I Love Tout

After my terrible experience with a Droid last summer, I didn't think there would ever be anything that could make me end my love affair with my BlackBerry. Then I was introduced to Tout.

What's Tout? A new social video network where you can capture short, 15 second moments of life. Think Twitter meets YouTube, but easy.

Their mobile app rocks. You can record the video and upload it within seconds to the web. The catch? It's only available for the iPhone or Droid.

So, I went to Verizon and upgraded to the iPhone ... yes, all because of this app.

This weekend, I used Tout to capture my friend's ice diving experience in the Adirondacks. I can't begin to tell you how fun it was. I wish they had Tout when I was a street journalist.

Not only was I able to give real time updates on Twitter, but I also now have the videos which I can use on my website, and for when people ask me about what it's like to ice dive in the Adirondacks -- and all without having to sit in an editing room or having to wait till I got home to download video and then upload to YouTube.

This is a field producer's dream!

It's also an amazing and intuitive platform for brands and news organizations.

I'm having a hard time posting them here, but you can watch all of the Touts we did that day on my website post.

I'm Speaking at BlogPaws!

This is so exciting! I'll be speaking at BlogPaws this week. My presentation is Social Media: A beginner's guide to building your influence.

My nerves have the best of me right now, because BlogPaws, a social media conference for pet writers and bloggers, is where I really got hooked on social media. So being able to share my social media knowledge at the event that you could say changed the path of my career, is exciting.

If I'm able to share the slides after the event, I will. At the very least, I think they will be available on the website and I will share that link here.

Ironically, the same weekend, there is a social media gathering in the Adirondacks, #ADK827, which I'm very bummed about missing. But, there is a good chance I will Skype in and ask a question to the one of the panels.

Isn't it so amazing that technology allows you to (sort of) be in two places at once?

Twitter Chat Schedule

I had the wonderful pleasure of giving a talk about social media during the Girlfriends Getaway Bolton Landing, and one of the items I brought up was twitter chats. If it's a topic, there is likely a twitter chat for it. From fitness to government, there is a chat for everyone and every professional.

I told the women in my seminar I would post the link to the twitter chat schedule on my site so they could check out all the amazing discussions going on around the world about topics that interest them and connect with like-minded people. So, here is the schedule -- it's a Google docs file.

No Comment? No Problem. Just "Like" Me, Please.

Everyone who writes a blog, or website wants more comments. The theory behind it is, more comments means more followers, readers and interactions -- and that equals more influence.

But, these days I would rather a reader "like" or "recommend" me, because it gets more eyes on my brand and post. When someone hits the "like" or "recommend" button on your website, it is shared immediately on Facebook.

It shows up in their newsfeed for all their friends to see it. And, it's not just some short to-the-point sentence. People see the person who recommended it, the title of your post, your website and usually the first graph, or whatever meta tags you have added.

If someone leaves a comment the only people who it is visible to are the people who already come to your site, and you. If they "like" or "recommend" you it is instant word-of-mouth marketing among friends, similar to a friend telling someone to go buy a product because they liked it when they tried it.

So, don't get upset if you don't have a bunch of comments, and instead be happy you are "liked."

Croudsourcing Your Personal Brand

Sometimes I laugh when people seem so shocked about the idea of crowdsourcing, because really, you are doing something people have done for ages -- asking someone else's opinion. Just this time, it's on a larger, and more public scale.

No matter what we say, we all worry about what people think, and by crowdsourcing you are able to put something out there and get criticism and complements on a project, idea, logo or whatever, before actually sinking money, or making a strong commitment, into it.

I've crowdsourced for brands before, but this was the first time I crowdsourced something for one of my personal brands. It was a magnet design for The Adirondack Chick, my food, travel and outdoors website.

A little background -- the magnets will be put in gift bags at an event I'm speaking at in the Adirondacks next month. While I'm speaking about social media during the wellness weekend, it seemed more appropriate to add something to the bags that was more closely related to my Adirondack Chick site, since all of the attendees are females, and well, we will be in the Adirondacks.

Here were the three designs I placed on my personal Facebook page and asked friends their opinion:

I was absolutely in love with the first design, but several people pointed out they thought part of the word Adirondack was lost in the center of the flower. After playing around with it and looking at it printed, they were right. So, we went back to the drawing board, aka Photoshop.

We played around with the shadows and other font, but it still wasn't working out as nicely as we planned. Instead, we decided to take a page from my business card, and move the sunflower image - which by the way, was actually grown in the Adirondacks in my garden - to the side and layer just a portion of the wording over it leaving a little white space.

After uploading the second and third one, we got great feedback on the third image, and because we had to make a decision ASAP, because of deadlines, went with it. 

I'm very pleased with the final results, and am really glad I asked for other people's opinions.