K’necht Delivers: Parenting & Social Media

I’ve been teaching people of all ages for over 30 years one subject or another. My early days as a technology instructor started by running software classes (Lotus, WordPrefect, desktop publishing) in the late 80s. Since then I’ve taught everything from web development, to SEO, web analytics and Social Media Marketing. My training background evolved to where I’m now an on-line instructor for the University of San Francisco’s Online Internet Marketing program and head up the USF Advanced Digital Analytics course.
With this experience I’ve had countless opportunities to teach and run workshops both online and in-person. When deciding if on-line workshops class are better for you or organization versus in-person training there are a few things to consider before making your decision.

Step 1: Which Types of Corporate Training are Right for Your Organization

When it comes training or workshops there are basically two types: public classroom and private. Each comes with its own pros and cons.

Public Classroom Training

Public classroom training/workshops generally offer the lowest cost. You simply register, pay your money, and show up. You don’t need to worry about reserving space for hosting the training course or acquiring the necessary equipment (PCs, projectors desks, etc.), it’s provided by the training company.
For corporations on tight budgets this might seem like the best deal. However, if you decided to attend a public training/workshop in person, there might travel costs associated with it. Don’t forget to include travel, accommodation and meal costs when factoring your purchasing decision. Also consider how many people from your organization are registering for the course or workshop. If you are sending 3-5 people the odds are you might have been able to pay for a private version of course for the same money.
If you’re thinking that you’ll only send 1 person and they’ll come back and educate the team, think again! The odds are the person you sent isn’t a qualified instructor. Their ability to complete a 100% knowledge transfer is highly unlikely and they can easily forget something critical. Plus you’re paying them twice (first to attend and then to teach).

Private Training/Workshops

Private training sessions and workshops are generally ideal for groups of 3 or more people. Typically a public one day workshop costs between $900 – $2,000 to attend depending on the subject plus travel time and costs (total cost for 3 people $6,000 – $9,000). Alternatively, the cost to bring in-house an instructor to run the class on your premises is $3,000 – $10,000 per day including travel. This represents a considerable savings especially if you have a group of 8-10 people who require training.
Another bonus of private training is many training organizations offer either minor or full customization of their material. This means that they can personalize the agenda to meet the exact needs of your organization furthering increasing the ROI of this training.

Step 2: Deciding Between In-Person vs. Remote Training

Once you’ve determine whether a public or private course is right for you, the next decision is to attend remotely or in-person.

Benefits of In-Person Training

As an instructor I prefer in-person training. From the instructor’s point of view, it allows me to read the body language of the students and adjust my teaching style on the fly to ensure that they are fully engaged. When conducting workshops, I get to ease drop on conversations in group assignment and provide unsolicited guidance. The mere physical presence of an instructor in the room also minimizes attendee’s desire/need to tune out and focus on their smart-phone. From participant perspective, employers are less likely to pull you out of an in-person training session. If they do, the odds are it’s something extremely important. If this is a public course, you also get the chance to mingle and meet others with a similar interest/need which allows for networking and building of business relationships which isn’t easily done when attending remote training.

Benefits of On-line Training

K’necht delivers: Remote Lecture

The reality of today’s workplace is time often doesn’t allow for employees to take an entire day off plus upwards of a day for travel to attend training classes. This is where on-line training comes in handy.
With on-line training you can have the benefit of a live instructor but neither party has to travel. This does directly translate into dollar savings (no travel costs) and frequently these lectures are broken into smaller segments running less than 2 hours and often 1 hour or less. As an on-line instructor I’ve notice any time an on-line lecture goes beyond 45 minutes I start losing my students’ attention.
The negative side to on-line training must be carefully balanced against its lower cost. These include:

• Students muting their connection and working on other tasks (not giving the class their full attention)
•  Frequent interruptions from others in the organization
• A longer overall duration for the material (a 7 hour course can be covered in 1 day on-site but may take 7-10 days of smaller 1 hour lectures)
• Less focused students as it’s hard to concentrate just on slides on a screen or a talking head

Which Training Option is best?

The reality is there is no clear winner. For someone seeking training or an organization looking to get their staff trained, you need to balance the cost savings of remote training versus attending a training course in person. It’s perhaps why many organization prefer to bring in a trainer for their staff. This lowers travel costs (only 1 person traveling) plus multiple people can be trained all at the same time and the material can be customized for the organization. Here at DAM, we offer a wide variety of private training course and workshops both remotely and on premise each of which can be customized to our clients exact needs.

The post Online vs. In-Person Training & Workshops appeared first on Digital Always Media Inc..

The evolution of the digital marketing sector has been propelled by free information.

Digital Always Media partner Alan K’necht uploaded his April Pubcon presentation, “Measuring Success: Up the Down Escalator” to SlideShare last Tuesday.

The DAM team started promoting the presentation through social media applications minutes after Alan’s slide-deck was posted. A bunch of our friends in the industry shared, retweeted, blogged about, or otherwise noted it in their blog posts. 

It quickly became a top SlideShare download. It was then featured on SlideShare’s Facebook page and LinkedIn feed. That’s a long way for a quickly posted and promoted presentation to go in a few days.

Here’s a copy of Alan’s presentation. He is always available to deliver it in person.

The post Measuring the Success of a Well Posted Presentation appeared first on Digital Always Media Inc..

Although it’s a long way from production and distribution, Google Smartwatch is a clear indicator of where Google is going when it comes to hardware. Moving towards hardware that can easily become integral to a persons’ day-to-day life is pretty ingenious, I have to admit, especially when you read reviews of how Google Glass is changing peoples’ lives. Robert Scoble wrote a rave review of the Google Glass recently, vowing to “…never live a day of my life from now on without it (or one from a competitor). It’s that significant.” And to be fair, it boasts an impressive list of capabilities:

• Time at a glance
• Take photos (prompted by voice command)
• Hands-free video recording (prompted by voice command)
• Sharing video input through Google Hangouts
• Photos and videos are instantly uploaded to your G+ profile
• Get directions via the screen
• Send voice messages
• Send text messages (prompted by voice command)
• Googling information through verbal questions
• Translating foreign languages
• Confirming flight arrivals and departures
• Unlike most Google products, its apps are AD FREE

With all these abilities, Google Glass’ intrinsic benefits are clear. Scoble’s review noted how much easier it is to be social when wearing Google Glass, as you’re not constantly looking down at a device. Combine these abilities with a smartwatch’s processing capabilities, and you will probably be unstoppable. But is it worth it?

One concern that wearable smart devices brings up is the degradation of essential skills. Similar to how our reliance on auto-correct and calculators has impacted our spelling and math abilities, how can we be sure integrating wearable devices won’t degrade our other skills? Why would you bother to learn a language if Google Glass will constantly provide you with a translation? Why develop a sense of direction if Google Glass will do it for you? It’s less of concern when you’re wearing the device, but how will people cope when they can’t? Similar to watching a teen cope without their devices, it’s akin to pulling a fish from water, just to see if it will breathe.

Another is cost: is it worth $500+? Scoble points out that a lower price point is more strategic, which is true. If it’s affordable, people will buy it in droves. However, restricting access through price point can also increase exclusivity and drive demand. Either way, it’ll be a success. It will depend on Google’s strategy, and that’s still very much up in the air.

What about security and privacy concerns? Wearing a device with a microphone and camera could easily breach personal privacy and, seeing as it’s already been hacked and rooted, it’s a possibility. Scoble pointed out that they can be used everywhere, even in the washroom (photo courtesy of Scoble himself):

Google’s current position is that the glasses are ‘still a work in progress’, but are given to professionals to help discover these bugs (and more importantly, write Apps for Glass). There is currently no PIN to protect Glass when it’s not being used, providing a perfect hacking opportunity.

Personally, I’m curious about Glass. I’d like to try it, but I’m not sure I’d want to own one, or even wear it for that long. I like the idea of Glass, but I like my privacy more. Bottom line, it’s up to the user to accept the responsibility and implications of Glass: it’s not Google’s problem if your privacy is compromised, no more than it would be McDonald’s fault for your weight gain if you ate 40 Big Macs in a row. Like anything else, if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, you should probably do it. But it’s up to you, not me and certainly not Google, where to draw that line.

The post Gearing Up But Dumbing Down appeared first on Digital Always Media Inc..

Featuring: Dave Davies, David Harry, Jim Hedger, Michelle Stintson Ross, and Dan Theis

Next Thursday, May 16 at 3:30pm, we’re going to do our first open Google Plus Hangout session on the new roles played by search engine optimization specialists in the digital marketing environment. Social media communities and rapid adoption and innovation of smart phones and tablets have fundamentally changed the search environment.  Today’s SEO is far different from what was standard technique five years ago.

This G+SEO Hangout will put five search and social media marketers together to discuss how SEOs work and focus have changed in 2013.

Putting this session together has required a large team. Debbie Horovitch of The Sparkle Agency will be producing the Google Plus Hangout. David Harry of Verve Developments is doing all pre and post production video work.

The post SEO Hangout 1 – Integrated SEO 2013 appeared first on Digital Always Media Inc..

Cutts wrote “I wouldn’t expect links from press release web sites to benefit your rankings…”, in response to a vague question about the pagerank value of a link in a press release. It was a one-off sentence that apparently had greater implications than it should have. I expect Cutts was really saying, “Don’t waste your time and money on bogus press releases to gain stronger Google rankings”.

For the most part, that’s good advice. People have spammed search results using press releases for years. The Penguin updates were designed to destroy poor quality links and degrade the ranking of pages profiting from them.

Tan decided to challenge Cutts’ statement wrong by making Cutts’ Gadgets, Google, and SEO Blog rank for the nonsense keyword, “leasreepressmm”. He wrote a press release refuting Cutts’ claim that links in press releases had no value. He tried to prove his point by using a non-existent word twice as anchor text with the link directed to Matt Cutts’ Blog. The blog is ranking on the first page of results for the word, “leasreepressmm”, and Google does recognize the combination of letters enough to return results for it. Similar results under actual keywords are almost certainly unachievable unless, of course, your press release represents something that is actually useful, timely, of note, or otherwise potentially important to Google users or to Google’s search results.

Here’s the simplest explanation about the value of links you’ll ever read, at least until a simpler one is written. Everything else is pretty much superfluous.

If a link makes sense on a page and provides a useful path for users it has great and immediate value. If it is only kinda sorta useful but worthwhile following for some users, the link has less value but is still sorta useful and worthwhile. If the link is placed on a page listing similar links to other domains that do not relate to each other, even through the content on or context of the source page, those links are valueless and likely harmful to the source-site/domain’s reputation. If you can’t think of a reason beyond spiders to place a link, don’t place it.

Can a link in a press release be of value? Of course it can. Can two links to the same domain in a press release deliver double or even equal value as just one? Probably not.

The post Link Values Simplified appeared first on Digital Always Media Inc..

Altruistic Applications

After the blasts, most runners were separated from their runner-bags and cell phones. Because the course was diverted, most people were not reunited with their possessions until a few days later. Understandably, panic spread as calls and messages from friends and family went unanswered. As a method of helping both competitors and their families, a Google People Finder application was enabled to re-connect families and provide the public information.

Broken into two sections, it was the most efficient method of ensuring a runner’s safety while the mobile phone network was overloaded. The Google People Finder was created after the Haiti earthquake in 2010 to reunite families and friends after disasters through the Internet.

As city transit was suspended, most runners were stuck in a foreign city without their wallets, cell-phones, or hotel keys. As the number of displaced runners mounted many Bostonians opened their homes to people who needed help. Thousands of residents added their names and contact information to online lists to offer assistance to complete strangers:

Through social media, this list and People Finder helps reunite and reassure families efficiently, but more importantly demonstrates the goodwill and decency of people especially in a time of crisis.

Social Media is now a Newsfeed

Until the recently no one questioned the process of how we got our news. For centuries, the public has relied on the media for information, pictures, and explanations of significant events around the world. It’s only in the last eight years that it has begun to change. For the first time, the concept of news-flow has been reversed; the people are now becoming the source of news and information, and the media frequently relies on social media to break stories.

It isn’t a perfect system. When Brown University student Sunil Tripathi went missing on March 16, he was falsely identified as the Boston bomber and instantly vilified, especially on news aggregates Reddit and 4Chan. A five-state manhunt ensued which was only suspended when the Tsarnaev brothers were properly identified. The popularity of the Internet has caused a polar shift for traditional media. The loss of significant advertising budgets, coupled with the competition of the Internet’s instantaneous nature has changed the scope how journalism is practiced. Fact checking seems to have gone by the wayside, often with disastrous results. Fox News even misidentified actress Zooey Deschanel as one of the suspects, presumably through a spell-check error.

While Deschanel eventually received an apology, Tripathi was not as lucky. Sadly, his body was recovered a week later. While the obvious mistakes were rectified as they hit the social networks, it’s more indicative of a burgeoning lack of accuracy in reported news, news outlets seem to favour speedy reporting rather than accuracy.

Crowdsourcing Justice

With an estimated 500,000 spectators, there was no shortage of pictures and video before the detonations. The Boston police appealed to the public to provide any images and video they had taken, and it proved to help identify the Tsarnaev brothers more quickly. Facebook user and marathon participant David Gren’s hi-res photo helped identify Dzhokhar better than official images or security footage could. When the manhunt extended into Watertown, police used social media to warn residents to stay inside. Residents in turn used social media to share with the public was happening in Watertown.

It was also an example of how social media benefits communities: by utilizing the most effective method of communicating with its public, Boston police were able to ensure residents were safe while they executed ground searches for the remaining suspect.

Despite the tragedy, the last few weeks have shown shining examples of humanity in a time of crisis. The citizens of Boston, through the use of technology, clearly demonstrated the better aspects of our society through their actions. Establishing a Google People Finder and opening their homes to strangers gave friends and relatives peace of mind about competitors’ safety. Crowdsourcing the news gave the world a new perspective on the aftermath of the explosions. Using social media to gather images and disseminate information became the quickest way to end the situation safely. But more importantly, it marked a shift in how technology shapes how society faces these situations, no longer individuals, but together.

The post Technology Changes the Chaos of Tragedy appeared first on Digital Always Media Inc..

Recently the weekly Twitter-Chat I co-host, #SocialChat, started trending on Twitter. While this made myself and co-host Michelle Stinson-Ross happy, we were surprised by one of the consequences.

We knew #SocialChat had become very popular when various people started leveraging the #SocialChat HashTag to reach our audience with regular tweets and not just during our weekly chat. This initially caught us us by surprise but we quickly realized it was a good thing.

Next came sponsored tweets on the HashTag. While being a bit annoying to our chat regulars, it’s another sign that your TwitterChat has arrived as brands begin targettng your audience. Of course we wish we could get a small percentage of the fee Twitter charges these companies for the content we generate, but then again we’re not paying Twitter for the platform.

It gets to be too much when various people start blindly tweeting on any trending HashTag and often using multiple HashTags that had nothing in common to promote something completely unrelated to the tags being used. This started happening this week on the #SocialChat HashTag.

And there were more:

This last tweet, took you to a questionable picture of a Instagram screen grab that was posted on Twitter. Not pornographic but leaving you with the question why would you want someone want to share it, let alone anyone want to see it. Michelle and I both reported this one to Twitter as spam.

It was a good thing these spammy posts happened at the end of the chat. If they had occurred during the chat, all the collective particpants would have submitted these accounts to Twitter as Spammers. With that many reports, odds are that Twitter would have suspended the accounts thus rendering them useless. This risk is something to consider if you plan on jumping on a trending HashTag without researching what that tag is all about. Your “so-called” clever social marketing plan might just get you or your client kicked off Twitter.

If you’re smart and want to take advantage of a trending HashTag like #SocialChat, do your homework and create this sort of tweet:

The link on the other end of this tweet  contained content which was appropriate and beneficial for the #SocialChat audience. And despite this person never ever having participated in SocialChat, he did provide something of value and interest and easily avoided being called a Twitter Spammer.

The lesson here for online communities is the same as for real life communities. You don’t interrupt the conversation with irrelevant and non-related information. If you do, people will think your a fool or worse, completely irrelevant and useless, and you’ll be banned from all parties that they can influence.

The post HashTag Attacks (HashTagBombs) appeared first on Digital Always Media Inc..

On April 23, 2005 the soon-to-be multimillionaire Karim uploaded the very first YouTube video titled, Me at the zoo. In it, he describes how cool it is that San Diego Zoo elephants have really, really, really long trunks. And that’s pretty much all there is to say…

.. except to note that Karim’s dumb video of himself appreciating the elephants is as significant as the first moving picture itself, 1888′s Roundhay Garden Scene. Interestingly, Me at the zoo is weirdly banal, just as the three second Roundhay film is however both are the first of things that absolutely changed the world.

Today, YouTube is the third most visited website after Google and Facebook. It serves over 4 billion videos each day and is among the premier platforms of digital communication. Eight years ago it was three ex-PayPal employees and footage of a pack of packin’ pachyderms.

The post First YouTube Video is 8 Years Old Today appeared first on Digital Always Media Inc..

Given those circumstances, try to imagine how Twitter and Facebook users might have felt seeing preset social media promotions regarding the Boston Marathon in the hours after the bombings.

That nobody expected the Boston Marathon to become a national tragedy when they pre-set their social media messages the Friday before made little difference, it was still insulting to see Tweets and emails from Foursquare to users who had checked in leading to a page asking how the Boston Marathon was for them.

This was a clever preset promotion, something any company like Foursquare would do, until circumstances around the event in their promotion went so horribly bad. In seconds, the clever preset promotion became a thing that could cause sorrow, anger and long term damage to a user’s trust in the Foursquare brand.

The problem wasn’t the preset. The problem was that nobody stopped it from being sent or altered the content of the message. Nobody redirected the promotional URL to something useful. (It is worth noting the CEO of Foursquare, Dennis Crowley, was running in the marathon. He was at the 25th mile point when the first bomb went off.)

A similar thing happened with other brands, many of which were associated with running or charities. Preset social media promotions sent hours after the bombings invited users to join brand positive conversations using the marathon as the point of conversation. While the preset mistakes are not deliberate acts of gracelessness like the Epicurious tweets inviting Bostonians to mourn over bowls of cereal, they are graceless acts of brand neglect.

Common sense says you should know what you’re saying in a public space when you’re saying it. Similarly, even though 100%, 24/7 monitoring of social media is a stretch for any organization, knowing the schedule of preset social promotions has to be the responsibility of SOMEBODY in a large or small business organization. In several instances this week, those somebodies should have taken action to prevent preset acts of social neglect.

The post When Set and Forget Equals Social Neglect appeared first on Digital Always Media Inc..

In this installment, we’ll look at the easiest way to establish Authorship in Google Plus, and explain why it’s in your company’s best interest to establish Authorship as soon as possible.

What is Authorship?

Authorship is the process of linking an author’s image and their Google Plus profile to an article they’ve written. It appears when the article or articles appear in search results, and is becoming one of the best ways to establish personal brands while promoting content.

As a 2009 Neilson study shows, people are less sceptical of content when it comes from a known source, like a friend. The study shows that while people have some trust in Search Engine Results (41%), they trust the recommendations of a friend 90% of the time – that’s more than branded websites (70%), TV (62%) or Brand Sponsorships (64%). With the increasing amount of spun content and spamming, users are more sceptical than ever, and Authorship is another tactic in increasing that trust and your reach.

WhyIt Matters:

There’s been an increasing amount of interest in Authorship, which makes establishing YOUR authorship a priority. As Authorship continues to grow, the competition to be recognized by the search engines will as well. It’s in your best interest that you are established before your competition, for several reasons:

Establishing yourself as someone who provides fresh, quality content not only benefits your sites’ success, but also allows users to discover more of your work and share it.

As search rankings increasingly move towards valuing quality content, it’s becoming more important than ever to ensure you are producing content that is relevant and valuable to users. ‘Spinning’ material will no longer cut it. Keeping the needs of users in mind is key; give them content that is genuine and to their benefit. That content will often be shared organically.

This process of sharing your work provides organic link building to both you and your organization’s site.

Authorship also provides the opportunity for users to discover more of your content. By clicking the author’s name, it will bring the user to the author’s Google Plus page, and displays links to other material. This creates more inbound links to those sites in an entirely non-spammy way – exactly what Google wants in the first place.

Increasing your following on Google Plus increases your reach, Sphere of Influence and Ripples.

If people like your content, they are more likely to follow you, which is beneficial in several ways. Increasing the people who follow you increases the chances that their circles will be exposed to your material and increases your overall reach. Having a large number of followers who trust your opinions gives you a greater sphere of influence over others. Having larger spheres of influence will also be reflected in your Ripples, which can be another way for new people to discover both you and your organization.

How to Authenticate your content:

I feel this is the easiest way to authenticate content through G+, as it very straightforward; its lack of coding requirements makes it easy for writers to authenticate their content without having coding experience. Both the website and your profile should be prepped; providing information on both sides makes a link easier and quicker to find.

Prepping your Google Plus Profile

1. Your profile picture should be a clear head shot
2. Set your Profile Visibility to Public. This can be found in the About section. Authorship will not work unless your profile is visible, though you will still be able to filter content to the appropriate people through the Circles function.
3. Verify your email address in the about section. You will be able to tell if it’s verified by a small checkmark icon to the direct right site – otherwise, you’ll find a ‘verify’ link. Click on it and follow the prompts.

Or…

Go to https://plus.google.com/authorship and verify your profile through your email. Simply enter your email address in the given field to link the content to your site. This is the easiest way to verify info, especially for those not well versed in coding.

Prepping your Content

1. Make sure there’s a clear photo of you, and a byline with your name as it appears on your Google Plus profile.
2. Actually, that’s pretty much it

My Authorship’s not showing up. What Gives?

It can take up to two weeks for Authorship to appear on articles. If, after the fourteen days it’s still not appearing, double-check your settings. If you’re still having issues, you might want to try adding a custom link in your ‘Contributor To’ section of your profile, and clicking on the ‘Add a URL’ button. Enter the address of your article or post, and save. If that still does not work, check the website it was published on.

Considering all the benefits, there’s no logical reason for you to avoid Authorship. It increases consumer trust in the content (and its associated brand), allows you to position you and the organization as an authority in your field, and increases your Sphere of Influence and reputation. As one of the most cost effective tactics in marketing, can you afford not to?

The post Elements of Google Plus – Part Seven: Authorship appeared first on Digital Always Media Inc..