poster (history tweets)
• http://www.twitter.com/sfdo (adrenalin sports tweets)

Tips from my Experience of Twitter

• The fun challenge in Twitter is getting an understandable message across in 140 characters!
• If others like your information, they may “Retweet” it, thus their circle of friends may also read it.
• Twitter is about relationship building, you can’t just “broadcast” announcements out, you need to engage with your followers.
• Post a mix of useful information, links to others tweets/information, and some personal information… quotes seem to work quite well too!
• Think carefully about the name that you use for Twitter. Shorter is better so you can be re-tweeted, and you’re not using up large chunks of your 140 characters before you start..
• Add a clear picture of yourself. I don’t like following people without ‘avatars’ unless I already know them in ‘the real world’.
• Think carefully about how you use your 160 characters for your ‘biography’, as others will use this (along with your ‘feed’).
• Password protected accounts allow you to have private conversations, but you can only have one account per email address so think carefully.
• If you’re going to feed your status updates into Facebook, and you’re planning on fully engaging, you may want to find the “Selective Twitter” app in Facebook, adding #fb to your “Tweet” (otherwise FB friends will unsubscribe as you fill up their feed!).
• Use ‘hashtags’ (#) to follow conversations. There’s a number of now settled hashtags (e.g. #followfriday, although the etiquette for recommending is somewhat interesting, and a certain amount of you pat my back, etc.), but otherwise you can invent one. They’re generally ephemeral so with a few basic checks (e.g. on searches), it’s a fairly safe bet.

I think this diagram “Twitter Currency” sums it up really well (and will, in time, add information on useful add-ons for Twitter, as I LOVE TWITTER).

Associated Applications:

• Hootsuite
• Friend or Follow

Wired Wessex sponsored an event by Tony Treacy on Blogging for Business on Thursday 28th May. Social Media is exploding and Tony’s right there, giving us advice via econsultants.it.

SuperFunDaysOut

In discussions with SuperFunDaysOut about taking over their blogging, Twitter and bookmarking strategies (looking forward to all that adrenaline flowing online!), I thought I’d see if there was more to learn – there always is – but was pleased to note that much of it was familiar, although I need to put more of it into practice!

Inbound/Outbound Marketing

Previously Tony had given a talk on outbound (interruption) versus inbound (permission/opt-in) marketing – with social media falling into the second category, and much the way that business now goes. How it all fits together.

Blogs, SEO, Tools

• Blogs are outdoing the web for SEO/traffic, as they are indexed quicker, therefore move up the Google, or Technorati, chain faster.
• WordPress is Tony’s recommended tool for blogs, with its own analytics software. It’s free, strong, professional (around 4,500 themes), and 6000+ plug-ins available.  He particularly recommends allinone. As WordPress also functions as a CMS, can have a consistent look to website/blog.
• Particularly recommends Ping.Fm, allowing autoupdates of all social media.

Keywords

Keywords are the key to everything, as Google is simply a database, albeit a very sophisticated one! I’ve forgotten the name of the new tool that Tony mentioned which Google are developing in response to the success of Twitter…

On a website, with organic methods, optimising and tweaking the content, it can take around 6 months to reach the top-spot in Google, but with blogs, it can be possible in 3-4 days!

Time, however, needs to be spent in the early stages to define the keywords – it’s not rocket science, but experience demonstrates that it takes around 3 days to develop this.

What do you write about?

Write about what they want to learn about, not what you want to sell (aside from any possible benefits it may have for your viewers), as it’s all about a process of relationship-building. 

Know Me -> Like Me -> Trust Me -> Buy Me

In the UK studies have shown that visitors access a site 6-7 times before they buy.

What should a post look like?

• Internal headings (indicative of content)
• At least one graphic
• 500-800 words (ok, view many of my posts so far as extended reportage, rather than blogs!)
• Lists – not too many (e.g. 10 things for x)
• 1 idea per post, keyword related.
• The headline should assume that the reader won’t read the article.
• Can surprise people with twists on words, etc [although I would add I'd take care not to be nothing to do with the words, as I get REALLY annoyed by that]
• No problems with being commercial if it’s a personal opinion, clarify as such. 
• No spelling errors!

A couple of free-ebooks are on his website. 

Publishing Schedule

• 1-2 times per week and stick to it.
• With WordPress (and probably others) can set a date to publish
• Create keyword content/strategy.

What can you put in a post?

• Interviews (including via email)
• Video interviews
• Guest posts from similar blogs (copy but provide a backlink, this is your CURATORIAL slant – pointing people to the best material)
• “Best of” lists
• “How do we do it” posts, including screenshots

Can you get someone else to write it?

Yes, plenty can be found on eLance, but no one knows your business as you do, and you’re missing out on participating on the conversation.

Tony, however, cited an example of tallshipsraces.org, which he took from a static site, which was targeting the 16-24 age bracket, and turned it into a site which generated great publicity/its own content, including YouTube. 

Put an RSS feed on and talk to your market. A number of US blogs are now using blogs as cusomter service. Time consuming but gets results. 

Comments

• Take comments seriously
• Comment back – share an example, etc. (don’t just market your product). Tony recommended CommentHut for commenting (along with another product he’d forgotten the name of!), aiming for 10 comments/backlinks per day.
• Offer thought leadership.
• Find out who people are and follow links.
• Subscribe to blogs and follow on Twitter
• There are pros/cons to monitoring comments, but easy with WordPress

Twitter

• Use it as part of your blogging strategy.
• Check out the “social media experts”, who’s following them?
• Aim for 95% personal tweets, 5% sales, otherwise likely to be de-followed. 
• Place Twitter URL on homepage, press releases, business card, email signatures!

Technorati

Technorati is the Google of the blogging world, so get your blog registered there. Find some big bloggers and start to link to their material (so you start to feature in their comments, etc.)

Google Reader

There’s a number of RSS feed readers [I use Newsgator], and Tony recommends Google Reader, which I use to follow blogspot blogs. 

Tony Treacy

I like Tony’s approach, offering advice to allow clients to run their own blogs! He’s passionate about what he’s doing and you can hear the excitement in his voice as he talks about the explosion of social media and how few companies can survive with a website alone!

Age Groups (Roughly!)

• Under 35: Digital Natives
• 35-55: Digital Immigrants
• 55-65: Digital Aliens
• 65 + Silver Surfers (who largely want to PhotoShop their family history then email it!)

AimHigher

Meantime, I’m looking forward to the end of this month when I’ll be adapting my WordPress for websites to WordPress for blogs to schoolkids who are engaging with University for the first time, shall think how best to structure the session!

Post first posted 3rd June 2009, on drbexl searches the net!