Andrew Tompsett » Social Media

Education Essentials: MarketingProfs.com is a Marketing Must!

Drewt — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 05:20:33 +0000

This blog posting is about an education tool that I call a “must have” in the communicators handbag of tricks.

What is MarketingProfs.com?
It is an education resource for marketers. While the website offers many resources, in my opinion the best tool they feature is the live webinar education sessions. These sessions provide a wealth of relevant and current information in a 1-hour format (1.5 hours if you stick around for the q’n’a).

What Resources are Available?

Live webinar sessions. If you miss a session, they are all recorded and available to watch later
Articles written by professionals
Daily blog postings
Case studies
Guides and reports
Conferences and seminars
Research publications

There are other tools such as forums, networking resources, job postings, etc. For a complete list, just visit the website.

Who Should Use the Resources?
If you are in any ways involved in marketing, communications, or public relations this site is a must. It’s also for anyone who creates or edits content, makes presentations, interacts with clients/customers/people, and/or likes new media.

This resource is not for you if you don’t invest in your education, business, or communication skills. But we both know, that’s not you.

Let me just say for full disclosure that the nice people at MarketingProfs.com are NOT paying me to write about them. I’m writing because it’s really a great tool.

Why Go Pro?
While they do offer some free marketing resources, the best resources are in the pro section. I’m sure that pricing will change over time, but right now you can get a one-year membership for around $300. Even if you only attend two webinar sessions, it will more than pay for itself.

The Bottom Line
I’ve been a member since around 2006 and in that time I have accessed some fantastic content and resources. I do recommend this to my colleagues and peers and just recently mentioned that I enjoy downloading one of the many MP3 education sessions to listen to as I drive.

How social media cool, aka #Klout, are you?

Drewt — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 03:12:57 +0000

I am not shocked that there is a tool to measure how social-media-cool you are. It’s called #Klout and if you have a score less than 40 you may not be able to access both online and offline events.

It’s an interesting fad that is very evident of our social time. After all, we have celebrities that are famous for just being famous. It only makes sense that we have an application to tell us exactly how social we are.

For more information, here is a great story that I highly suggest you read:

8 Facts And Figures About Klout You Might Not Know

How to link multiple twitter accounts into your Facebook profile or fan page

Drewt — Fri, 28 May 2010 14:25:54 +0000

Social media is an interesting world, one that thrives on making connections. Sometimes it just makes sense to reduce the number of steps it takes to collect and publish information.

So here is the challenge, I wanted to take several Twitter sources and have them automatically update my Facebook fan page. After doing some research I have found an effective way to make this work.

Step 1

Collect the RSS feeds from Twitter. This will be in the form of the following type of link:

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=twitter profile name

For example I used the following two accounts:

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=esclhin
http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=gswitzzz

Step 2
Using an RSS aggregator, create one RSS feed. Here is a free aggregator that works well:

http://rssmix.com/

Once you combine your RSS feeds, you’ll be given a new address. Copy this new address and get ready for step 3

Step 3

In Facebook you’ll need to access the Applications area. Depending on if you are trying to add the feed to your profile or your fan page, this will be accessed through different links.

Go to your Facebook page
Click on Applications section
Once you’re in this window, you can access the Notes settings.
On the right-hand side of the Notes area, you can choose to import a blog.
Copy and paste the location of your blog’s RSS feed.
The page will then import your blog. After you have posted to your blog, the post will show up a little later in your Facebook page.

That’s it. Now you’re up and running with multiple Twitter feeds into your Facebook account.

Google is Growing Up

Drewt — Fri, 14 May 2010 19:46:25 +0000

Google and Twitter are merging both together and into my life.

So I’ve been following the whole Google/Twitter merger with some excitement. In doing so it has me thinking about the evolution of searching the web. Let’s face it, search really started with Yahoo. Yes, there were lots of other options, but Yahoo was the pioneer. Then Yahoo made some mistakes, developed an interface that was far to cumbersome and Google jumped in and took over.

A google twitter search for monkeys

Google has always been great at retrieving information that is indexed, and therefore old. It was horrible at grabbing the latest up-to-date information from the web. Now this is changing as Google and Twitter team up. Admittedly Google still does not grab the latest feeds from discussion groups, Facebook, etc, (it’s now within hours, but not within minutes) but the fact that it taps into Twitter means that they are taking a step in the right direction.

I found a great site that highlights some features Google has added. I highly recommend checking it out:

http://butyoureagirl.com/2009/12/22/view-live-twitter-feeds-in-google-search-results/

I look forward to the day when I search for information about a breaking news story and Google takes me instantly to the live streaming video update directly (content pulled from the words that the person is saying on screen).

Cheers,

Drew