Smart business owners today know being online is part of business and content is king! http://bit.ly/10jRs3n
Q:What are the steps to take to follow someone on twitter when you only have their name? Thanks! Julie Ledbetter
Anonymous
Hi Julie! Welcome back to our site!
Twitter Search can be tough, when there isn’t enough information it will give you a list of people with the same name. If a person is serious about Twitter, she has filled out the profile page with full name and short bio. There should be enough clues to identify the right person to follow.
As you are asking here, I assume the Twitter search didn’t give you enough information to identify the right person. That’s a tough one. There is some “Sherlock”-ing” to be done. I would start with a Google Search to find the person’s website or if she is mentioned on a website. Google search is far broader of course than Twitter. Chances are they published their twitter account on their own website or you find their LinkedIN profile or their Facebook profile. Then you still can connect to the person, just not on Twitter.
I personally have a rule: If I can not find the twitter account of a person within 15 minutes, I assume he or she doesn’t want to be found and has no interest in other people connecting to him or her on Twitter.
Get found on Twitter:
- Don’t be an egghead, add your profile picture (headshot works best)
- Fill out the profile page with your full name and short bio, with info that is relevant
- Add your Twitter account to your website or Facebook or Google+ profile
- Add you Twitter account to your e-mail signature
Any other thoughts? What do you do to get found?
It starts with a Blog: SBRN Social Media Summer Series
Thursday June 21, 2012 - at the Membership Meeting Birgit Pauli-Haack gave a 30 min presentation, on why you should start blogging. In essence: Blogging increases Search Engine Visibility within months and gets your site ready for the Social Web, ready for the sharing economy.
The slideshow is available on slideshare.net:
SBRN: It starts with a Blog or Get your Website ready for the Social Webs
View more presentations from Birgit Pauli-Haack
For a deeper research into low-cost popular Blog Engines read Relevanza’s “4 Best Blog Engines For Small Business & Start-ups”
3 Most Relevant Updates on Facebook, Google Places and Bitly
Last week’s technology news contained quite a few updates implemented by social networks…
After my return from Europe, I find myself reading & scrambling through the technology resources, trying to get a handle on those updates and measuring their relevance to you. Below, I summarized the three most significant changes on: Facebook, Google Plus and Bitly.
Please use below links to learn more and feel free to send us your questions via the comment section below or via our “Ask us” page. We will hopefully be able to post the answers quickly…
Google Looks To One-Up Facebook With Google+ Local
Ever since Google Plus went public, it seemed to be obvious that integration with Google Places for brands, stores, and hospitality locations will be happening further down the line. Doing research for our last edition, “Claiming your Business on Google Places” eBook, we already saw the signs with subtle changes in the look & feel of the pages.
Now it is official and, of course, we will update our ebook yet again with the newest developments and instructions on how to navigate the local Google space on Google+ Local and how to connect & migrate your current Google Place page to a Google+ Local brand page.
Moving Google Places content into Google+ Local
Google to Use Zagat to Refine Local Search
This Google+ Local integrates with Zagat, an online restaurant review site which was bought by Google last year. Personally, I am very pleased by integrating Zagat + Google Places for restaurant site. It seems Google created now a serious competiton to Yelp, with a much higher trust factor for both restaurants as well as customers. More about it on Diner’s Journal of the New York Times
Facebook Targets Small Business Owners With New Features
Great overview by Suzanne Vara on SocialMediaToday on Facebook’s new features for pages administration: Multiple Level Admin and what is particularily interesting, a Post Scheduling Functionality. You’ll find good instructions on how to use them.
Bitly launches redesign
The biggest changes have been taken place on Bitly, the most-used URL shortener and click-through analytics tool for social media sharing. Plenty of new features and a completely new user interface for administrators greeted users last week. As expected, the changes didn’t make all users happy. After a few days, people got accustomed to the changes and are using the new features heavily.
Mashable published a very helpful slideshow around Bitly’s new features: How to get the most out of the new Bitly
Reminder: SBRN Social Media Summer Series
This month’s, the first of three events in the SBRN Social media Summer Series will take place: ‘It All Begins with the Blog’ on June 21, 2012 5:30pm Holiday Inn Fort Myers Airport at the SBRN (Small Business Resource Network) Mixer.
$15 SBRN members, $25 Guest, including light snacks. Register at this SBDC seminars page
Over the next few weeks we will work on updates of our ebooks on Facebook and Google Pages and Google Local. We will notify you in this space, when updates are available.
In the meantime, please let us know what you think about the changes and how we can assist you with your updates. Again, here is the page to submit your questions: Ask! Or use the comment section below.
How to create a Wibbitz Video from your RSS Feed
Last week I shared our new discovery of Wibbitz and published Relevanza’s last headlines as Video on the site. If you missed you can see it here: Video #BeRelevant
This week, we show how easy it is to create such a video for your own RSS feed of your website. Let get started!
- Scroll to the Start form:
- Enter your email address and the URL for your Feed:
- How to get your RSS feed:
- Go to your website/blog and click on the RSS link or icon.
- Go to your browser’s address bar and copy/paste the URL from the page
- Paste it into the “Feed Url” field on Wibbitz
- And click on Create Clip
It’ll take a few moments for the program to process the information. Once completed, a new section will open on the site showing the video, and underneath providing a few customization tools.
You can decide if you want a voice over, which will be automatically generated, that the video runs in a loop or not and if it should auto-start on your site (tip here: leave the auto-start option unchecked.) . The soundtrack selection drop-down box gives you various options for background sound. Our choice here is “Breaking News”. The last option is the size of the embed box, when you use the code on your website. The contact width on our site is 745, so the 640 x 360 pixels is the best size offered.
When you click on update clip, the video preview above will adopt all your changes and you can test it. The embedd code was updated, too. Provided your are as close as you can with the currently limiting options, copy the embed code from the box. Make sure you get all of it, maybe use Control+A to “Select All”
Then go to your site, open the edit form of your page or post and paste the code into your HTML/Source view.
Here is a screenshot how the finished Video displays on the Immokalee Today Front page. 
After diving into this site a bit deeper, I find a few things missing. I am fully aware that these might be features for the paid version. Past a call to action “contact-us if you are a publisher”, this young site doesn’t provide yet a lot of information. It’s off to a great start!
- Customization for video player configuration (size, color, sharing)
- Export to YouTube
- Auto-Caption
- Separate Intro-Text
Let us know about your experience when you try it out. Feel free to post a link to your video in the comment section, with a few notes about your site
Hope you find these how-tos helpful in your ongoing quest to make the best out of your blog and use it the most efficient way.
As always, feel free to asked us your questions either in the comment section or at our Q & A page.
SBRN Summer Series: Business Network dives into Social Networks
Birgit Pauli-Haack & Darius Joseph, members of the Small Business Resource Network at the SBDC, will co-present on using Social Media for business. 30 minute session followed by Q & A.
See Southwest Florida SBRN website for more information
June 21, 2012
Topic: It All Begins with the Blog
In this first session of this summer series, business owners will learn why a blog on your website is the basis of your online marketing. You will learn about a blog engine, why it will drive all your online activities and how it helps not only as a springboard to the social web but also increases your search engine visibility. In the 21st century, you need to take charge of your online communication. Birgit Pauli-Haack has some interesting statistics on inbound marketing, has written about the most popular blog engines and will provide you with a list blog topics and ideas.
July 19, 2012
Topic: Facebook for Business
The new Facebook timeline for business: what has changed and how you can streamline your Facebook experience. Birgit will walk you through the anatomy of a Facebook page, your options for reaching out to existing and future clients through networking and posting.
August 16, 2012
Topic: LinkedIn and Google+ Pages.
Google Plus pages are so much easier to set-up and manage than Facebook pages. And, as a huge benefit, they are part of the search engine powerhouse, Google . This session will cover examples of brand pages.
LinkedIN has been the professional network for corporations and business owners that provide business-to-business services. Company pages and tabs for carreers, services and events makes LinkedIN a great place to advertise and list your companies.
Presentations and Q & A will be posted after each event on this blog.
To register for SBRN events please see the website: http://swfl-sbrn.posterous.com for announcements.
Celebrating Small Business Week, SBRN will also sell ticket to all 3 events for a special price at the SBRN Tradeshow: Thursday, May 17, 2012 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm, Hilton Garden Inn - Airport,16410 Corporate Commerce Way,Fort Myers, FL 33913. No cost, please RSVP
Video: #BeRelevant News on Relevanza
We discovered a pretty nifty service that transposes text to video. This is another example why it is important to have an RSS feed on your website and use it more like a dynamic part of your business than using it as an after-thought. We are looking forward to the moment when this site moves out of the introductory phase and allows for more variation and customization.
And now without further ado, the lastest news from our Relevanza Blog.
Let us know what you think of it in the comment section.
#BeRelevant - Social media is community, relevance...
Through all the changes of interfaces, new networks making in-roads, niche-networks getting traction, FB timeline, GooglePlus updates, Twitter Advertising, Pinterst, it’s easy to get overwhelmed, befuddled, confused.
While trying to sort this out, it’s equally easy to loose sight of the purpose of social media - connecting, reach-out, listening, and send more signals instead of just noise. Short in one hashtag #BeRelevant. Read more on Relevanza by Steve Hart.
OPEN Forum: Newest How-to Book about Google + by Guy Kawasaki
A new book by noted and legendary guru, Guy Kawalski. He’s become such an advocate for GooPlus that he’s written a book, his first how-to book in 25 years, What the Plus? Google + for the rest of us.
A few students in our group asked us if we can also recommend books on social media. We used Pinterest to put a collection on books published about Social Media its overall concepts together. We admit, we have not read them all but we follow all authors on Twitter and are familiar with their online work, they generously share on blogs and in the news.
Here is the link to our Pinterest Board: (or click on the images)
http://pinterest.com/relevanza/social-media-books/
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Resources for Social Media Technology for small business owners.
Published by Relevanza, Inc.
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