How My Mother Became Internet Savvy

First, Let me say - I probably have the coolest most beautiful mom in the world. Yes I love her. In the last year my mom learned how to write emails, use links, chat on windows IM, search online and lately - even how to make a video conference.

I have been trying to get her to learn how to use the internet for more than six years. During that time her computer was not even installed, covered with a blanket under a table. So what made her be more open to the net? How did this change of behavior happened?

First step - Computer location
When my mother moved, she had her own computer installed in the living room. Until then she was using my brother's computer which was in his room. The computer kept sitting with the blanket cover waiting for attention.

Second - Job requirement
My mother is a kiddengarden teacher. They started introducing computers to kids in her class and she felt she had to at least learn how to turn the thing on and off. Also, her manager started sending updates over emails and teachers’ forum. That is when she decided to set up her first email address. She started surfing the forum, posting questions on line and waiting passionately for the magic reply.

Third - Language
Most of the operating systems in Israel are set to English as default. My mother is not as comfortable with English as she is with Hebrew. Once she had the Hebrew version downloaded to her computer, everything looked much more intuitive for her.

At this point all the fears and doubts were totally forgotten. She is sending job search links to my sister, searching for a new oven online, viewing her salary online, and chatting with her daughter in San Francisco. Just last night she was so excited to find rubber pants on “the internet”.

Video conference –
Our first video conference was so moving, we both cried a little. Remember we live so far away. In the second call I showed her my house and we danced together like we used to do back home.

I guess there are so many different reasons why the older generations do not like the web. I believe we just have to make it more intuitive for them. We should encourage them to experiment by showing them all the cool stuff they can find online.

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Video Creation For YouTube - Tips For Marketers

Videos are becoming more and more popular as educational and marketing tools. If you are an online marketer, you know videos are hot but you may not be sure of how to optimize your video production marketing wise. Here are some tips I learned using Camtasia Studio 6 software.

1. Use the word “Video” in your file name

When you save your project or upload it to the web, include the word “video” in your file name and description. This will make your video appear better on video searches.

2. Brand your video

Add branded slides to your video. Open the video with your company logo and the video title. Introduce yourself, your title and the company while the first slide is shown. Add a closing slide with the company logo and have your contact information there. If you are making a power point slide, you can simply save it as JPEG image

and import it to your video editor software.

3. Use the focus option

You should make sure your video has the best quality possible. I will give you some technical specifications in the next bullet point. However, even if you create a high definition video, YouTube will compress it and turn your video into a Flash file, which reduces the quality of the video. In order to make sure the video looks clear on YouTube, you can use the Focus option using “Zoom n-Pan”. Avoid creating extreme zoom changes; it can get confusing if you keep “jumping” from 100% zoom to 30%. I like to use 80% zoom for the majority of screen shots and I adjust to even lower zooms when I want to show small areas on my page. In any case, try to create subtle transitions between zooms.

4. Record and produce with best quality options

The new Camtasia version has all these standards as the default option. If you are using an older version, make sure to choose the following specifications:

When recording – change your area dimensions to 1280*720. This is the HD standard.

Then Go to tools> Options >

1. Capture tab > save file as AVI

2. Video tab > change to Manual > change to 30 frames per seconds

3. Audio tab > change the source according to the equipment you are using

Start recording.

Camtasia will open the editor’s project settings – choose recording dimensions

When Producing

Choose custom production settings> next

Choose AVI file> next

Choose 30 in frame rate per second, go to Audio format – choose 44.100 kHz, 16 Bit Stereo> next

5. Make it short and sweet. People are looking for videos since they have a shorter attention span, so give them what they were looking for. Get to the point quickly and avoid repeating yourself.

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Looking For A Job in Web 2.0 Market

Looking for a job? Forget your resume; work on personal branding.


“22% Of Employers Check Your Facebook Profile; 1/3 of which reject candidates because of their FB” (link)


This is a tweet that I sent out early yesterday. Amazingly, a few hours later I had a phone interview with one of the leading companies for voice over IP communication. After we talked about some of my online marketing experience, the interviewer asked me for my Twitter user name. We were following each other before I could say Abra Kadabra! How great is that. Well, it is wonderful if you are projecting a professional image on your twitter or any other social media channel account. If you are not prepared – it could be the point where you lose that job.

You might think, this is not the case for every type of job search and this kind of candidates screening approach is more likely to be relevant for online marketing professionals. I agree this is probably the case most of the time; however, you must be aware of the different purposes people use social media for today. It is no longer just a fun place to play at. Marketers, Recruiters, Employers and Businesses use these channels for marketing research, business development and candidates search.

So how can you change your personal branding?

These are some steps I took myself back in January when I realized the power of personal branding.


- Be Strategic – What kind of image would you like people to see in this specific channel? If you have several desired images (professor/singer), create different accounts on Twitter or YouTube where it is easy to have multiple accounts and keep the content separate. Decide what you would like to project on facebook and be consistent.


- Create separate accounts for yourself and be as active as if it was for your corporate account. Are you using your company twitter account? That is nice, but it doesn’t contribute to your personal branding. Create your own presence, even if you are already engaging under a corporate account.


- Clean Up – once you decided what is it you want to project, clean up any content that does not fit with your image. Un-tag yourself from pictures on facebook, Sort your web albums and delete any pictures that may not give the image you are aspiring to get, edit your community – some people may be get more value from you and contribute to the conversation in your other channel.


- Content – choose your content carefully while you have your personal image in mind - status changes, tweets, sharing information about events you are going to, groups that you belong to – all reflect on you as a person. Share work you have done, provide links to news or information you have in other websites that can reinforce your image.


- Be Yourself – Yes, you have to be strategic, but it doesn’t mean you should pretend to be someone you are not. The different images you are trying to project are all real parts of the whole you. The key to personal branding is to be aware of the different parts of your personality and professional life, be comfortable with them and control where and when you share those with others.

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Social Media Marketing Measurement Tools

While we all agree social media marketing presents many new business opportunities for marketers, the ROI from social media marketing remains unclear. It is especially hard to measure some of the “softer” benefits of marketing through social media channels. In this post I listed a breakdown for some of the measurement tools available sorted by four major marketing objectives. The measurement approach is to collect all the social media channels that are being used and to examine them under one marketing objectives.

Brand Awareness

How many people know about me?

Channel	What to look for	Tool
Blog	Unique visitors	Google Analytics
Twitter	Number of followers	Twitter home page
Facebook	Page/Group views	Page analytics
YouTube	Video views, subscribers#	YouTube Insights

Community Growth

How many new people know about me?

Channel	What to look for	Tool
Blog	Subscribers growth/ new visits	Google Analytics
Twitter	Followers growth	Twitter Counter/ homepage
Facebook	Fans count	Facebook Page
YouTube	New unique visitors/ subscribers/ views growth	YouTube insights

Influence

How many people take action about me or recommend me to others?

Channel	What to look for	Tool
Blog	traffic source (indicates my influence on the other channels)	Google Analytics
Twitter	Number of Retweets and Replies to my content	Retweetrank /tweetdeck
Facebook	iLike	Manually
YouTube	traffic source (indicates my influence on other channels)	Google Analytics

Feedback from clients

Channel	What to look for	Tool
Blog	Comments number
Twitter	Retweets, Replies, Direct messages number	Tweetdeck
Facebook	Wall posts and messages- manually “interaction”	FB Page insights
YouTube	Comments, video views

Another important benefit of social media is sharing information. Trying to measure this benefit is similar to trying to measure the ROI of your education. It is almost impossible yet we all know there is value in it. You get to learn from others’ experiences and save research time. I hope these charts provided an organized way to layout some of the information. There are many more tools out there and I do not presume to know all of them. I would like to invite you to share your experience with tools you have used, measurement approaches or strategies you have developed.

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