It seems like everyone just can’t stop talking about social media. Just last week my wife received the American Council on Exercise’s (ACE) bimonthly newsletter and sure enough the cover story is “Marketing Your Fitness Business with Online Social Media”. (So yes, she now has homework to do!) It’s no wonder that sole-proprietors in the service industry have caught on. Times they are a changin’, and this economy is a catalyst for finding new ways of doing business.
But if you’re new to social technologies, as I was not so long ago, it can seem seriously overwhelming—not unlike those remote controls above. Blogs, micro-blogs, social networks, aggregators, feeds, sharing, and privacy issues, does it ever end? There’s a flurry of these tools and it seems like a new one catches my eye every time I fire up my laptop or iPhone. My first experience came when I finally gave in and created a basic MySpace page last year. The first time someone “dropped by” my page to “leave some love” was my cue to skedaddle out of there. I deleted my first invitation to Facebook and I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to read the ranting and raving of us common folks in a blog. I just didn’t get it at that time.
I started in the Innovation Center in January of 2008. Since social media was on our horizon, I decided that it was time for me to tiptoe in again. I am happy to report I’ve found what I consider to be the right tools for my needs. This might help if you find you’re overwhelmed.
First things first: limit your time online on any social media/networking site. Set a limit and stick to it. I spend no more than 30 minutes online and usually at night. Some of these actually allow me to be more productive.
Facebook – Sign up, build a profile, add a photo, find friends, and share. It’s that easy. Thankfully, it has enough privacy settings to lock your profile down like Fort Knox. We ought to know—Fort Knox is just down the street. AllFacebook has the must-read, skinny on privacy as well as how to get the most out of the social networking flagship. (Thanks @chimoose)
Google Reader – you can search the blogosphere for blogs centered on topics of interest to you and then read them all in Google Reader. First get a Google account and then simply look for the RSS feed on a website or a blog and click subscribe. I don’t browse to news sites anymore. I let them come to me in the reader. I can share the articles I like with my Gmail contacts.
Blogs – there are several ways to start blogging. You can create your own blog, or contribute to other blogs by posting comments. There are about a dozen of us who are taking our blogging baby steps right here on Crumple it Up. I have found Guide to Blogging very useful.
Twitter – this micro-blogging tool is the latest rage in social media. Messages are limited to 140 characters yet millions of people are using this. As far as I’m concerned, the key to Twitter is that it’s all happening in real time. Want to know what people are thinking about a brand right now? Check. You’ll find out. Also check out what our social media guru @naimul wrote about the rise of the health tweeple.
LinkedIn – this is an online resume and networking hub all in one. If this economy has you down, LinkedIn must be part of your solution to get back up. I hear it’s being used as a really inexpensive recruiting mechanism. It’s ideal for networking and connecting with hard to reach people. You really never know who’s in your network. In my experience, your profile on this page should be kept professional. Save the socializing for other sites.
Delicious – if you’re like me, you have a computer at home, a computer at work, and now a mobile device with a browser. Delicious is social bookmarking. What I love about it is it doesn’t matter which computer or device I am on because all my bookmarks are stored here. I can share them or keep them private.
SlideShare – this is like YouTube but only for presentations. The first three times I used it I found what I was looking for within two minutes. Priceless.
There’s no shortage of social media tools. I haven’t mentioned any video sites like YouTube or 12seconds.tv because I haven’t had much use for them other than entertainment. The theme here is utility. Hone in on what you need, try out a few tools, and keep the ones that make your life easier.
For further reading, our social media buddies Jason Falls, @jasonfalls, and David Finch, @davidfinch, have written extensively about all these topics on Social Media Explorer. Their motif is to embrace possibilities, and these guys know their stuff. Regardless of whether your desire is to build a personal brand or to learn something new, don’t be afraid to wade in.
What did I miss and more importantly, how are you using these tools to make your life easier?
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
We’ve been having fun with social media for a few months, but now we’re ready to take it to the next level. Humana’s innovation center team is excited to announce the launch of our first Facebook application – the Battle of the Bulge. This is the latest release from Humana’s Games for Health (see Paul Puopolo’s post from last week).
There is some pretty interesting research being done right now on the influence of both social networks and visual reinforcement on weight loss.
And we’ve completely ignored it to launch BoTB.
Just kidding. But Battle of the Bulge does adhere to our most important design principle – to be fun first, and healthy afterwards. Once we figure out whether or not you like it, we’ll see where it goes from a health perspective. Anyway, check it out on Facebook tomorrow. Play it with your friends – have fun – and let us know what you think.
For the official press release (you didn’t really think this was it, did you?), click here.
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
This is the first of several posts about my plunge into the deep end of the social media pool. In addition to being wonderfully self-indulgent, I hope that it’ll be instructive (and soothing) to anyone who’s as cautious as I was about social media.
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When I joined Twitter in late 2007, I did it out of obligation. Everyone in business – at least our business – had started talking about social media. But most of us had done nothing more than read about it in Fortune or Fast Company.
It was starting to look pretty hypocritical. But I can tell you that I was not the least bit interested in making "friends" on Facebook or MySpace with total strangers. I didn’t have the energy to be interesting enough – often enough – to be a blogger. And I certainly didn’t care to tell anyone – whether I knew them or not – what I was doing every minute of the day on Twitter.
Up ’til that point, I had guarded my online identity with great care. My Yahoo profile page (way, WAY before real social media) said my name was Herve Villechaize (bonus points to anyone who can tell me who THAT is). My identity on Facebook and MySpace was Elmer Fudd – a 72 year old polygamist from Arkansas (most of those identifiers are not accurate). I had to introduce myself to the 1 or 2 friends I had in each place by stating that I was really Greg Matthews.
By the end of 2007, I decided that it was time to come out of the social media closet and put myself "out there" if I was ever going to have any real hope of understanding the phenomenon I was reading about. I started a blog. You can still find it at http://chimoose.blogspot.com. It was about whatever I felt like writing about – and it still is. It is composed mostly of updates on my family (lots of pictures and videos of my daughters that I still don’t feel comfortable posting to YouTube) but was interspersed with my commentary on whatever issues are on my mind . . . usually around politics and religion (and the separation of the two), health and health care, cool technology and IU basketball. My only regular readers are my immediate family, and I rarely say anything interesting to any group of people beyond that. I may someday, but I’ve decided that it’s just not worth forcing. My little blog has served two nice purposes. 1) It got me out there testing stuff out. I know how blogger works, I know how to use Google Analytics to track traffic on my site, and I can even write simple HTML code to program buttons and links on my site. I also learned the art of the link, which was the beginning of my education about the new currency of social media.
You see, while there are a few people who are making money blogging, there are millions and millions more who are blogging because they have something to say, and they can always, ALWAYS find someone to listen if they try a little bit. After I’d been blogging for a couple of months, I noticed that other blogs I liked had "blog rolls" on them – links to other blogs that were relevant (or not) to the author. I decided that I might as well start a blog roll of my own as another way of sharing a little bit of myself – in this case, things I was interested in. What I didn’t realize is that I was giving "link-love." What most bloggers want is an audience. And having other sites that link into your own is a great way to accomplish that – particularly because Google searches take the number of relevant links into consideration as their algorithm orders search results.
I had discovered a site called "Inside the Hall" – a blog about Indiana University basketball written by a group of young amateurs (by which I mean that they’re not professional journalists – yet). I loved this blog because it was insightful, funny, and updated almost daily with good new material. In fact, it became my primary source of information about my favorite team very quickly. Since my family (the main readers of my blog, if you’ll recall) are also Indiana fans, it was only natural for me to provide a link to Inside the Hall on my blog roll.
After doing so, it took about 12 hours for me to get a thank you note from one of the ITH bloggers. He had tracked back to my blog, read it, and realized that I was an IU fan living in Louisville. We sent a few emails back and forth, and formed a relationship of sorts. I am still a regular reader of and commenter on his blog. And I’d learned a great lesson about how to grow a network in the web 2.0 world.
Coming up next, Part 2 in the series: How I overcame my fear of Facebook, and what I’ve learned as a result
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DISCLAIMER ALERT: The ideas expressed in this post came out of my own head, were researched by my own eyes and were expressed by my own hands. They are not intended to serve as medical advice in any way, shape or form. And they do not reflect the views of Humana Inc. or any of its subsidiaries. I take full responsibility if you think this post is awesome or not awesome.
This is the second of several posts (click 