How to Extend Your Social Networks with Ease

I'm a social person—I fully admit it. As I've mentioned in my blog posts before: I love social—the connections, the collaboration, the exposure to new ideas. I'm transparent about my social savvy—my email auto-signature includes links to my LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, plus a link to my blog.

When I was coaching colleagues on using social media, I found that many people were unsure about who to connect with on the big three social engagement networks: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, so here are my top tips and tricks for making it easy and effective.

Twitter is Best For: Trends, News, and Solutions

Twitter has the lowest barrier to entry, is the most open social media platform, and has the easiest-to-make connections. I don't follow everyone who follows me, but I do follow those who have educational or thought-provoking content, and I engage with their followers. To find interesting people to follow:

• Review the "Who to Follow" recommendations Twitter shares on the right side of your Twitter web client and follow the ones that look interesting. Twitter will continue to personalize and add to that list over time.
• Look for experts in your field.
• Add people you meet face to face.
• Follow journalists and bloggers whose writing you admire.
• Take advantage of the top 100 lists of influencers publications compile and add them to a list.
• Keep an eye on trending hashtags for relevant Twitter voices.

You don't want to be one of those people who only has 25 followers but is following 5000. Follow slowly and thoughtfully. Your followers will grow as you share relevant content and engage with other Twitter handles.

If you have strong political, religious or controversial views on particular topics you intend to share on Twitter I recommend that you consider two handles: One for your professional life and one for your personal life.

Facebook: Personal Connections,  Storytelling, and Targeted Advertising

Facebook, while ever expanding and morphing, it is still the most personal of the big three social networks. Not registering as yourself violates the TOS (Terms of Service), which filters out many of the spammers and trolls you find on Twitter.

Facebook makes suggestions of people you might know. It warms my heart when my friends find themselves interacting with each other about my posts and friend each other.

Because you have the opportunity to openly share your thoughts, opinions, and life events here with your friends, I recommend being discriminating about who you accept as friends. You can customize the "Who can see my posts" settings, but it's best to err on the side of under sharing.

Facebook's powerful ad platform enables advertisers to target with amazing accuracy, so you'll see ads customized to your interests.

LinkedIn: Powerful Professional Connection Tool

LinkedIn is the largest professional social networking site with 467 million members. When you populate your professional profile, there's an added layer of comfort and identification when connecting with others.

 There are two schools of thought about LinkedIn connections. LIONs (LinkedIn Open Networkers) accept connection requests from all. On the opposite spectrum are those who only connect with people they've met face to face.

I'm right in the middle of those extremes. I've created guidelines for myself that are not set in stone, but help me quickly scroll through and act on the 30+ connection requests I receive each week.

• If I've met someone face to face at a networking, professional or social event, I always accept those connection requests.
• I always accept connection requests from One Brick volunteers or TEDxSanJoseCA volunteers/attendees/vendors. Volunteering is a passion of mine, and I love making virtual connections that complement the real world ones.
• Because I've managed different LinkedIn groups for years, many group members request to connect. I rarely accept those. Group members can request to connect with fellow group members. Before you accept, review both their profile and their contributions to the group. If their only contributions are shameless self promotion, feel free to decline. 
• Working for a company as large as IBM means that there are droves of IBMers on LinkedIn and I always accept connection requests from them.
• LinkedIn is optimized for recruiters. If you're open to discussion, accept them.

Ultimately you need to be comfortable with the connections you've made on social networks. If you find someone offensive, delete the connection. If you enjoy their posts, let them know. Virtual or real-life, connecting with people and adding them to your network can expand your world. Give it a try.

Musings About High School Career Day and a Career in Social Media

I'm one of those people who can get pretty excited talking about a topic I'm passionate (and knowledgeable) about.  And if you ask me questions? I'm over-the-moon happy when I'm interacting with an engaged audience. The power and excitement of social media happens to be one of those topics. (Volunteering, social good, animals, and books are also on that list. :-))

Social media training is a part of my job that I truly enjoy; I've trained 200+ colleagues and coached several executives in the last year and a half. So for someone like me, being invited to talk about my career at a local high school's Career Day is fun. Really fun. And because social media is a topic that interests many people, including high school students, I'm guaranteed an interested audience.

View the deck on SlideShare by clicking on the image

"#Hashtag with Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake"

Presenting my material three times in a row on Career Day at Cupertino High School enabled me to tweek  my presentation on the fly for the next audience — including moving the #Hashtag with Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake video from the end of the presentation to the middle, since I ran out of time and didn't get to show it for the first session. (It's one of my favorite clips, and I laugh every time I watch it.)

Generation Z, our current high school students, are smart, passionate people and digital natives who've never known a time without either socially sharing their lives, or having them shared for them by their parents. A 2013 Pew study confirms this social media saturation, "Eight in ten online teens now use social media sites."

So I was not surprised that the majority of these digital natives had seen the Ellen DeGeneres 2014 Oscar selfie, but only about half were familiar with the 2013 Superbowl Oreo tweet. And every student in each of those three classes had either participated in an Ice Bucket Challenge or had a good friend or family member who had participated in the challenge.

Generation Z is going to be joining the workforce very soon. Millennials are changing the face of the workforce to meet their needs, and I think we'll see another significant workforce engagement change when we start working with the Gen Zers. I for one, am looking forward to it.

Repost from IBM Social Business Insights Blog: Cool or creepy, part 2: Seven additional social networking apps to consider

As part of a team of IBM Redbook Thought Leaders, I blog for the IBM Social Business Insights blog, and repost those blog posts here on my personal blog. Cool or creepy, part 2: Seven additional social networking apps to consider, is the second part of a series that was originally published on December 23, 2013, and is owned by IBM. Part 1, Five new social networking applications: Cool or creepy? is here.
I recommend checking out the IBM Social Business Insights blog for some compelling and though-provoking content.

Cool or creepy, part 2: Seven additional social networking apps to consider

Brandi Boatner, Digital Experience Manager, IBM @ThinkBluePR
Holly Nielsen, Social Media Leader, IBM @HollyNielsen

This holiday season it’s time to tech the halls with boughs of privacy…or maybe not?

During the holidays, many people share gift ideas, wish lists, New Year’s resolutions they have no intention of keeping and a good amount of laughter with family, friends and loved ones.

Last year we took a look at some popular social networking applications that were designed to connect people by sharing only the information the user wanted to share. With thousands of apps being created every day, and as we close out another tech-obsessed year, which apps will stick around in 2014? Let’s look at some recent apps and ask the same question: Are these cool or creepy?

 1. Gym Shamer

Gym Shamer is an app that lets you set your workout goals and then check in at the gym through Foursquare. If you miss a workout, the app tells your entire social graph that you blew it.

Cool/creepy factor: This one definitely falls on the creepy side. We’re good enough at the remorse game ourselves for missing a workout, especially if we list “Get in Shape” as one of our New Year’s resolutions. We don’t need all of our friends, family, colleagues and followers piling on the grief.

 2. Butt Analyzer

Butt Analyzer is, yes, you read it correctly, an app that uses your phone's camera to take a photo of a man’s or woman’s derriere and calculate the attractiveness of that booty on a scale of 1 to 10. It’s only available on Android, so we couldn’t test it out (which is probably just as well), and there’s a share button that enables sharing the results with your social network.

 Cool/creepy factor: This app is one of the highest ranking out there on the creepy scale.

3. Spout

Spout is a new way to look at your social content feeds—Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Flickr—in a swirling, moving, graphically interesting format where the words flow and stream across the screen. You can set the theme, mode, display time, animation style and word speed.

 Cool/creepy factor: Definitely cool. Spout is a word lover’s dream. It would make an amazing screensaver. Hint: if the word stream makes you dizzy, try different speeds and animation styles to find the one you like best.

4. CARROT

The webpage for CARROT for iPhone touts it as “the to-do list with a personality.” You create your to-do list, and CARROT berates you for failing to complete items and rewards you when you finish them. “She” has 400 rewards for good behavior at her disposal, but states, "You don't want to make me upset." Personalized gamification, anyone?



Cool/creepy factor: We’re leaning toward cool for this app, as this reviewer could use some help getting her to-do lists completed. But, getting scolded by her smartphone could also result in immediate app deletion. Not sure what an angry Siri sounds like, but do you want to find out?

 5. Tinder

Talk about a well-defined target audience: no smartphone, no Facebook profile, no Tinder dating. If you read the online reviews (which we did) it would appear that Tinder is taking the millennial dating world by storm. Its claim to fame? It finds out who is nearby and connects you with them if you're mutually interested. A photo of someone in your pre-defined geolocation pops up on your phone, and you swipe left if you’re interested, right if you’re not. Or maybe it was right if you’re interested, left if you’re not. Anyway, if the other person also swipes in the yes direction, a chat box pops up and you can chat. After that, it’s up to you.

Cool/creepy factor: This app is cool if you live in a large metropolis and have trouble getting out and meeting people. All millennials have active Facebook pages and smartphones, right?

 6. Slydial

This app sounds like just what it does. Slydial is a voice messaging service that connects you directly to someone’s mobile voicemail, bypassing the ringing. How many times have you dreaded dialing a number and praying the other party on the end of the line doesn’t answer and your call goes straight to voicemail? Now, there’s an app for that.

Cool/creepy factor: This app is actually pretty cool. Users click on the slydial icon and instantly connect with the recipient’s voicemail box. Slydial can be used for practical and efficient communications when you’re short on time, when you’d rather not leave a text and, more important, when you want to avoid life’s awkward moments. This app is currently only available in the US.

7. MedXCom

“Take control of your health and well-being—anytime, anywhere!” is the tag line for this app. The MedXCom Patient app is a patient portal that lets you store and manage all of your health profile with confidence and convenience and instantly share important data and updates with your doctors.

Cool/creepy factor: MedXCom is both cool and creepy. It is a great way for people to manage health information and include as many details as they need to monitor personal health like reminders for taking medication, storing images of health insurance cards (most people lose these cards every year) and the ability to instantly notify health professionals in case of an emergency. However, on the creepy side a feature of the app is called “safe bumping" that encourages dating singles to go to the doctor for regular STD checks. And yes - that information can be shared.  We'll stop there, but it's safe to say we think it's TMI and bit too creepy.

It would seem that the term privacy means different things to different people in the digital age with our evolving interconnectedness. However, two key constants remain with the emergence of social networking apps: user discretion and transparency. Perhaps we can make 2014 the year privacy found its way back from the abyss of mobile applications. That’s one resolution we can all stick to…maybe.

5 Social Media Myths That It's Time to Put to Rest

Have you seen this statistic from the Pew Internet and American Life Project's Social Networking research report?

As of September 2013, 73% of online adults use social networking sites.

Regardless of whether you're using social media to keep in touch with friends and family, play games, follow the news, or research goods and services, most of us are logging into these sites multiple times a day. Statistical research has revealed that more than 95 percent of Facebook users log into their account every day. The same number for Twitter is 60 percent and for LinkedIn is 30 percent.

And as with all new technologies, there's a learning curve, and an even steeper curve of understanding before we truly comprehend the impact of social networking. And while we are at the bottom of the social networking curve of understanding, there are five myths that need to be put to rest now.

1. Twitter is about nothing but what people had for breakfast
   That might have been true for the first six months of Twitter, but we've moved past it. News organizations and celebrities are the most followed accounts, but the virality of Twitter means that anyone can start a trend. Two examples? Arab Spring and the Boston Marathon bombing — both hit the world consciousness via Twitter. Breakfast? Not any more.
   
2. No one cares what personal stuff I post; my privacy settings will protect me.
   So there's trusting, and there's foolishly naive. How much do you pay for your Facebook account? Nothing? Well, no, actually you do pay — with your data. Your likes, dislikes, opinions, friends, religious affiliation, political affiliation and more are all tracked, stored and shared. As long as you are aware that you are paying with your data, you can be circumspect about what you say. But to count on your information to remain unused and unshared with advertisers, is well, Pollyannish at best. Every day we hear about another data breach. Your social media data is not immune to hacking.
3. Recruiters / hiring companies don't pay any attention to this stuff.
   Yes, actually they do. According to this survey by Reppler, 92% of recruiters admit to checking out and screening out applicants based on their profiles on social networking sites. For more information, read my blog post, Think Before You Post: Your Digital Footprint Lives Forever.
4. Googling yourself is narcissistic.
   No, it's really not. It's smart. See #3 above.
   
5. Social media is a fad that won't last.
   Will today's social networking platforms look the same in five years? Unlikely. As with all technologies, they will mature, users will mature, and the platforms and how we use them will evolve. The proliferation of smart phones and the millennials' comfort level with sharing their lives online essentially guarantees that the social media genie will not go back into its bottle.

So why don't we let these five most pervasive myths about social media rest in peace. Of course, additional myths are created and perpetuated every day. Which additional ones would you like to see disappear?

Three Incredible Infographics

Infographics are amazing. They are a fast and easy way to convey a large amount of information quickly and succinctly, as you can see by this, you guessed it, an infographic explaining infographics. Which by the way, useful as it is, I'm not including it as one of my three incredible infographics because it's not new.

Created by Customer Magnetism, an award winning Digital Marketing Agency.

I wrote a blog post last year, Infographics: The Graphic Visual Explosion, and if anything, I'd say infographics have become even more popular in the last nine months.

Here are three of the most incredible infographics I've seen pass through my feeds this week, and I can't help but share the wealth; something most social media practitioners seem almost supernaturally compelled to do. (Hmmm, I think there's a blog post here.... every time I see an amazing article, image or infographic I immediately start mentally crafting my tweet or Facebook post about it.)

I can't decide which of these is my favorite, so I'd love to hear which one you like the best.

This first one, designed by Marketo, which shows us some of the numbers associated with cat and bacon searches, is utterly brilliant. Social Media Today has a great article, Why Marketing That Includes Cats and Bacon Is the Cat’s Meow, that actually suggests some ways you can integrate these popular cat and bacon memes into your small business marketing plan.

The second one, created by eBay Deals, illustrates 16 examples of viral philanthropy, via crowdfunding sites such as indiegogo.com, giveforward.com and gofundme.com, and even reddit, for the victims of natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes, victims of large-scale shootings, and others who have pulled some heartstrings.

This is a screenshot of the top of a very long and narrow infographic.Click on the link above to see it all.

The final one in my trifecta of favorites is Every Second on the Internet, a brilliant and interactive infographic from designly.com showing, in real-time visuals, how much data is streaming through the Internet every single second. You have to see it in action — this still shot doesn't begin to do it justice.

This also is just a screenshot of a tiny part of the entire piece. Click on the link aboveto see it all.

This is just the beginning, and we'll continue to see great strides in function and creativity. Infographics do not translate well to mobile, nor are the majority of them, including these, accessible in their current form to people with visual disabilities.

Think Before You Post: Your Digital Footprint Lives Forever

It's safe to say that 10 years ago no one knew what a digital footprint was, or that everyone who is online has one. Today, of course, it's a very different story, and like many emerging technologies, there are potentially and previously unknown positive and negative results from using the technology — in this case sharing your life online with friends, family, and the world.

The upside?
You create and control the online image or persona that you present to the world.

The downside?
You create and control the online image or persona that you present to the world.

In a recent Mashable article, 1 in 4 Young Adults Regret Social Media Posts, Survey Says:

 Legal-information website FindLaw.com conducted a "demographically balanced" survey among 1,000 American adults, asking them questions about their behavior surrounding Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr and other popular social platforms. Among younger adults aged 18 to 34, 29% said they have posted a photo, comment or other personal information they fear could compromise their current or future job prospects.

It's not an irrational fear.

An article on examiner.com, Current and potential employers are looking at your social media pages, points out:

A survey of more than 2000 hiring managers and HR professionals conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of CareerBuilder in February of 2012 found that 37% or nearly two in five employers check social media when looking at a potential employee. An additional 11% stated they would like to begin using social media to screen new employees. 

If you google "people who've lost their jobs due to social media mistakes", you'll see quite a few examples, such as:

• In March 2009, a 22 year old thoughtlessly tweeted about a job offer from Cisco.
  "Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weight the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work."
  Cisco employees saw her tweet, and shared it with her hiring manager. The job offer was withdrawn. Her tweet, and the entire story, went viral.
• Matt Watson lost his job at All City Coffee in Washington, DC after he was outed as the voice behind the sarcastic and snarky comments on the blog The Bitter Barista.
• There have been multiple reports of teachers in conservative school districts who have lost their jobs after posting "private" photos of themselves on Facebook drinking alcohol,  smoking, or posing in revealing lingerie.

As the millennials move into positions of power, everyone will be more digital-savvy and the stigma of a less-than-stellar digital footprint will begin to fade. But until that time, and because the Internet is forever and nothing is truly "private", here are three easy rules to keep yourself out of trouble:

1. If in doubt, don't post it. This goes for your Facebook posts, tweets, Instagram photos, reddit or tumblr accounts, and comments on articles and blogs.
2. If you would be embarrassed if your grandmother or second-line manager saw it, don't post it.
3. Enable the Facebook photo tagging permission so that your "friends" can't tag you without your approval.

The good news? You control your digital footprint, and can put your best foot forward, digitally speaking.

Image courtesy of Simon Howden/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Trend Spotting: Instagram & the U.S. Government

You just never know when the first whiff of a trend is going to reach out and grab you to say, "Hey, pay attention to me!"

I was scanning through my feeds tonight, and realized that I'd just seen the third article in a week about United States government agencies now on Instagram.

I know, your first thought was, "Instagram, really?"

You mean the popular social/photo sharing application started by two Stanford University graduates and purchased by Facebook a little over a year ago for a cool billion dollars? The free iPhone and Android application used by 130 million users a month who've shared 16 billion photos, at a rate of 45 million photos a day, and which garner 1 billion likes a day?

Our federal government at the forefront of social media?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

The first item I saw about the White House featuring President Obama, really didn't surprise me, and I retweeted it without much thought.  I wrote a blog post late last year, How Social Networking Won an Election and Paid for Cancer Treatment, about the unbelievably social-savvy team working on President Obama's re-election team. 

 And the article from Mashable about the Department of the Interior joining Instagram actually delighted me — a new opportunity to view stunning photos —  636 at last count. (This is from someone who is notoriously lacking in the photo taking skills arena, according to her teenager.)

Just one row of stunningly gorgeous photos from the Department of the Interior's Instagram account. And they're all this beautiful!

But tonight, the article from Forbes about the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) extending the reach of The TSA Blog TSA Week in Review feature by opening an Instagram account and sharing photos of confiscated items — now that one both made me pay attention and frightened me. Fireworks, loaded guns, a belt buckle knife. Seriously, what were these people thinking?

Instagram photo of a belt buckle knife confiscated by the TSA.

Of course, now I'm intrigued. It turns out that NASA has been on Instagram long enough to attract 345,000 followers. The U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources only has 66 followers, but I'm sure they'll catch up. The U.S. Air Force has 1287 followers. I'm stopping now — I could easily stay up until 3 am googling, finding and following these accounts.

When you step back and take a look, this trend makes sense. Check out the usa.gov website. It's enabled with social sharing buttons, and has hundreds of free apps. (When I'm done with this blog post, I'm definitely going to check out CIA Mobile.) Many agencies have Twitter accounts.

If you want to reach out to and connect with people — prospects, customers, constituents, students, friends, volunteers, advocates — you need to go where they are. As the U.S. government has clearly figured out.

From Advertisers to Teenagers: Facebook's Widespread Reach

Facebook is frequently in the news. Okay, almost daily. Or, if you follow AllFacebook.com, multiple times a day. I follow many of the news stories since I'm a frequent Facebook user / contributor, but today's news seemed especially relevant and broad based, since it races from a new advertising tool to privacy controls to more user functionality to teenage usage statistics. And interestingly enough, I found three of these articles on Twitter, and one on Facebook.  I think the breadth of these four articles shows just how integrated and ubiquitous social networking, and specifically, Facebook, has become in the daily lives of so many of us.

Wall Street Journal: Buy Signal: Facebook Widens Data Targeting

Facebook is officially rolling out a new tool for advertisers that combines Facebook's treasure trove of information about its subscribers and their likes with data partners who will provide information about the items and brands a consumer buys through sources such as loyalty card programs, email lists they subscribe to, and how they're spending their money.

Not surprisingly, privacy advocates are not thrilled. "There's no place to be left alone," said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a Washington, D.C., policy advocacy group. He said Facebook's relationship with data partners could become more worrisome if Facebook leverages the location data it passively collects from mobile devices to sell ads.

Read the full Wall Street Journal article.

Time Tech: Facebook Privacy Settings Guide

As the old adage goes, there really is no such thing as a free lunch. You pay for a "free" social media application such as Facebook with your personal data. People either are unaware of the exchange, or are comfortable with it.

Time Tech has put together a thorough little primer that walks you through the latest retooled privacy settings, such as who can see what posts, setting your timeline and tagging settings, blocking, app customization and more.

So now, if your friends post this inaccurate meme on their Facebook walls:

 You can refer them to the Time Tech article, or to the Snopes Urban Legend correction for accurate information.

Fast Company Design: Facebook Opens The Door To Dislikes, With Emoticons

 Image courtesy of digitalart
/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Everyone will soon have access to the new Facebook feeling/emoticon combinations — all 200 of them — on a drop down menu.

Having an alone, angry, or lost day or emotion? There will be an emoticon for it.  Feeling especially loved or great? You're covered.  Read all about it here.

Tech Crunch: Facebook Still Reigns Supreme With Teens, But Social Media Interest Dwindling

The results of the Piper Jaffray study quoted in this article are contrary to my experience. They claim that out of their survey group, 33% of the teens chose Facebook as their most important social network.  The teens I know (including the one who lives at my house) loved Facebook at the beginning, friending hundreds and hundreds of casual acquaintances, posting photos, liking statuses; all the things the rest of us do. And as soon as their parents and grandparents started flocking to Facebook, that was the kiss of death for it as far as teens are concerned. There is some hope that the new mobile Facebook app in the works may bring these younger users back, but we'll see.

15 Questions to Ask Yourself BEFORE Launching Your Social Program

There are thousands of articles, blog posts, ebooks, videos, white papers, presentations, and webinars available that you can and should research to develop your social strategy and build a social program. The sheer volume of information and conflicting opinions and advice can be overwhelming and confusing. A few of my favorite sources (in no particular order) include: MarketingProfs, Social Media Examiner, Jeff Bullas, Paul Gillin, and socialmediatoday.
Once you've done your research and built your program plan, I've distilled what I've learned into a checklist of 15 multi-level questions for you to answer to help you decide if you're launch ready.

1. What do you want to accomplish, that is, what does social success look like for your brand? 
2. How does your social program support your company's business objectives? 
3. How will you measure success? 
4. Do you have a digital strategy? What is it, and how will your social presence complement it and support it? 
5. Who is your audience? What content is going to be valuable to them? 
6. Which social media channels are your audience using? Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn? Google+? SlideShare? What about Pinterest or Instagram? Tumblr? Snapchat? 
7. Which social media channels are your competitors using? 
8. Which are the top two or three channels your audience and competitors are using that you can focus on first? 
9. How are you going to follow who your customers and competitors are following, and listen to the conversations taking place? 
10. Are you going to create a blog and/or can you host your content on your website? Do you have the content and sufficient content creators to support a blog and keep it fresh? Or does it make more sense to focus on placing your content on other's platforms? 
11. Do you have the bandwidth / resources to support a social networking program? 
12. Do you understand the risks of using social media, and do you have a crisis plan for dealing with unhappy customers, trolls, or bad press? 
13. Are there other brands or divisions within your company who already have their social channels set up? Can you piggyback onto their efforts and success? 
14. Does your plan include increasing the amplification and reach of your social program by encouraging your SMEs (subject matter experts) to build their own social eminence and actively participate?
15.  Are you ready to no longer just push content out to your ecosystem — clients, prospects, partners, press, bloggers — but actually build relationships with them? 

Until you can fully answer these 15 questions — don't launch. Don't jump on the bandwagon just because everyone else is riding it. Make sure your social strategy is well thought out and robust. However, with that said, social is no longer an option, but a business requirement, so don't delay too long.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Did I miss something? Did you launch your social program before you answered these questions? What would you have done differently, and what went well?

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The 5 Reasons I Volunteer

Updated and reposted from my blog on BlogHer.

Three and a half years ago I decided volunteering and giving back to the community might help me acquire more balance in my often-frantic and frequently unbalanced life of corporate employee, single parent, homeowner, pet guardian and all of the other roles I fulfill.

I signed up with a local volunteer organization, One Brick, and showed up at my first event, helping Sunset, a local magazine with a gorgeous campus (lots of test kitchens and gardens), sell tickets to a tiny home tour. We toured the home and an amazing outdoor kitchen setup for free – while others were paying $10 for the same privilege. It was fun, the people were nice, and it took me out of my own life for a while.

I did a few more events, and then was asked to join the event management team – since the more managers One Brick has, the more non-profits we can help. Without any hesitation I said yes – managing two to three events a month felt doable and I figured it would keep me committed to consistently volunteering.

And I do. My hours vary based on what else is going on in my life, but I’ve done so many different events – just to name a few:

• Sorting cans and fruit at the food bank
• A repair a bike workshop for kids in need
• Fundraiser event support
• Handing out water for a 5K race
• Picking up trash along a creek
• Rose deadheading in a city park
• My latest favorite – helping to serve the meal at a local soup kitchen that serves a free dinner five nights a week. (I'm now coming up on the end of two years of serving dinner at the soup kitchen once a month, and it's consistently a highlight of my month.)

 And I’m in good company – according The Chronicle for Philanthropy, which cites a report by the Corporation for National and Community Service, 63.4 million adult Americans ­— nearly 27 percent of the population — volunteered to help charitable causes in 2009.

So here are the reasons I volunteer. I hope that some of them resonate with you and will encourage you to volunteer in your community.

1. While I won’t say that volunteering has perfected my life and smoothed out all of the rough spots, it does help me in my struggle for balance by taking me out of my daily life for a few hours and letting me focus on serving others.

2. On days when I’m feeling at my most cynical – volunteering helps me feel the buds of hope for our world blooming in my heart, and I can smile.

3. There’s something about spending several hours with a group of like-minded people – who are working to help others and who want to make the world a better place – that helps you be a better person. At least for part of your day, you’re more forgiving, more accepting, and more grateful for the blessings you do have. Since many people use the Thanksgiving holiday as a way to work on being centered and grateful for their blessings, volunteering is a perfect way to spread the wealth.

4. Volunteering is good for your health. According to a report from the Corporation for National and Community Service, there is a close relationship between volunteering and health. People who volunteer are found to have lower mortality rates, stronger cognitive ability, and lower rates of depression later in life than those who do not volunteer.
5.  I'm always working on publicizing our volunteer organization via social media channels (including managing our Facebook page), extending our reach, so even when I'm not doing my social media day job, I'm using my social and marketing skills and knowledge.

I find that when I volunteer and help someone in need, the benefits definitely go both ways, tangible and intangible.

So give it a go – you have nothing to lose and so much to gain. :-)

Infographics: The Graphic Visual Explosion

The exponential growth of social media channels and the popularity of graphics and visuals on those channels has spawned a new visual format on steroids with a new name: infographics.

Like many social fans and practitioners, I enjoy how clever and informative infographics can be, and try to collect the ones I like on Pinterest. Today's find was this one about which profession drinks the most coffee.  It seemed quite fitting, since
1) I love coffee,
2) I drink a lot of coffee, and
3) my profession overlaps both categories 2 and 4.

Once I started down this blog path, I googled "infographics" to get some sense of how many infographics have been created in the last couple of years and if someone has counted/cataloged them. 14 million results were returned for my search. Yes, 14 million. Seriously? And the quick survey I took of the links showed that some of them were for multiple infographics.

So after Google, my next stop was Wikipedia of course, which included this definition:

Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly. They can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system’s ability to see patterns and trends. The process of creating infographics can be referred to as data visualization, information design and information architecture.

It made me think of a class I took years ago that used two of Edward R. Tufte's books: Envisioning Information and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. They're beautifully printed books, but they haven't left my bookshelf in years before tonight. (I'm going to look through them this weekend now that they've caught my eye again.)

UX and design practitioners are probably very familiar with his work, but I looked him up and was amazed at his expertise and list of works. (I don't think I appreciated the one-day course I took those many years ago nearly enough.)

I remember very little about the class, but what I remember clearly is the poster we received of Napoleon's March of 1812, a graphic by Charles Joseph Minard, which was published in 1869. I liked it so much that I had it mounted and framed, and still have it hanging on a wall in my house. I pulled it down to take a fresh look at it, and I'm impressed all over again.

Tufte's website states about Minard's work: "Probably the best statistical graphic ever drawn, this map by Charles Joseph Minard portrays the losses suffered by Napoleon's army in the Russian campaign of 1812."

The poster includes this description in the legend: "Six variables are plotted: the size of the army, its location on a two-dimensional surface, direction of the army's movement, and temperature on various dates during the retreat from Moscow."

Almost 150 years ago, Menard visualized, and created by hand, a complex visualization that is as compelling today as it was then. I'm a little less impressed by the coffee consumption infographic from this morning, just because it is one-dimensional, and pales in comparison to Menard's masterpiece. I'll continue to be amused by today's infographics, but now that I've revisited this classic, it's going to take a lot more to impress me.

Image 1 source: http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/180x5gza1jl9rjpg/original.jpg
Image 2 source: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/posters
Alt text for image 2 : <This information is included on the poster>
Napoleon's March to Moscow  The War of 1812
This classic of Charles Joseph Manard (1781 - 1870), the French engineer, shows the terrible fate of Napoleon's army in Russia. Described by E. J. Marey as seeming to defy the pen of the historian by its brutal eloquence, this combination of data map and time-series, drawn in 1861, portrays the devastating losses supffered in Napoleon's Russian campaign of 1812. Beginning at the left on the Polish-Russian border near the Neimen River, the thick band shows the size of the army (422,000 men) as it invaded Russia in June 1812. The width of the band indicates the size of th army at each place on the map. In September, the army reached Moscow, which was by then sacked and deserted, with 100,000 men. The path of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow is depicted by the darker, lower band, which is linked to a temperature scale and dates at the bottom of the chart. It was a bitterly cold winter, and many froze on the march out of Russia. As the graphic shows, the crossing of the Berezina River was a diasaster, and the army finally struggled back into Poland with only 10,000 men remaining. Also shown are the movements of auxiliary troops, as they sought to protect the rear and the flank of th advancing army. Minard's graphic tells a rich, coherent story with its multivariate data, far more enlightening than just a single number bouncing along over time. Six variables are plotted: the size of the army, its location on a two-dimensional surface, direction of the army's movement, and temperature on various dates during the retreat from Moscow

There's Always a Flip Side, and Sometimes It's Dark — Online Bullying and the Price It Exacts

I saw a tweet yesterday that caught my attention; yet scared me at the same time.

I took a deep breath, and clicked on the YouTube link.

I watched a beautiful young woman tell her story — pouring out her heart about some stupid mistakes she made, and how miserable she'd become from the incessant bullying that had taken over her life, even through multiple school changes. Of course I was crying before the end of the 8 minute and 55 second video. And with a heavy heart, I googled her name to find out that she committed suicide last Wednesday.

And I'm heartbroken. And discouraged. And finally, outraged.

How did we get to this? I've been an outspoken advocate and supporter of these amazing new technologies that enable us to connect, person-to-person, with others around the world: fighting injustice, toppling evil regimes, collaborating, crowdsourcing and sharing news, ideas, solutions, projects and money, encouraging words, and yes, even funny cat photos.

But when and how did this instantaneous connection and documentation of our every memorable moment flip to this dark side where bullying and the never-deletable online mistakes can so haunt our youth, leading some of them to believe that their lives are ruined, and no longer worth living?

If you were a teenager who never did a single stupid thing, please step forward or raise your hand. Yeah, that's what I thought. We all did it — it's part of growing up and self discovery. Of course, our mistakes were usually kept small and local, and not publicized to the world at large.

The first glimpses we've had at this public outing of teenage growing pains were with young stars — actors, musicians — who did their growing up in the bright and unforgiving lights of the public view. Could anyone forget Britney Spears' or Lindsey Lohan's breakdowns and mistakes paraded for us all to see? And. awful as it is, that public exposure of foolish or thoughtless moments that should be private are considered one of the costs of fame and fortune.

But Amanda Todd? She wasn't famous. Or rich. She was just a confused teenager who made a few bad decisions, including her selection of "friends". And was bullied and harassed until she felt like her life was not worth living, and ended it.

And that is wrong. Morally reprehensible. Unforgivable.

So how do we stop losing any more of our children and teenagers to the public humiliation that makes them choose to leave us?

I have three suggestions:
1) Education and awareness
2) Activism
3) Legislation

Education and Awareness

Education is critical. Education for teens and for their parents. Your digital footprint and shadow are permanent. Once a photo or post is out on the Internet, it's not retrievable. Last year IBM created some activity kits — amazing resources that are free to the public to use and share. I presented Control Your Online Identity. Help teenagers learn to protect their personal data online to two groups of middle schoolers attending a summer camp at the IBM Almaden Research Lab. I'm a pretty savvy social media user, and I still learned a few things. There is a second activity kit available for parents and/or teachers on Cyber-bullying.

Both kits can help concerned adults help this generation navigate a safe path through this uber-connected and uber-documented online world we now live in.

Activism

Raise your voice. Use your social connections to inform the corporations who create and own these social media tools and platforms that privacy is of utmost importance, and is not to be ignored or minimized. Bullying and harassment need to be dealt with harshly.

Tweet, send emails, make comments on their brand pages, sign petitions. These companies are listening — of that you can be assured.

Legislation

The Children's Online Protection Privacy Act of 1998 was the last time a federal privacy law for minors was enacted. And it only protects children under the age of 13. Hello? 1998? With all of the changes that have occurred online in just the last three years? Contact your legislators and tell them that new, stricter legislation is critical to protect our youth, all of our youth, against bullying, harassment, and unathorized usage of images. Today.

Amanda Todd and her potential are gone. Her family's hearts are broken. But maybe we can save other lives.

October 16, 2012 Update:  Amanda Todd's Alleged Bully Named By Anonymous After Teen's Tragic Suicide

Repost from IBM Social Business Insights Blog: Video captioning (Part 1 of 2): Win/Win for accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO)

Earlier this year I started blogging for the IBM Social Business Insights blog as part of a team of IBM Redbook Thought Leaders. I'll be reposting those blog posts here on my personal blog. Video captioning (Part 1 of 2): Win/Win for accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO) was originally published on August 7, 2012, and is owned by IBM. I recommend checking out the IBM Social Business Insights blog for some compelling and though-provoking content.

Video captioning (Part 1 of 2): Win/Win for accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO) 

By Holly Nielsen, Social Media Manager and Webmaster, Human Ability and Accessibility 

In this two-part series, we’ll look at the exploding growth of Internet video, and how captioning your videos can make them search engine friendly and available to more potential customers.

Let’s face it. We’re becoming a world that documents our every waking moment with video, and shares that video with our social networks.

Video started out as a medium that only the professionals could afford and had the skill to use. Technology evolved – shrinking in size and cost so that every smartphone and most cell phones now include a video camera, and we’re all amateur videographers.  

Who’s watching web videos?

Not only are we creating video content, but we’re watching it too, all over the world. A few examples:

• Pew Research Center reports that “More online Americans are using video-sharing sites — and they are doing so more frequently. As of May 2011, 71% of online adults reported watching videos on a video-sharing site such as YouTube or Vimeo.”

• comScore, Inc. noted in 2011 that Internet users in Germany, Turkey, Spain, and the UK watch an average of at least 30 minutes a day of online video.

• An article by Forbes about the explosion of online video in Latin America reported that in "March 2011, more than 80% of all Internet users in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Chile watched online video;" in fact, 4 out of 5 users watched an average of 8 to 11 hours of online video during that month.

YouTube is the world’s largest video repository, and as of July 10, 2012, the latest statistics were remarkable:

• 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
• Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month
• Over 3 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube
• In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views or almost 140 views for every person on Earth

Businesses are embracing video

Businesses, both business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C), have jumped on the video bandwagon, with good reason.

According to an article on Business2Community, watching a video can have an impact on the bottom line of your business, especially as high-level executives flock to video channels:

• According to emarketer.com, a majority of business people surveyed by Forbes in October 2010 said they watched more video currently compared to the previous year.
• Virtually 60% of respondents said they would watch video prior to reading text on the same webpage, and 22% said they generally liked watching video more than browsing text for examining business information.
• 75% of all executives said they watched work-related videos on business websites at least once a week, and more than 50% use YouTube to watch those videos.
• 65% of U.S. executives surveyed by Forbes in October 2010 visit a vendor’s website after viewing a work-related online video.
• 53% conducted a search for a vendor, product, or service for more information and 42% made a business-related purchase.

Invodo has collected a plethora of statistics supporting how video drives conversion and traffic for retailers, including these:

• 52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in their online purchase decisions. When a video is information-intensive, 66% of consumers will watch the video two or more times. (Internet Retailer, 2012)
• Product videos play a key role in consumer purchase decisions, citing a 9x increase in retail video views at the start of the 2011 holiday season. (MediaPost, 2012)
• Visitors who view product videos are 85% more likely to buy than visitors who do not. (Internet Retailer, April 2010)
• Retail site visitors who view video stay two minutes longer on average and are 64% more likely to purchase than other site visitors. (Comscore, August 2010)

So now that we’ve confirmed that the use of video as a communication medium will continue to grow, we’ll look at where accessibility and SEO intersect when it comes to videos, part 2 of this two-part series.

 

Grey Poupon Mustard and Exclusivity: Reversing "Like" Mania on Facebook

You knew it was coming, right? Someone was going to reverse the constant cattle drive for Facebook brand pages to get any and all likes, regardless of value, and become an exclusive social networking destination.

According to one of my favorite fun and snarky news sources, Adrants, "The [Grey Poupon] campaign, developed by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, will employ an algorithm that will search and judge users' profiles based on their proper use of grammar, art taste, restaurant-check ins, books read, movie selections and other indicators of "classy." If the algorithm detects poor taste in music or TXT speak, for example, they could be rejected for membership. Those who do not qualify, will have their Like rescinded and asked to refine their profile before trying again."

"Those who "cut the mustard" so to speak will be invited to take part in the chance to win prizes and a Grey Poupon-approved "classy" badge they can post on their profile."

 Take a look at the Grey Poupon Facebook Timeline photo.

Notice the Become a Member/Application and The Society/Members Only modules.  When you click through to the Application page, it states, "Only applicants with the most discerning palates will be admitted. Those whose applications are declined will have their LIKE rescinded."

Okay, I did it. I applied. After giving the usual app permissions to access and use my info, etc, etc, it actually shows a ranking of my number of friends, education, musical taste, and an example of my grammar usage in a charming and fun little program. And whew, I made it!

 
I'd vote this campaign an A+. I just finished a book club book called, "Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me)" by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, which confirms what most of us already knew — if you have to work harder for something you'll value it more.

And we all know that the Gold Rush for fans and followers and Likes is a heady rush, but ultimately, engaging with one good prospect is better than attracting 1000 indiscriminate followers. I think we can count on seeing a lot more of these types of differentiation programs to drive prospect nuturing and customer conversion now that Facebook has passed the 950 million fan mark (as of September 2012). And eventually the other social media channels will follow suit.

So did you cut the mustard? What's your score? Inquiring minds want to know. :-)

Using Graphics to Explain Social Media

We've always been a very visual society. And with the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies and the proliferation of social media channels — digital images and graphics are everywhere — perfect for the visual learners among us.

 If you're not familiar with this learning model (one of many), Wikipedia briefly describes Neil Fleming's VAK (or VARK) model that divides learners into three types:

1. Visual learners who think in pictures and learn best with visual aids (infographics would work well)
2. Auditory learners who learn through listening (these are the podcast and book on CD people)
3. Tactile learners who learn through doing and touch (those who need to experience it themselves to learn, enjoyed science lab immensely)

I'm definitely a visual learner, and it doesn't matter if there are words or images — it's still all visual. For instance, I've always been one of those people who is inspired by quotations (that's the point, right?) that resonate at different phases in my life. And I keep a file of relevant quotations for the Facebook pages I manage, and I enjoy sharing the ones I find on my own Facebook page. But lately, I've noticed the words alone are no longer enough — they're always included on or with an image. (There's a potential  argument here about too much of a good thing diluting value, but I'll leave that for another time.)

So recently, this graphic came across my Facebook news feed, and amused me to no end (so of course I had to share it).

And it reminded me of one I saw a few months ago. (I guess food and a sprinkling of snark cross most if not all social, ethnic, and gender boundaries, so it makes for a good example.)

 

And whether or not you're familiar with all of these social media channels, you can still get a good feel for how people use them by these tongue-in-cheek examples.

And really, isn't that the point of them?

Twitter's New Strategy: Serving Up What They Think Is Relevant to Me

I got this new now-weekly email today from Twitter. If you have a Twitter account, you probably received one also, which looks similar to mine. Note: This is a longggg graphic — there's more blog content below it, so don't give up quite yet.)

Twitter has quickly jumped on pushing their recent purchase of Summify into Twitter production in record time. (Summify was a start up social news aggregator that collected news from users' social networks and compiled it in daily emails.) According to Twitter's blog, they're delivering "The Best of Twitter" to my inbox.

If you glanced at my long, long graphic above, you can see that there are two parts to this new email, which are as follows, according to the Twitter blog: 

• The first half is a "...summary [that] features the most relevant Tweets and stories shared by the people you’re connected to on Twitter."

• The second half of the ginormous email "... features the most engaging Tweets seen by the people you follow, even if you don’t follow those who wrote them. You can see who from your network retweeted or favorited these Tweets and click “View details” to retweet, favorite, reply or view the conversation around them." 

And here's where I start to get uncomfortable. I was reminded of a Ted Talk video I watched late last year, and went digging for it, to see if I remembered correctly. And I did. Twitter's new summary doesn't prevent me from following specific tweeters and hashtags, but it seems to be the first step in becoming a gatekeeper by surfacing the content that the Twitter algorithms determine is relevant to me, and is yet another example of the "online 'filter bubbles'" that Eli Pariser talks about in his nine-minute TED Talk, that I've embedded below (and highly recommend you watch). TED summarizes the video this way, "As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy."

(A colleague and I tried the Google search experiment where we both searched on the same word, then compared what we found — and we did not get the same search results — so the online filter bubble is in play right now.)


 So in "summarizing" the stories and tweets sent to me in this weekly email, Twitter is perpetuating and embracing the "online filter bubble" that Eli Pariser talks about; deciding for me what is relevant to me, just by serving it up in a weekly email.  I subscribe to several social media aggregation emails — one of my favorites is from SmartBrief; but aggregating is what they do and it's what I expect of them.

All of this makes me wonder where we draw the line in this age of information overload, and how we choose between:

• News customized to what you've looked at so far and the news and articles your social network is reading
  
  or
• News that helps you stretch your mind and your opinions, and lets you step out of your clearly defined point of view to learn and decide on your own? 

So what do you think? Are they mutually exclusive? Do we have to choose one or the other? Or is there some way to make them both work?