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Today was the first webinar in the Storytelling & Social Media series from NTEN and TechSoup Global. I’m happy to say that I had the great honor of serving as the speaker for the webinar and had a ton of fun. It’s always a little weird to talk over the phone and not be able to hear or see those you are presenting to, but everyone was really great with comments and questions and responding online so I knew I wasn’t talking to myself!
If you want to check out the recording of the session or register for webinars that are still to come, check out the full line up.
Today’s webinar focused on the building blocks of social meda; things like tagging, RSS and how to get started finding the conversations taking place online. Here’s my slide deck:
The questions folks asked at the end were terrific! Some of them, along with my answers, include:
- How much time a day do you spend reading (RSS feeds)? I used to be quite worried about reading everything that came into my reader. Until I finally “got it.” Even if you don’t read the post that comes in your RSS Reader, that content isn’t lost and the knowledge is still at your footsteps. You can search within your reader and find content that came through that you might be looking for, even if you didn’t read it the first time.
- How do you separate personal and professional contacts or content online? I share a lot of information online, but if it is something I really want to be personal, I take advantage of the settings in different applications and mark things as private or hidden. Most all of the tools you’ll use online allow for you to show or hide different content for different users or groups.
- What’s the difference between Netvibes and Google Reader? Netvibes is a lot like an iGoogle home page and is designed to have many different widgets or boxes that are customizable. You may have a weather widget next to an RSS feed of your organization’s blog, a calendar widget and a feed of Google Alerts, and so on. Google Reader is designed to organize your feeds and let you share them with your contacts/the world – without having boxes and widgets. I like to use Google Reader most of the time, but keep my Netvibes up-to-date for times when I want to narrow in on certain topics because of the way you can view the feeds. You can see screen shots of both of these in the slide show above.
- How do you create a tag? If you are using Delicious, for example, you don’t need to create a list of tags or a taxonomy you have to stick to before you actually start saving bookmarks. You can create a new tag every time you save something if you want to. When you save the bookmark, you add the tags you want associated with it, and those can be new or ones you’ve used before. That’s it; once you hit save that tag is created.
There were other questions and some good conversations. If you were on the call and had a question that didn’t get answered feel free to ask it here in the comments or you can check out the Emerging Technologies forum in TechSoup to join the conversation.
Upcoming events in the series include podcasting, video creation, creating social buzz, and social media ROI. Check them out and register here!
Download the recording of today’s webinar on Social Media Building Blocks.
Thanks to all those on the webinar today! It was a lot of fun talking with you and I’m happy to keep answering questions and discuss how we can all use social media better to more effectively and efficiently change the world for the better!
Amy, couldn’t make the webinar, but thanks for sharing it all here on your blog!
Thanks, Laura! No worries – it was a FULL house and we had some fun with tagging and new tools.
Whoa. What learnings. I adored every moment and every aspect.
Hands down, this sold me on the value of screen casts as you teach/blog. whoosh. what helpfulness!!!
the readytalk style that allowed us to ‘see’ your desktop another huge biggie.
here’s what was tons of fun for me: i have taught myself bits of all you reviewed. so that was fun b/c i wasn’t aware how much i already knew. but you threaded how interactive all can be: ie: i will become so much more efficient thinking of delicious as a platform to share from instead of another bookmark hub (i’d never yet dived into it)
similarly….adore the concept of multiple readers and didn’t know netvibes allowed for the commenting per link or the sending a note to someone (like you did w/ corrie)
adore that
and i’ve just been becoming familiar w/ how FB can serve as a hub and you can link stuff off that…like i’m already posting my tweets and so i don’t have to duplicate w/ status updates.
i want to get better at delineating how much personal stuff i want clients/prof relationship folks to see…ie: maybe i set up a FB just for personal?
had zero idea about the plugin for your blog for the ready news..what is that?
and may i ask what plugin you use w/ this blog that allows the #of comments to be visible / viewable under your title?
I had about 300 links on my blog’s sidebar…under categories like: inspiration, community, cooperation–but these were static links..ie: went to other blogs.
and there’s a place for that. but i’d so prefer having links to rss or to categories on net vibes.
i don’t yet have a strategy.
i practice/write about my journey of practical spirituality..and i’m often linking/writing about whatever is a given crisis in the world/my life and how I’m thinking about it from a spiritual perspective…that said, i do this with every news or tech or entertainment or whatever feed i read.
if there’s one trend i’m always seeking humanity’s quest for principle, truth, proof of it and always trying to use more efficient forms of all kinds of science to get there….
i would like to somehow start a non profit eventually and that’s another story. but for now, getting my hands around the tools and the ways to aggregate and share is vital and huge. thank you so so much.
you have an approachable, accessible, pleasant and happy way about you. and your poodle/labradoodle is adorable. i have a bichon.
hope to meet you someday…maybe i’ll get to nten if i can somehow figure out sponsorship….i’m in boston if you get this way …
thanks again.
tre 😉
Hi Tre-
Thanks so much for joining the webinar yesterday and sharing some of these great take-aways with everyone here!
A couple quick answers to your questions below: the wordpress plugin I use to post delicious bookmarks to my blog is called Postalicious. The face that the number of comments appear at the top of my posts is just a feature of the template and style settings, not a plugin. One thing to try for separating professional and person contacts in Facebook is to create two groups and assign your contacts to one or the other, then you can change your settings to allow professional contacts to see certain information and your personal contacts to see other or the same information, etc. You suggested creating two accounts, and I do know people who have chosen that route, but keep in mind how much time you have to use the tools and maintain a presence (if it’s already enough time having one account, well, two might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back!).
Thanks again for joining the conversation here on the blog and I hope you’ll stick around and share your thoughts in the future. If you’re at NTC or if I’m ever in Boston – we’ll certainly connect!
hi amy,
this is a great resource. I wish i could have made it to the webinar, thanks for sharing it here.
Excellent work! Love the way you presented this. I’ve added it to the WeAreMedia wiki too.
Thanks for the video 🙂 Good to understand the building blocks of social media and have some pointers on how to use it.