15 Tools Every Social Media Manager Should Use This post was originally published on Feb 4, 2014 Smart businesses know that social media is a power to be reckoned with: social media channels create a direct line of communication between your company and consumers and give anyone with an Internet connection instant access to the latest buzz around your products or services. Not to mention, they can help you to generate revenue, while building your brand presence. Let that marinate for a second. The 16 tools below will help you and your social media manager take on the complexity of the job. 1. Those who have Google Analytics installed on their website can use Visually’s Google Analytics Report: an app that creates a custom infographic of your website’s activity and performance. Pricing: Free 2. This free, easy-to-use Twitter management tool allows you to oversee all aspects of your Twitter account(s) in one interface. 3. 4. Like Hootsuite, Sprout Social is a social media dashboard that monitors and manages multiple social networks. 5.
LinkedIn: The Beginner's Guide Update: This post was updated October 2013 to reflect current statistics and tools. LinkedIn is considered the non-sexy, sleeping giant of social networks. It keeps a low profile, perhaps due to the professional nature of its users. Founded by Reid Hoffman in 2002, LinkedIn has grown to 225 million members in over 200 countries, making it the world’s largest professional network on the Internet (by comparison, Twitter has more than 500 million registered users, and Facebook has surpassed one billion). That being said, we doubt you spend 20 minutes on LinkedIn per day, like Facebook’s power users do. SEE ALSO: The Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Have you used LinkedIn to find a job, network with professionals or research hot topics in your industry? 1. Like most social networks, LinkedIn hosts your personal profile, a page on which you may list information like job experience and professional skills. For more information about optimizing your LinkedIn profile, see these additional resources:
Twitter for Education? It’s Actually a Good Idea Many people write off social media when it comes to education. They don’t think that the two can survive hand in hand with each other. A few weeks ago, I wrote about how social media can actually benefit education . Engage Students Making social media work professionally | Money PC Hanif Sanghar was so pleased to have been involved in an operation to catch two vicious attackers that he tweeted he had "arrested the offenders", even though the suspects had yet to stand trial. The tweet was deleted and he was reprimanded. Doctors and nurses at a hospital in Swindon were suspended after posting pictures of themselves lying face down on resuscitation trolleys, ward floors and on the Wiltshire air ambulance helipad on Facebook as part of an internet craze called "the lying down game". And in America teacher Ashley Payne lost her job after a parent spotted a Facebook picture of her with a glass of wine in one hand and a beer in the other. Reading these stories could give you the impression that there are certain careers where using social media is a recipe for disaster. The tweeting teacher Science teacher Rob Butler began tweeting as @cleverfiend about three years ago and has since built up a band of more than 800 followers. Tweet on the beat Social media medics
Fix problems with Facebook games, chat and more This article describes how to troubleshoot problems you might encounter while using Facebook in Firefox. In order to load games on Facebook like YoVille, FarmVille, Cafe, or Fishworld, you need to set the Flash plugin to allow saving information on your computer. Right-clickHold down the Ctrl key while you click on any Flash content and select . The Flash Player Settings Manager window will open. If you cannot connect to the Facebook website at all in Firefox: Check to see whether you can connect in another browser (such as Internet ExplorerSafariEpiphany). The Facebook Help Center has a troubleshooting page that lists known Facebook website problems and bugs. Clear cookies and cache Clearing your stored cookies and the Firefox cache can solve several common problems with Facebook, such as Farmville issues. Click the menu button , choose History and select . Check cookie settings If you receive an error message that mentions cookies after clearing your cookies and cache:
5 Reasons Listicles Are Here to Stay, and Why That's OK | Underwire Image: IS/Getty Lists are everywhere. They’re the bread and butter of sites like Cracked and BuzzFeed, and regular content or sporadic filler at dozens more. They’ve met with no end of resistance from the old guard, cantankerous readers and old-school journalists convinced that listicles (and their admittedly unfortunate portmanteau) are rotting our brains, destroying our attention spans, and generally contributing to the decay of all that is right and good. Are lists overused? 1. Welcome to the information age! With near-infinite information at hand, and reporting moving at more and more breakneck speeds to keep pace with social media, it’s easily to end up either trapped by choice paralysis or whittling away hours on end trying to keep up. Regardless of Reddit’s motto, there is no front page of the Internet; but lists, at their best, give us focused, annotated tables of contents. 2. The way we’re presented with information changes the way we process and interpret it. 3. 4. 5.
DOWNLOAD Get Into Google+: A Guide For Everyone Curious about Google+, but don’t know where or why to start? Check out “Get Into Google+: A Guide For Everyone”, the latest free Google Plus guide from MakeUseOf. This guide, by author Maggie Marystone, teaches you everything you’ve ever wanted to know about Google Perhaps you were a founding member of MySpace. Maybe you’re a Facebook power user, or maybe you’ve just started to explore the world of social media. The answer is simple: Google. Google Plus Guide Table of Contents §1 – Introduction §2 – What is Google+? §3 – Creating a Google Account §4 – The Google+ Sign-up Process §5 – Circles §6 – Chat §7 – Stream §8 – Sharing Content §9 – Searching and Browsing §10 – Photos §11 – Hangouts §12 – Advanced Features §13 – Mobile Apps §14 – Tops and Tricks §15 – Conclusion 1. The answer is simple: Google. You may have heard that Google+ is on its way out. Here’s the point: joining Google+ means you will be poised to take advantage of all that Google has to offer. 2. 2.2 How is Google+ different? 3. 4. 5. 6.
What Do You Mean Evernote Could Get Better? Last time I wrote about the way I organize myself completely changed for the better with Evernote. Really, I can't talk enough about this program and the endless possibilities there are for it. (Just look at the comments from that post.) In that post I gave a few resources for learning about Evernote and even fewer with how to use it in the classroom. Well, lots of people have sent me lots of great resources and I wanted to follow-up and post some more. These are sites, lists and ideas all for using Evernote for your personal use or in the classroom. Get Productive Fast With Evernote- Mark Stout contacted me about this great eBook he created about getting started with Evernote and then some of the more advanced features like integrating IFTTT.com. 10 Tips For Using Evernote Effectively- This recent article from ReadWriteWeb was a great addition to my Evernote resources. The Evernote-Livescribe Connection- Last year at ISTE I was able to get my hands (finally) on a Livescribe pen.
BBC punches holes in Facebook with virtual bagel stunt The BBC has conducted a test to show that Facebook ‘likes’ generated from sponsored ad placements within the social network may be of little value unless tightly targeted. The experiment, in which technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones bought ads for a fictional ‘virtual bagel’ company, found that many likes received from the global campaign appeared to be from fake accounts or users from Egypt that liked thousands of pages. With so much of the value of the social networking giant based on its potential ad revenue, and questions over the efficacy of advertising in its tightly controlled ecosystem circling, the exercise speculated that global activity in particular, whether it be number of ‘likes’ or clicks on ads, may be of little or no value. The page for the virtual bagel company was set up with very little information apart from a brief, vague description so that it would be of little interest to Facebook users.
Facebook issues in Google Chrome - Chrome Help Issue This Video Will Have You Completely Rethink How You Conduct Yourself Online And In Person (Video) World• Robert Gordon • We, as human beings, think that through social networks, we’ve somehow become more social creatures. The problem with this theory is, the more we “connect” online, the less actual human interactions we have, making us actually fairly unsocial. A new video breaks down exactly how the social aspects of human beings have evolved and transformed, showing how we’ve regressed from a social standpoint. Shimi Cohen shows exactly what’s wrong with our social structure now, and how we manipulate how we want to be presented to peers, family members, and potential mates on social media, rather than having vulnerable and genuine conversations in real time. Check out this video below, and take a moment to truly assess how you conduct yourself, both online and in person. Top Photo by Brittny Moore
Twitter for Beginners: 5 Steps for Better Tweeting Twitter is immensely useful as a utility for joining in the global conversation and sharing thoughts, opinions, information, and media. But for new users, there's also a fairly steep learning curve. For many people new to Twitter, the site doesn't immediately "make sense" and it can be a bit daunting. But there are things those users can do to make the service more useful from the get go. Below are five steps for new users to take in order to make the Twitter experience more enjoyable from the beginning. STEP ONE: Find People You Already Know I joined Twitter later than most early adopters, but once I finally became a Twitter newbie in early 2008, it was much easier to jump into the conversation when I was following some people I already knew — people who I was sure were already talking about things I was interested in and would value my input. Another way to find friends is to check out the Twitter Facebook app and see if any of your friends on Facebook are also on Twitter.
Flipping Professional Development Last week I worked with almost 100 educators from my district in the area of flipping the classroom over a period of two days. These two sessions were lead by well-known "flipper", Brian Bennett, another colleague of mine, Brian Bobbitt, and myself. It was a fantastic two days and there was a lot of excitement. Being a part of these sessions allowed me to really think about the way we do professional development. I must admit, I enjoyed the second day a lot more than the first day. The first day we started off talking about the philosophy and rationale of the flipped classroom. We had a day off between sessions and we communicated through email about what we wanted to do differently. One of my favorite conversations I had the second day was with a group of instructional coaches and administrators from my district and how they can flip professional development. I personally experienced traditional PD this past Friday in a session for a leadership cadre that I belong to in my district.