From blackberry to iphone to android, the first thing we do when we get one is…download apps. This article will share some sites of app reviews for the blackberry, iphone & droids. Feel free to add your own and share your reviews of certain must have apps or must not have apps.
I recently went to a networking event and met up with a business owner who just jumped into the social media scene. I hadn’t had a chance to introduce myself yet, the gentleman introduced himself, his company, gave me his business card, with his web address on it (always a good idea), then proceeded to tell me where
I could find him on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I said, wow! That’s great, you’re really being active and getting into social media. He then proceeded to tell me that it’s hard trying to remember what he post where and who to tell to follow him where and at this point, he was becoming quite frustrated. I gave him my business card and told him to check out our website when he had a chance. He then asked me if he could find me on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn because he wanted to build up his network. I said sure, just go to our website and you’ll find everything you’ll need there and you may even be giving us a call.
That night I got a new fan, a new follower and a connection request. A few days later, I got a phone call. It was my buddy the frustrated social media business owner. He asked me how does everything gets posted to the same place? How many hours I spent posting and what other social media platforms were there for him to maximize on? I told him that it really is quite simple how the social media platforms can be integrated through widgets. Social media is made to be simple, not overly complicated. The point of social media is to attract new potential customers, wherever they may be. You want to give people a reason to come back and find out more, and you want to give them a central location to go back to every time. If they have to hunt you down, it’s not going to happen.
There are a lot of great tools out there to help. Facebook has profile badges that you can create to put on your website. Twitter has “tweet buttons“, badges and button icons you place on your website. LinkedIn has apps that will connect your blog into your LinkedIn account. No need to multi-post. 1 post and everything is updated! There are tons of integration widgets out there. Did you know that you can even schedule your updates? Hootsuite helps you schedule your tweets in advance.
And of course, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are not the only source of social media out there. Depending on your business, business directories are a great source to find new clients. There are tons of business directories out there that you can tell your clients your on and clients can read and post reviews which helps your business build credibility: Google Local, Yelp, BizVotes, and Thumbtack to name a few.
If you’re a business that needs to drive people to you (local restaurant, shop…), get into the location based social media side. Sites like Gowalla, Foursquare and Facebook Places are very beneficial and becoming increasingly popular.
Save yourself and your business some time and take advantage of our countless hours of research and testing. Redline can help with your social media needs. Give us a call today 904-281-0009!
Halloween – the kids are back in school, the weather is getting cooler, it’s the kick off of the holiday season. Break out the props, and plan your costume. Sometimes we fold under the pressure of topping last year’s custome or just trying to make that perfect statment. Kids love it and it brings out the kid in all of us. What’s your favorite Halloween moment? Do you have any Halloween traditions in your house? Favorite costume? Post them here. We’ll also be posting links of where you can get customes online, halloween treats, and halloween happenings in Jax.
Where are you getting your Halloween costumes? Here are some places we’ve found on the web. Some offer discounts, free shipping over a certain amount, live chat, and the ability to search by themes. Costume Cauldron offers live chat support, props and worldwide shipping.
SpiritHalloween offers a bit scarier costume selection. There are also locations in Jacksonville.
Costume City has a wide selection of kids’ themed costumes such as Iron Man, Avatar, Toy Story and many more. Free shipping with orders over $50.00 offered.
Are you involved in social media? What badges have you earned? Osnapz makes using social media fun. If you’re familiar with foursquare and the concept of earning badges, then you’ll like osnapz. Osnapz let’s you earn badges for your social media sites. Currently osnapz offers badges for: Gowalla, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare, LinkedIn & Flickr. You can also connect via Facebook, though there are no facebook badges to be earned yet.
This week I got a request from a business customer wanting to know more about foursquare. “What is this foursqure? I just don’t get it”…. Foursquare is a location service-based social network game. What it does is tell you where your friends are. It’s like Google Lattitude meets a little bit of Facebook, and a touch of Twitter which makes for some fun and friendly competition. Foursquare just turned 1 this month and already has 500,000 users and 1.5 million vendors.
The whole system is based on “checking-in”. You check-in from restaurants, stores and basically any public place, you can also add a little message about where you are and what you’re doing – all very brief – and the system will then register what you’re up to. People who are your friends will then get a message to let them know where you are and your activities, and the idea is that they can then join you or visit that place later for themselves.
The fun part is that you get points for checking-in. It’s all still new, even for the developers, and much of the system is still evolving but, at the moment, you get a point for checking in, you get five points if it happens to be from a place you’ve never checked-in from before; a further point if it’s the second, third, fourth etc. and another still for checking-in multiple times in a row. Currently the points aren’t good for anything other than bragging rights but that’s plenty. There is a leader board on the site with the top users. Also, if you check-in from the same place more times and more regularly than anyone else, you become crowned Mayor of that venue- an honour that many may try for and that’s part of the fun. You can also earn badges as you check-in. There are badges for the number of times you’ve checked-in to new venue from Newbie up to Superstar, plus all sorts of random titles to earn. Developers are working with vendors and taking suggestions for all sorts of new badges.
That’s the fun side of foursquare and what users appreciate, but while all this is going on, imagine you own a restaurant, hotel, store or coffee shop and people literally compete to see who can spend the most time in your venue. They are recommending your best menu items to friends, and telling the world via Twitter and Facebook every time they walk through your door. And, you can track where they are coming from, where else they’ve been and what time of day they like to visit and gathering other very valuable feedback. Vendors should really look into getting themselves listed. How to get listed? When a foursquare user goes to a new location they go to “check-in” and the app pulls up vendors within the area, if your not on there, the foursquare user can add your establishment for others to view next time. Redline has been adding our vendors and customers whom visit throughout our weekly service calls. Foursquare has also just announced that they will be adding a dashboard with analytics for vendors. It’s currently being beta tested by about 30 vendors. Other benefits to businesses – 1. Word-of-mouth marketing: Foursquare works with Twitter and Facebook, one check-in at your restaurant or venue could be potentially viewable by thousands via users’ social networks. 2. Customer loyalty building/reward: Businesses can track customers’ visits, and can easily reward their most frequent customers. Foursquare promotes business’ “Mayor Specials,” specials for those who visit an establishment the most. 3. Recommendations from your best customers: Foursquare users can add “tips” about places, such as what to try on the menu or the best day to visit. These tips are available to anyone who checks in to your business, or even if they are close to your business.
What do we think of it? It’s definitely interesting and fun, especially if you’ve got a group of friends to play with. It’s also compatible with other social networking platforms such as Facebook, Twiiter and Osnapz. Here at Redline, our techs have been using foursquare to promote our clients that want the exposure. There have been rivalries over mayorship It’s a great exposure tool for restaurants, coffee shops, stores and other venues. We’re really looking forward to foursquare rolling out their vendor dashboard.
How do you get started? Like all social networks, just head to the foursquare site and sign up. Add a photo and find your friends. There are of course apps for the iPhone, Droid & Blackberry. Look us up on foursquare: redlineitinjax. For help getting started and more information on vendor dashboard & analytics, contact us at Redline.
ScreenToaster is a free online screen recorder. It lets you capture onscreen action without downloading software. This gives you the ability to record screencasts, tutorials, demos, training, lectures and more. You can choose to add a microphone and have sound or a webcam for video. You can then share and stream videos online, embed them on blogs and webpages or send them by email.
It’s free! Just sign up for an account and you can get started. Great app for simple tutorials and a quick easy way to post by simply linking. User friendly.
There is an option to upload your video directly to YouTube, but it’s a bit flaky. It crashed on me several times and when it did work, it took forevers. If you want to upload to YouTube with ScreenToaster, the best way would be to save the screen recorder as a .mov and then go to YouTube and upload directly from there. The ScreenToaster option works just fine. I’d like to see the ability to instead of having 1 chance to pick an option (youtube, screentoaster, save as .mov or .swf) you can go back and convert or upload.
It works great for creating short little “how to” demos to post on your web site, blog, facebook, linkedin…
All in all I thought it was a neat little application that has lots of posibilities and we’re planning on using it for little online demos of “how to”. Below is a little recording we made of a request from one of our fans – facebook chat emoticons. We made the recording, saved it as a .mov and uploaded from our YouTube account.
Feel free to drop us a line if you have any more questions about ScreenToaster, have something you want us to demo, or have an app you want us to test out.
I get asked a lot about social media and what accounts to set up and how to maintain them. I also get asked if they should just set up a social media account to say they have an account. My answer, do you have a business just to say you have a business and not maintain it? The idea of social media is to interact with your network and existing and potiential clients. I also get asked what accounts should be set up and maintained. There are tons of social media platforms people are using. The 3 main ones are still Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn. If you’re thinking of setting up any or all 3 of major accounts, take the time to grow and manage them. It’s better to have 1 great account then to have 3 sparse looking accounts. Some key things to work on:
1. Build your network, whether it’s through building contacts and endorsements on LinkedIn, or gaining more fans on Facebook and twitter
2. Have something to say. News articles links, blogs, words of wisdom, company happenings… will build interest for your viewers
3. Promote others. Don’t just focus on yourself. If you promote others, they’ll promote you.
4. Post often. Whether it’s you or multiple people within your company. Give viewers a reason to come back.
5. Integrate your social media platforms. If you do have multiple accounts, have them centralized in one place like your website. There are widgets that your web developer can install in the coding that will pull live feeds from your twitter and Facebook accounts (for an example, check out our website for our latest postings: www.redlineservices.net).
Cultivating your social media accounts take time. I run into businesses that get overwhelmed on what to do and time management. Redline understands that it’s not what you do, there’s where we can help. We manage multiple social media accounts. Redline has Social Media Packages that help fit your goals and budget.
If you have any questions concerning social media feel free to give Redline a call 904-281-0009.
2010 is going to be an even bigger year for Social Media. Companies are creating apps to intergrate SM accounts to make it easier to post and connect. With the combination of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other SM platforms, the lines of business and personal have become blurred. Like ANY social setting, there is etiquette to follow. I was doing some research to write an article on “social etiquette for online”; I ran across this article and thought it was eloquently put. Below is a brief recap. For full article click here: “The 11 Rules of Social Media”
1. Give More than You Receive
2. Don’t be a Keyboard Gangsta
3. Add Value to the Site
4. Don’t Sabotage Other’s Efforts
5. Remember that Cheaters Never Win
6. Build Quality Relationships
7. Stop Pushing the Envelope
8. Respect the Community
9. Listen to Others
10. Be Accountable for Your Actions
11. Be Nice
A survey from bizreport.com states that 56% of businesses plan on boosting their social media presence in 2010. The attached article has 75 reasons why businesses should integrate twitter into their marketing. For those businesses with fb fan pages, there is an app to integrate your fb post with twitter.
Redline works with companies that are looking to build up their web presence. We hope you take advantage of our post to read the articles or ask how we help you.
Looking for reasons why you should integrate twitter into your marketing?
If so, then here’s 75 of them..
Now depending on your business, target market and business model, you could use twitter….
1. To promote your worthwhile cause/favourite charity on justgiving.com
2. To point people to the latest copy of your newsletter
3. To promote your internet radio show on blogtalkradio.com
4. To tell people of your event on eventbrite.com
5. To send out an updated price list to clients & prospects
6. To share your powerpoint presentation on slideshare.net
7. To ask for referrals or to give referrals/recommendations
8. To qualify prospects
9. To tell people about your latest press release on prfree.com
10 To promote your latest article on ezinearticles.com
11. To enquire how you can help your current clients or subscribers
12. To Share some useful tips about your services
13. To get signups for your workshops and seminars
14. To conduct market research
15. To promote your latest podcast
16. To share your seminar talk on slideserve.com
17. To give your feedback of software you just bought
18. To conduct marketing research
19. To show the latest thread on your blog (twitterfeed)
20. To point them to your press release on PRWEB.com
21. To get eyeballs on to your squidoo.com lens
22. To get people to book on your workshop via regonline.com
23. To position yourself as an expert
24. To get new members to your clubs on groups.google.com
25. To promote your articles on goarticles.com
26. To increase response to your base.google.com ads
27. To tell people about onlywire.com
28. To share your white paper on scribd.com
29. To launch your new premium service
30. To tell people you’re going on holiday
31. As a way to promote your products online
32. To promote your latest video on You Tube
33. To promote your ad on oodle.com
34. To allow people to download a trial version of your software
35. To promote your latest job openings
36. To find latest job openings are out there
37. Share useful tips about your products
38. To promote your latest photos on flickr
39. To get comments onto your blog
40. To share an important fact form wickipedia.org
41. To ask how you can better help your followers
42. To help others generate traffic via trafficswarm
43. To show your demo video on video.google.com
44. To show people your trial software on download.com
45. To boost morale by enquiring about others and offering your support
46. To create mutual opportunity for friends
47. To simplify/improve your customer service and support
48. To tell people about theresultsacademy.com
49. To promote your new membership site on ning.com
50. To promote your latest book
51. To help with recruitment for your MLM Opportunity
52. To remind people of your terms and conditions
53. To tell people how to create a mobile website with mofuse.com
54. To give people a google map url on how to find you
55. To direct people to your ezine sign up page
56. To get people to vote for you at digg.com
57. To collect case studies, feedback and suggestions
58. To get people to sign up to your webinar at gotowebinar.com
59. To share customer testimonials
60. To run a poll or survey using surveymonkey.com
61. To advise others of bad payers / bad debtors
62. To point people to your latest article on Business-Scene.com
63. To tell people what’s coming, and ask them they’d like too
64. To tell people about your new listing on reddit.com
65. To tell others what the best sellers on ebay are
66. To link to your ads on Friday-ad.co.uk
67. To encourage others to subscribe to your group on facebook.com
68. To share financial market info from
69. To ask for ideas, suggestions and recommendations for new products
70. To share a Spreadsheet via Google Docs
71. To Tell people how to book on your next webinar
72. To share and get your appointments booked up
73. To give your feedback of a workshop or seminar you attended
74. To demonstrate to journalists how responsive your network can be
75. To say thank you to people who care
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This week I got a request from a business customer wanting to know more about foursquare. “What is this foursqure? I just don’t get it”….
It’s a great exposure tool for restaurants, coffee shops, stores and other venues. We’re really looking forward to foursquare rolling out their vendor dashboard.
redlineitinjax
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