Social media is a critical tool for most businesses and non-profits. Here in Maine we have the Social Media FTW conference each fall and this is a clip from 207 where we talk about who should go and what to expect.
Leading up to the 3rd annual Social Media FTW (For the Win) Fall Conference, I had an opportunity to put on my “tech guru” hat one more time and go on 207, the evening news program that runs on our local NBC affiliates here in Maine, and talk about the upcoming conference.
Kathleen Shannon interviewed me about the history of FTW, who was speaking, and who should go.
My big takeaways from the interview were, “that’s a really nice shirt,” and “I should shop at Marshall’s more often.” You can watch the interview at the WCSH 6 website or down below.
Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, ProFounder and Quirky can help you get your business, art show or music tour off the ground.
Let’s say you’ve got a brilliant business idea but the bank doesn’t agree with you. (Or you lack the collateral.) And your family and friends are all tapped out. Does that mean that you should give up and get back to your cubicle?
Thankfully, no. There are plenty of online resources for crowd funding; getting lots of little payments from your community, friends, colleagues and even strangers who like your idea.
In a recent segment I taped for 207, we looked at a number of sites like KickStarter, ProFounder and Quirky where creatives and entrepreneurs could turn to for seed money for their business ideas, music CDs, causes and more.
You can watch the segment below or over at the 207 website. Enjoy!
All of these services allow you to upload a certain amount of your music to the “cloud” so that you can access it from other computers and mobile devices. You can purchase additional space a gig at a time on most of these services.
To be honest, I don’t see the appeal. I can carry about 50G of music on my iPhone or 120G of music on my iPod and never have to worry about whether I’m near a wifi hot spot or whether AT&T is going to deliver my music back to me. Even that’s only a fraction of my music collection, so the idea of spending hundreds of dollars a year to access music I’ve already purchased just doesn’t work for me, and the iPod/iPhone option fits in my pocket.
One service that I really did like was rdio. Besides being able to upload your music you can access their music ($5/mo for web, $10 for web & mobile access). I’ve already discovered a bunch of great music. The interface and product search needs some serious work (genres? release dates?) but everything else is pretty solid. I’ve never been a fan of “renting” music, but I think that after my 7 day trial is up I’ll spend the $10 a month for access to a wide variety of music I wouldn’t have otherwise given a chance.
You can watch the segment over at the 207 website or down below.
Sometimes Google just isn’t the right place to get an answer on the web. Maybe you need an opinion, or the question hasn’t been asked before, or you need the wisdom of crowds.
Because of this, many question and answer sites now populate the web. In a recent segment on 207, Maine’s premiere evening new program, I talked about a few of these answer sites, including Quora, Aardvark and LinkedIn Answers.
All three sites offer unique approaches to getting your questions answered. Quora has a great sense of community, and many well known personalities ask and answer questions there. Aardvark is often a place to get an answer quickly, often in 10 minutes or less.
LinkedIn Answers is a great place to ask business questions of the LinkedIn community or answers questions yourself and establish your expertise there. I’ve often posted business questions such as “what do you charge clients for travel time?” and “how many times will you leave unreturned voicemails before giving up on a sales prospect?” Often, I’ll get dozens of great answers which I then turn into a blog post…giving credit to the best answers, of course.
Since QR Codes are such a visual tool for marketing and communication, it seems only natural that TV would be a good medium to examine and explain them.
So, I found myself of 207 yesterday recording a segment on QR codes; explaining what they are, how to generate a QR code, how to read or scan one, and providing some ideas on how businesses and non-profits might use them.
With QR Codes being so popular in Japan, and smart phone usage exploding in the US, this is definitely something that all small businesses should pay attention to. Whether QR codes are a good fit for your marketing is something you’ll need to decide based on your business and audience, but expect to see a lot more of these 2D barcodes in the near future.
You can watch the video below, or on the 207 website if you’re reading this post in an email.
I really wanted to find a swami hat before this segment taped, but no luck. So, without my Carnac abilities at full, I attempted to predict the future of technology…at least through 2011 on 207 the other night.
What are the best gifts to get the geek in your life?
