Two of the biggest excuses organizations and individuals have when it comes to using social media applications is that it takes too much time to figure out how to use them and takes too many resources once your start using them. True, some social media applications may take a bit of time to learn, but unless you have been on a deserted island for the last ten years, you probably figured out by now how to use email and do basic things on the web like find things with a search engine. If you can do that,figuring out most social media applications should be easy.
Cost is not an issue because once you can get online, which you should be able to do either at home, at work, or at your local library, much of the really good stuff is free. The following ten social media resources are not only free, but should be useful to you in some way, especially if you are trying to make yourself or your organization more visible online.
Before you explore new social media applications, you may want to get a free online email account. Having this kind of account makes using social media much more convenient. Some applications require that you have an account with one of these email services, and most require an email account for administrative purposes. Also, if your main email account is from your organization, you may want an outside account to keep your activities more private. Three of the most popular places for online email accounts are from Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft.
Suggested Resource: Gmail
The following ten social media resources are not only free, but should be useful to you in some way.
1. Blogging
Think of a blog as a web site where just about all the work is done for you. You sign in, write something, hit a button, and it is online. If you've thought about starting a web site but have no idea what it takes to do it, a blog is the easiest way to get that experience. Also, if you already have a web site, a blog is an easy way to try quickly try new ideas that may later put on the site. Two of the biggest blog services are Blogger and WordPress. Both of them can get you from login to published blog in less time than a lunch break.
AirSafe.com's Choice: Blogger
2. Micoblogging
This is a stripped down version of a blog, basically little more than a couple of sentences and maybe a link to something online. Examples include Yammer and the much more widely known Twitter. This blogging method that may work best for sending short messages to portable devices like an iPhone or Blackberry, or in conjunction with other resources such as a web site, mailing list, or full sized blog.
AirSafe.com's Choice: Twitter
3. Online File Storage
If you need to share files with one or more colleagues, or you need to access key files from several different computers, and don't want the hassle carrying around a laptop or thumb drive, or emailing files, you can use one of these services to manage your files in a password protected environment.
AirSafe.com's Choice: Airset
4. Photo Sharing and Storage
If you are interested in sharing photos, services like Flickr and Picasa allow you to store photos online, and even giving you the option of allowing others to access them or download them.
AirSafe.com's Choice: Flickr
5. Intelligence Gathering
If you need to find or track some information online, for example monitoring a developing news story or keeping current on a competitor or industry, Google has a service called Google Alerts that will keep track of them for you and send regular email updates when it finds something.
AirSafe.com's Choice: Google Alerts
6. Video Sharing
Some of the millions of user generated videos are published every day may actually be of interest to you. While you may be able to find them using general search engines like Google or Bing, you may have better luck by searching within video sharing sites like YouTube, Metacafe, and LiveLeak. YouTube is by far the biggest, with the greatest variety of content. Also, if have videos that you want to share, you can follow the AirSafe.com example and create a home page withing the site to showcase your videos.
AirSafe.com's Choice: YouTube
7. Social Networking
Facebook and Myspace may be the most well known social networking sites, but a site like LinkedIn is more relevant to working professionals, providing a kind of online resume and biography, and allowing others to see you out and contact you.
AirSafe.com's Choice: LinkedIn
8. Subscribing to Podcasts
There are millions of audio and video podcasts out there that cover a huge range of topics, including a few that would be of interest to you. Both Apple (iTunes) and Microsoft (Zune) distribute free software that allows you to easily manage subscriptons to audio of and video podcasts of every description. The iTunes software also has extensive links to online audio stream of radio stations from around the world.
AirSafe.com's Choice: iTunes
9. Free Phone Calls
Wouldn't it be great if you could use the Internet to call someone long distance, even internationally, without spending any extra money? You can download a program like Skype or Googletalk and talk for free with anyone else who has both a connection to the Internet and who has downloaded the same software.
AirSafe.com's Choice: Skype
10. Social Bookmarking
All web browsers allow you to bookmark favorite pages, but if you use several computers, or even several browsers on the same computer, keeping track of your bookmarkes can be next to impossible. Bookmark sharing resources like Delicious, Digg, and StumbleUpon allow you to create an online account where you can store and manage your bookmarks, and then either make them private and password protected, or make them public and available to anyone.
AirSafe.com's Choice: Delicious
Selected Social Media Applications Used by AirSafe.com
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Flickr
Delicious
Podcast (main page)
Podcast (subscription)
Mailing List
Prlog.org (online press releases)
Bird Strike Blog
Crash Video Blog
Next Steps
If you are using none of these services, go ahead and try one of them to see if it can help you out in some way. If you are using one or more of them, leave a comment on this blog post and share your experiences, positive or negative, with using these services.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
How AirSafe.com Uses Twitter and a Mailing List with Its Blog
Social media applications make it easy to publish and share information with an audience. They can be used individually or they can be used in combination with other online resources and applications. By combining applications, their combined usefulness can be greater than the sum of their individual strengths.
One combination AirSafe.com uses consists of an automated mailing list, a blog, and Twitter. The mailing list had been developed over several years and had been used to send newsletters and breaking news items. The various AirSafe.com blogs are more recent additions, and have been used to provide more details than were possible in a newsletter, and to supplement the main web site.
Twitter is the newest addition to AirSafe.com, and initially had the most problems. Twitter is what is called a microblogging service, which acts like a blog it that it allows users to easily publish something online, but is very limited in that you have a 140 character limit, basically enough for a headline and maybe one link to another resource.
For AirSafe.com, having only enough space for a headline and a link to another resource isn't a problem since Twitter's main use was to encourage a subscriber to link to other content such as a particular page on a web site. As a relatively new online service, very few current AirSafe.com visitors would have had an account, and many may never be convinced to subscribe to the service. Incorporating Twitter into AirSafe.com's content wouldn't make sense unless there was a way to include the majority of AirSafe.com's audience that doesn't use Twitter.
The key breakthrough was using Twitter in combination with other AirSafe.com resources, specifically the site's automated mailing list and the AirSafe.com News blog site. The mailing list service, which over the last several years has grown to several thousand subscribers, has a feature that allows it to be linked to a blog so that any new blog item leads to an automatic generation of an email that includes a short message and a link to the blog item. A second feature automatically sends out a Twitter message to followers that includes a link back to the new blog posting.
In short, those two features allowed anyone who was either a subscriber to the AirSafe.com mailing list or to the AirSafe.com Twitter account would be automatically notified whenever there was an addition to the blog. Instead of updating three AirSafe.com resources, only one had to be updated to reach three distinct audiences.
The mailing list, blog, and the Twitter account are promoted in different ways to different types of AirSafe.com visitors. By doing a little bit of behind the scenes work, all three audiences could be easily connected.
One of the unexpected benefits was that Twitter and related technologies opened up additional options for finding useful information that was of interest to the audience with the audience. The most useful was the Twitter search function at search.twitter.com. It is a great tool for quickly finding useful links to breaking news stories. For example, after a plane crash, it can be used to search through the hundreds, and sometimes thousands of Twitter messages that users send to one another after a crash. At least a few will have links to news media and other resources that have timely information on an unfolding event.
The blog is the main resource that AirSafe.com uses for breaking news on plane crashes, so when the blog is updated and AirSafe.com subscribers receive a notification of the new blog entry and then visit the blog, they get information from AirSafe.com and also benefit from the work that Twitter users did to find relevant online content.
Next Steps
If you want to see how this stuff works or how it can help you, do one of the following:
- Follow AirSafe.com on Twitter: If you don't have an account, you can quickly create one for yourself.
- Join the AirSafe.com mailing list: Receive breaking news on plane crashes, plus much more information.
Visit the AirSafe.com Mailing List Archive: See what you have been missing.
Check out AirSafe.com's mailing list provider: If you are thinking of starting a mailing list, or making your current list more capable, this is a good place to start.
One combination AirSafe.com uses consists of an automated mailing list, a blog, and Twitter. The mailing list had been developed over several years and had been used to send newsletters and breaking news items. The various AirSafe.com blogs are more recent additions, and have been used to provide more details than were possible in a newsletter, and to supplement the main web site.
Twitter is the newest addition to AirSafe.com, and initially had the most problems. Twitter is what is called a microblogging service, which acts like a blog it that it allows users to easily publish something online, but is very limited in that you have a 140 character limit, basically enough for a headline and maybe one link to another resource.
For AirSafe.com, having only enough space for a headline and a link to another resource isn't a problem since Twitter's main use was to encourage a subscriber to link to other content such as a particular page on a web site. As a relatively new online service, very few current AirSafe.com visitors would have had an account, and many may never be convinced to subscribe to the service. Incorporating Twitter into AirSafe.com's content wouldn't make sense unless there was a way to include the majority of AirSafe.com's audience that doesn't use Twitter.
The key breakthrough was using Twitter in combination with other AirSafe.com resources, specifically the site's automated mailing list and the AirSafe.com News blog site. The mailing list service, which over the last several years has grown to several thousand subscribers, has a feature that allows it to be linked to a blog so that any new blog item leads to an automatic generation of an email that includes a short message and a link to the blog item. A second feature automatically sends out a Twitter message to followers that includes a link back to the new blog posting.
In short, those two features allowed anyone who was either a subscriber to the AirSafe.com mailing list or to the AirSafe.com Twitter account would be automatically notified whenever there was an addition to the blog. Instead of updating three AirSafe.com resources, only one had to be updated to reach three distinct audiences.
The mailing list, blog, and the Twitter account are promoted in different ways to different types of AirSafe.com visitors. By doing a little bit of behind the scenes work, all three audiences could be easily connected.
One of the unexpected benefits was that Twitter and related technologies opened up additional options for finding useful information that was of interest to the audience with the audience. The most useful was the Twitter search function at search.twitter.com. It is a great tool for quickly finding useful links to breaking news stories. For example, after a plane crash, it can be used to search through the hundreds, and sometimes thousands of Twitter messages that users send to one another after a crash. At least a few will have links to news media and other resources that have timely information on an unfolding event.
The blog is the main resource that AirSafe.com uses for breaking news on plane crashes, so when the blog is updated and AirSafe.com subscribers receive a notification of the new blog entry and then visit the blog, they get information from AirSafe.com and also benefit from the work that Twitter users did to find relevant online content.
Next Steps
If you want to see how this stuff works or how it can help you, do one of the following:
- Follow AirSafe.com on Twitter: If you don't have an account, you can quickly create one for yourself.
- Join the AirSafe.com mailing list: Receive breaking news on plane crashes, plus much more information.
Visit the AirSafe.com Mailing List Archive: See what you have been missing.
Check out AirSafe.com's mailing list provider: If you are thinking of starting a mailing list, or making your current list more capable, this is a good place to start.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Social Media's Role in Airline Safety
Dr. Todd Curtis of the AirSafe.com Foundation will present the paper "Social Media, Bird Strikes, and Aviation Safety Policy" at the upcoming 2009 Bird Strike North America Conference in Victoria, Canada the week of 13 September 2009. The following excerpt of the abstract gives a good overview of what to expect:
When many bird strike related organizations first launched their web site, that was about all the online presence that was needed. However, with the rise of the use of social media technology that allows users to tailor how they find and use information, having a web site is no longer enough. Many of the most useful tools in the social media arena are relatively simple to use, often free, and can greatly expand the ability of an organization to reach an online audience.
For those of you who will not be in Victoria for the conference, Dr. Curtis and the AirSafe.com Foundation will provide information online, including podcasts, videos, presentation slides, and other materials that will allow those of you in the bird strike and wildlife hazard community, as well as others in the aviation safety community, to benefit from the presentation.
The first of these online resources is the Conversation at AirSafe.com podcast "Social Media's Role in Airline Safety." In this show, Dr. Todd Curtis discusses the role that social media applications like Twitter, YouTube, and podcasts have had in shaping the public's relationship to aviation safety issues. Using the example of the January 2009 ditching of a US Airways aircraft in the Hudson River, the show discusses why any organization that intends to influence aviation safety policy or the aviation safety community should embrace these emerging technologies in order to better serve their members and the general public.
You can listen to the podcast at http://www.airsafe.com/podcasts/show96-social-media.mp3, and review the full transcript, as well as follow links to a number of supporting resources, at the AirSafe.com News.
When many bird strike related organizations first launched their web site, that was about all the online presence that was needed. However, with the rise of the use of social media technology that allows users to tailor how they find and use information, having a web site is no longer enough. Many of the most useful tools in the social media arena are relatively simple to use, often free, and can greatly expand the ability of an organization to reach an online audience.
For those of you who will not be in Victoria for the conference, Dr. Curtis and the AirSafe.com Foundation will provide information online, including podcasts, videos, presentation slides, and other materials that will allow those of you in the bird strike and wildlife hazard community, as well as others in the aviation safety community, to benefit from the presentation.
The first of these online resources is the Conversation at AirSafe.com podcast "Social Media's Role in Airline Safety." In this show, Dr. Todd Curtis discusses the role that social media applications like Twitter, YouTube, and podcasts have had in shaping the public's relationship to aviation safety issues. Using the example of the January 2009 ditching of a US Airways aircraft in the Hudson River, the show discusses why any organization that intends to influence aviation safety policy or the aviation safety community should embrace these emerging technologies in order to better serve their members and the general public.
You can listen to the podcast at http://www.airsafe.com/podcasts/show96-social-media.mp3, and review the full transcript, as well as follow links to a number of supporting resources, at the AirSafe.com News.
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