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Use Social Media to Sell Boy Scout Popcorn

By on August 27, 2010 in facebook, PayPal, twitter

Scouts and Scouters now is the time to ramp up your online sales planning for the 2010 popcorn sales campaign. This is the third year that the Boy Scouts of America has allowed the use of e-mail to increase sales. The BSA created unique sales ID codes for each scout to e-mail to their relatives to buy popcorn which would be credited to that Scout. This year have your parents extend that system to their social media networks which are likely much larger than their e-mail address books.

It’s the obvious next step in using online tools to help your unit excel by using the social media sphere. A number of units and councils are using all manner of social media. This Pack from Virginia has outlined their campaign goals and achievements on their web site along with other useful information about their unit. The Bay Area Council has links to the national BSA listing of social media links such as the national council’s Facebook Page and Twitter page. These folks have set the precedent so it’s time for your Pack and Troop to get on the ball with leveraging social media for your benefit.

Start with a Facebook page. You need to have a personal account first. Then create a Twitter page for your unit. Pretty sure you need to have a personal account to do this as well. Assuming you already have personal profiles for both of these platforms though, invite all of your personal FB friends and Twitter peeps to “Like” your unit Page and “Follow” your unit Twitter account. Then send invites to your Scouts’ parents to Like and Follow and have them forward both sites to their friends and peeps to help build momentum for the virtual sales effort. The main thing though is to make sure that your parents forward their son’s online ordering code to their social media connections.

For your Page consider creating an Events tab to advertise the neighborhoods, football tailgates and other events and places where your Boys will be selling popcorn. Also think about creating a landing page and adding a PayPal button to it to accept general donations to your unit year round. Naturally you’ll want to keep the wall updated regularly so that your growing list of Facebook fans can brag about your unit and encourage other youngsters to join your unit.

Use social media to have a record breaking sales year for your Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and make this 100th year of Scouting a memorable one for your unit.

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Connect, Engage, Thrive

By on March 10, 2010 in Blogging, Business, facebook, twitter

Do you know this lady? If not, you probably should. I’ll tell you why in a post or two coming soon.

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Nan Ross, Owner of Corporate Cosmo

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Tweets and Greets on Hootsuite

By on March 6, 2010 in Blogging, facebook, General Interest, LinkedIn, twitter

Thanks to Terry Crosby I figured out how to engage particular groups that I want to follow in list fashion on HootSuite. I can create a list – or a column as it is known on HoostSuite – using keyword phrases under the Keyword Tracking option. Then I can pick a person within the column to both follow and tweet a message to on the Hootsuite interface. It gives the option to make my choice of the Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn platforms to send the tweet simultaneously. Take a look at Terry’s tutorial for a quick lesson.

As for today’s activity in particular, I’m looking up other bloggers and social media experts who are attending Blogging While Brown in the Nation’s Capital this summer. My objective of course is to take the initiative in my real world networking by connecting virtually and touching base with potential new friends and business associates a few months ahead of time.

Also discovered today that the regular Twitter account allows you to create lists as well. The Blogging While Brown site has a list of attendees so I just followed the entire list (By the way why aren’t you on there already?) and now I’m following up with particular greetings to each of them.

So I encourage you to create a HoostSuite account today and spend some time learning the fundamentals. Create a few columns using keywords relevant to your blogging and social networking. Then work your columns in tandem with your favorite Twitter fan page lists and watch your contacts blossom.

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Blogging While Brown Review – Cheryl Contee and Naoko McCracken

By on July 3, 2009 in Blogging, Politics, twitter, WordPress Tips

Cheryl Contee a.k.a. Jill Tubman of Jack & Jill Politics and Naoko McCracken a WordPress rep gave a joint panel on “Using the Latest Tech Tools To Grow Your Blog”. I’ll start with Cheryl’s piece first.

Cheryl emphasized the point that when you have made the decision to convert from one blog platform to another (ex: Blogger to WordPress) your conversion activities are critical. Research and archiving are important. You have to research the particular conversion procedures on your current blogging platform. Archiving your existing posts and comments are important. Once they had done their homework and were ready to make the platform switch Cheryl and her blogging partner Baratunde Thurston dedicated a long weekend to the entire conversion process.

Jack and Jill also participated in the Democratic National Convention in 2008. The tools they used were laptop, iPhone, flip cam and mobile internet. They used a Nokia 965 to do live web streaming via Qik and they got lots of good video and man on the street coverage via bus riding and walking the streets.

At Inauguration 2009 they did a lot of WordPress blogging on the iPhone. While in Washington D.C. they walked around the city and rode the Metro to take in the scene.

They also had the opportunity to cover the G20 Summit in London this year. They carried lap top, iPhone, and flip cams as their key hardware systems. The team covered events at Heathrow Airport and they got around by walking, and riding in the Tube.

Can you say Twitter? So that’s what microblogging is. The Jack and Jill team used their phones for mobil microblogging. In fact if you want to keep up with Cheryl and Baratunde you can tweet them at @ch3ryl, @baratunde and follow their adventures around the globe. Cheryl and others at the conference were my reason for finally “getting it” about Twitter and I finally created an account.

Finally Cheryl introduced us to Disqus a cool WordPress plugin that lets you organize comments. Commenters can get to know each other as a community. You can also add features such as Likes, Replies, ties to email, Twitter, Facebook etc.

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Naoko’s presentation included some of the differences in the two versions of WordPress. The .org platform is open source. The .com platform is the one you want to use for hosted blog service.

Naoko also shared some interesting links with us. This one shows some of the heavy hitters who use WordPress for their sites. This link shows how to apply WordPress for iPhone applications.

If you developers weren’t already aware, you can publish posts via email on WordPress. Other variations of WordPress include WordPress MU which allows multiuser blogging and BuddyPress which helps you build social networks. An example given was flokka.

I really learned a lot from this presentation and got a lot from Cheryl and Naoko’s experience. You may never use all of these tools but you’re bound to find something that you can apply to your site immediately so be sure to save these links to your blog site favorites folder and review them from time. Whenever the inspiration hits you to try something new and take your blogging to the next level, you’ll have this great trove at your disposal.

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Blogging While Brown Conference Review – Milt Haynes

By on June 24, 2009 in Blogging, twitter, YouTube

Blogging While Brown was a true blast. I got to meet a bunch of people face to face for the first time. Some were facebook friends. Others I had touched base with on the phone before and finally put voice to face. It was also a pleasure to make lots of new friends including many bloggers I hadn’t heard of before.

I missed the key thing that I really wanted, the beginning blogger boot camp, on Friday June 19th. That was the hands on, how to do everything blogging workshop. Things didn’t work out logistically or financially to fit that in this time but I’m making it a priority for next year.

There are lots of things that were a part of the regular conference on Saturday that stood out to me. I took in so much over the course of the day that I’m going to have to share just a little with you day by day as I continue to reflect and review my notes. Today I’ll tell you about Milt Haynes’ presentation, “The Competent Blogger”.

Milt covered a wide ranging variety of tools we can put to use in our blogging repertoire. He talked about Pod casting for iTunes and YouTube. He gave us some features of the Black’s Gone Geek web site including the Careers In IT page (check it out). Blacks Gone Geek will begin doing research on social media careers. The site also has an Online Community Start Up Guide. As well, Milt recommended that we also have a regular website to match up with our blogs.

There are a few other interesting concepts he introduced as helpful tools for blogging. He touched on the e-mail blast. If you get a lot of those unsolicited emails that you have to unsubscribe from, that’s an example of an email blast. Of course you also receive them from groups that you do want to stay informed of. Another tool is MindMeister, a site which allows you to do online mindmapping. You can also collaborate with others and share your mindmaps. HootSuite gives metrics for who’s twittering you. It’s billed as the ultimate twitter tool suite.

You can also generate reports of your blogging activity. MicroSoft Office Live and Google Analytics are prominent options.

A couple of good traffic tracking tools are Hubspot and Inbound Marketing, two sites that help your site get more traffic and more notice. Inbound Marketing also has what’s called “Inbound Marketing University” which includes a certification exam and a webinar from their marketing guru Mike Volpe.

Milt gave us a lot to chew on and I could spend an entire week just checking on his tips and seeing where they could lead me. I bet you could too so go ahead and check into some of these knowledge nuggets and I’ll share more conference gold with you tomorrow.

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Blogging While Brown 2009 Reception

By on June 19, 2009 in Blogging, facebook, twitter

Tonight we had an outstanding reception for Blogging While Brown and many of my favorite actionists were on the scene for the second annual conference for bloggers of color. Man I love the energy and enthusiasm of this group! We had an awesome kickoff and I met lots of bloggers and facebook friends who blog that I’ve read or facebooked at some point. Shawn Williams of the “Dallas South Blog” and Ananda Leeke creator of “Author Ananda Leeke’s Blog” are no longer mysterious blog presences. Cheryl Contee of “Jack and Jill Politics” and our organizer Gina McCauley founder of “What About Our Daughters” are no longer just names.They are new friends now. I’ll fill you in on some newbies who are cool people and up and coming bloggers as well.

I’ll say it again, the energy was fantastic. We ate, talked together and got to know one another. We even had a spades tournament tonight. All the important relationship building necessary for a great meetup over the next day and the follow through after this weekend began in earnest this great evening.

Can’t wait until the serious sharing happens over the course of the day Saturday. I’m expecting great things of myself and my compatriots. I’ll share the innovative thoughts and comments as often as I can this weekend here, on facebook and twitter. If you’re not here, you’re missing out on the inspiration. I’ll keep you posted of course (smile) and do my part to help inspire you to save up your pennies for next year. Until then stay tuned to MartyBLOGs at Blogging While Brown 2009 and visit these and other bloggers’ links as I post them. More to come. Ciao.

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More About Those Online and Offline Laid Off Camps

By on May 30, 2009 in Blogging, Business, facebook, Faith, LinkedIn, NING, Society, twitter, XING

Have you been following the news about various groups around the country hosting laid off or out of work camps? These are get togethers for people who have lost their jobs and are trying to get back into the job market. One of my LinkedIn groups, Out of Work Chicago, is mentioned in this Wall Street Journal post. I’ll be connecting with them when I get settled in our new digs.

This is the social networking version of a “meetup” which is common amongst us bloggers who want to meet the faces behind the posts. The economic situation has created a similar physical networking trend branched off of the virtual social networks for the jobless.

If the current crisis resembles you check out the nearest church or civic club hosting an event close to you. And of course, if you’re in a city large enough, there’s probably at least one social networking group of this type so search your LinkedIn, facebook, XING, NING and twitter groups for details relevant to your situation.

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