20. COMPUTER COMPUTER COMPUTER COMPUTER COMPUTER COMPUTER COMPUTER COMPUTER SERVER COMPUTER COMPUTER SERVER SERVER SERVER SERVER COMPUTER COMPUTER COMPUTER COMPUTER COMPUTER COMPUTER
35. Web Page Web Page Web Page Web Page Web Page Web Page Web Page Web Page Web Page Web Page Web Page Web Page Web Page Web Page Web Page Web Page Web Page
Who in here feels like when they log into any of these 3 sites they are entering an alternative reality?
—the land of Oz, if you will?
Who among you just wants to click your heels—or your mouse—and just go back to home—that is, Internet Home?
Who feels a terror, akin to the Cowardly Lion, when they see all those Tweets fly by like winged monkeys?
Well there is no need to yearn for home like Dorothy and fearing the great and terrible Wizard of Oz.
Usually it is just some small person running things from behind a green curtain.
Instead, let me be Glenda the Good Witch and guide you through this beautiful Land of Alternative Realities.
But, first, let’s take a look at the topography of Oz … or, in this case, the web.
Think of the internet as a body—a body of knowledge.As with any body, there are a number of systems including the muscular system, the skeletal system, the nervous system, the circulatory system, the endocrine system and the digestive system.Well, it is the same with the internet.
As anyone who has ever had a baby knows, the first three systems to develop are the brain, the heart and the spinal cord. There’s something romantic about that isn’t there—(CLICK)
There’s something romantic about that isn’t there—wisdom, love and courage … (CLICK)
(CLICK)Anyways, let’s look at each of these in terms of the internet:
The brain: you can think of this as the computer.------------The heart: spurs the flow and interaction between computers.------------The spinal cord: the beginnings of the pipelines through which content begins to travel.
So let’s think back to the beginnings of the web.The very first thing that the founders of the internet did was network siloed computers to create redundancy and protect data. So the first thing was the computer, or the brain.
Next created the network; or the spinal cord.
Finally, they created a messaging system, or the circulatory system.
So the first thing was the computer, or the brain.
Next created the network; or the spinal cord.
So we have just identified the first layer of the internet’s ecosystem:Computers, networks and messaging systems.
Then comes the second layer: here comes the beginnings of the tech bubble in the ‘90s, when email and chat start to take off.
We can add web sites, LANs, email and chat (ICQ, AOL, Prodigy, Yahoo).
We can add web sites, LANs, email and chat (ICQ, AOL, Prodigy, Yahoo).
Then comes the third layer, which brings us up to 2000s.Here we see the birth of blogs and Twitter.
In fact, I would consolidate LinkedIn and Facebook to be self-contained systems but who are parasitic in nature because they will leach from Twitter and blogs.And there is the whole omnipresence of Google that overshadows the entire hemisphere of the web.
The new applications, most of which are free, include GroupMe, FastSociety, Beluga, Kik, TextPlus, PingChat, HurricaneParty and Yobongo. So now we can see the entire topography of the web.Still feeling uncomfortable? A little lost? Are you starting to click your heels and feeling like going home?
Well, let’s go back to that fallen house and get your ruby red slippers.Because the only way you’re getting home from here is to take that long yellow brick information highway with me.
So let’s talk about creating your own little Oz from your own computer.How do we begin?Just like Dorothy and the Scarecrow did, with the brain, of course!
And what did we say that was? A web page!What! I can’t do that, you say. It costs too much. It takes too much work. I don’t know how.No, sir. I am not taking that for an answer.Let me tell you about 3 Geeks. I set up the blog in less than 10 minutes on blogger.com. It was free. It was simple. It gives you no excuse.
The Cowardly Lion. And what was he looking for? Courage—or a spine. And what did we say that the spine was? The nervous system or the network, if you will. Fortunately, what this past decade has done for the internet is eliminate the need to build that infrastructure. Technology has progressed to a point where it has removed the necessity of building out that network by relying on random visits or pushing people to our sites via e-mail.
Instead, these new sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn let us populate and grow our network by importing our contacts from our e-mail systems into their systems.By doing that, these sites are establishing connections for us and letting our friends see our other friends and spotting potentially new connections.
That’s why these social media networks are growing so quickly. If you think of it like an organism, these networks are developing like a cancer.So, before when you sent 1 email to 10 people, maybe, 1 person will forward it. But now, if you send 1 tweet or 1 status update, it is automatically showing up on all of your imported contacts, followers, friends or connections. And who knows how many they will send it to?So why exactly does Facebook and Twitter work so much better than e-mail? Because it is short. In a stroke of brilliance—and sheer luck—they limited the message to 140 characters. Twitter and Facebook revolutionized the message.
So you now we are getting to the “heart” of the matter. These interactions, tweets, messages, are the circulatory system.Now we know everyone hates those chain e-mails. They are too long, with their glittery, animated carebears embedded into the often sappy poem about how you and all of the sender’s 50 closest friends are her bestest friends and wants you to affirm the friendship with a forward to all of your bestest friends and a reply to her.Now, a 140-character tweet eliminates all of that embarrassment. If you just read a great article or watched a hilarious video, you can send in less than 30 seconds. When you get the tweet, you can read it in less than 15 seconds. Sending it on takes less than 5 seconds.No more bloated e-mails.
Blog comments, Tweets, texts and the status updates are creating a whole new milieu for messaging. Eliminating the need for emails, these are exchanges are typically a line or 2 long. As mentioned with Tweets, which mimic texts, you are limited to a certain character length.And, now, with the parasitic features available on LinkedIn and Facebook, these sites will pull your tweets into their environment so you only have to post on one environment and it will be replicated across all of your sites.
LinkedIn integrates with Twitter, Twitter can push out to Facebook, 3rd party apps like HooteSuite and Tweetdeck allow you to handle multiple profiles all with one time.
Now that we have examined and dissected the body of the web, let’s see how we can master it to become our own little men behind the curtain.I was going to say something clever here—like, he is me or she is he … well, you get my drift …
By the way, an aside on pictures: make them photos of yourself that are recognizable. Dark photos, faraway photos, photos of two people or photos of your dog, baby or your hand puppet are not acceptable. Social media is all about personal relationships. No one can relate to you if they can’t see you. (walk thru examples)And then make sure that you use the same photo on all of your sites. This is the beginning of personal branding. It doesn’t have to be a glamour shot. Just make it a relaxed, approachable snap shot of you.
So you have your own little world built and created. Now you want to get it circulating in the internet galaxy.So let’s think about your launch strategy: how are you going to start your social media campaign?Well, once again, it is comprised of 3 components: 1) what’s your goal, 2) who is your target audience, and 3) how are you going to get there?
Well, we are going to treat this like any other road trip. Where do we want to go? Dorothy said “there’s no place like home”. Who was her target audience? She was Off to See The Wizard of Oz. And how was she getting there? By following the Yellow Brick Road.So let’s think about you: what do you want?You want a wildly popular web site.Who do you want visiting your site?Your peers? Your staff? Your boss?How are you going to get there?social media a/k/a peer pressure a/k/a word-of-mouth.You don’t have to answer these questions but it will help you. You can just start randomly tweeting and building out your network but you will have a better chance of hitting your target if you bear these three questions in mind: where are you going, who are you targeting and how are you getting there.
Lastly, we haven’t talked about the Yellow Brick Road or those super Ruby Red Slippers, have we? Where do they fit into this story? Well, they are the means and the way of reaching our goal—they are the tools or your secret weapons.
And for us, it is TweetDeck,
HooteSuite, or any of those free 3rd party apps that are out there, ready and waiting to help you make your way through the quagmire of social media.These are both excellent online tools that helps you manage the Twitter stream. Or should I say Twitter Tsunami?TweetDeck allows you to segment and categorize your tweets into discreet columns so that it is easier to follow folks. I have columns set up for my fellow geeks, competitors and areas of interest. It makes it easier to catch up on news, too.
That’s when a star is born.I’ve seen it so many times, it’s now inevitable. We’ve all seen it: Justin Beiber got his big break on YouTube. Sephora gave a young, unwed mother in England who sold eyeshadow on ebay her own make-up line—and she doesn’t even have a beauty license. A young woman’s blog about her culinary hero, Julia Child, turned into a multi-million dollar movie.Heck, your own little three geeks here, in 2 short years were named one of the top 10 blogs in the country.And it does matter to your firm. They just don’t know it yet. Unless they claim their name, they will get hijacked. If they don’t participate, they will get left behind. And if they say that it can’t be proven that it will land them a client; well, how will they know it until they try?They’ll be like Auntie Em and the folks back home. In black and white and all wind-blown.So, I think that does it, folks.
So, I think that does it, folks.I hope you now realize, like Dorothy, although she claimed there was no place like home, she racked up quite a few frequent flyer points for her frequent visits back to Oz.
