Over the past month we’ve been helping one of our clients launch their Facebook presence. This has given me time to reflect on you can develop a personal and respectful relationship even when “you” are acting as a company or organization.
Narrative Voice
Facebook is filled with people who want to connect with people, companies, and causes they care about. However, many are slipping in during the odd moment of freedom at work and don’t have time to waste.

It’s therefore a good idea to aim for something short, clever, and conversational. It’s fine to acknowledge your personal agency as …

2010 Predictions in Review
A year ago I made several predictions about how the online world of 2010 would shape up. As the year comes to a close I thought it would be a good idea to see how close I came to the mark.
1. Smart Phone Bandwidth will become more expensive
True! – In January, both AT&T and Verison redesigned their mobile pricing plans in a way that increased the cost of unlimited data, and in June AT&T did away with unlimited data plans altogether.
2. HTML 5.0 will become the de facto language for cutting edge …

Every so often I hear something on KQED Radio that speaks for itself.

Listen to Michael Krasny, Kara Swisher, Laura Sydell, and Marc Rotenberg discussing the recent Wall Street Journal article that revealed how frequently Facebook fails to live up to its own privacy policies.

What is Social Media?
Social Media is a vehicle to share information with a broad audience twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. In addition to being any form of online publication or presence that allows users to engage in multi-directional conversations, it is a way to build relationships with the public. Online tools allow businesses to keep in touch with customers and easily update them on what’s new, whether it is products, services, events, an interesting insight or a new hire to the team. Basically, Social Media is the “wave of the now.”
What to know about Social Media
Social Media …

Well, we finally made it to Facebook. Just like any other small business, we struggled with the decision of whether or not to have a presence in Facebook. It’s free to start; it’s simple to use… but the reality is that it’s an investment of internal resources—mostly time. But given the staggering statistics of how much Facebook is used, we decided to give it a shot. Here’s how we did it.
1. We decided on content
We took this as an opportunity to have a balance of work-related posts and fun/personal ones with the goal of showing the world who we are …

Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, LinkedIn, Flikr, Photobucket, Ning, Xanga, WordPress, …. The list of social media platforms goes on and on.  Some overlap with each other, others have no channels of compatibility, and most of the services that would allow you to synchronize the content of multiple services are annoyingly piecemeal.

Enter Ping.fm.

Ping.fm has compiled a list of 40 blogging sites, social networks, online status recorders, social bookmarking services, and photo sharing sites - each and every one of which can be updated individually or in groups from within the Ping.fm interface.

See a service you don’t yet use?  Ping.fm will …

Link building is one of the key elements to Search Engine Optimization.  The more reputable sites you can get to refer people to your site, the better your search engine results will be.  You will usually need a well known and positive reputation in order to garner such links, but there are some small steps you can take on your own to get the ball rolling.
There You Are!
I don’t know about you, but when I first decide where I want to go shopping, one of the first questions I ask myself is, “what’s near me?”  I’d be willing to bet …

Philanthropy today is not just about the merit of your cause but also your credibility, your visibility, and the ease of giving.

According to the Giving USA Foundation, 2008 charitable giving was estimated at over $300 billion, roughly 2 percent of the US economy. 2008 was also the first time in over 20 years that inflation-adjusted donations dropped relative to the year before.

While the 2009 figures will not be available for another month, earlier this year the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported that the current recession’s impact on charitable giving seems to resemble that of the recession of …

This week’s vein of online ore can be found at http://bit.ly

Bit.ly will take any web address and shorten it to exactly 20 characters. This is especially useful when you are making a short form post like a Twitter entry or a Facebook status update, were the total length of your post is limited. However, it is also handy whenever you encounter a site with a URL more than a line long.

In addition, bit.ly tracks statistics, letting you know how many people followed your links, and whether …

Purpose

At their heart Facebook, Forums, and Blogs are all about communication and community, but each focuses on a different area of where those to concepts intersect.

Forums: The main purpose of a forum is to create a sense of community.  Most forums require participants to become members.  Members are then allowed to participate in ongoing conversations and create new conversations of their own.  In addition, most forums include some means of direct, private, unmonitored communication to foster direct communication among the members (and to company representatives).

Blogs: The main purpose of a blog is to serve as a …