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Tell me about the Flip video and how it can be used as a personal or professional tool on social networks. 

I think this was my favorite Christmas gift! It’s been so fun taking home videos and sending them to the out-of-state grandparents. Real easy for them to watch what that family is up to. Not only that, it’s simple to put videos on Facebook now. A Flip Video camera makes it easy to upload and share videos. The camera comes with its own software so anyone can view what you upload on any platform. It’s small and simple with just a few buttons. I liken it to a digital camera where instead of still photos you take video segments. Each of those segments are treated separately where you can view/delete/upload/share them. It even comes with its own connection to a computer (USB plug). You plug the camera in, a window pops up where you can view or save videos. From there you have choices of how you want to share them such as emailing or uploading to a social media site. The technology is really easy! I borrowed one from a co-workers and tried it at Halloween and was sold ever since. This is a must-have for new parents in my opinion. They are reasonably priced too. The intro video for this blog was taken on my Flip Video camera. The hardest part of the whole process was getting down our lines! Though I have to say our outtakes got us a few laughs. We put the video on YouTube and also put the video in an eblast. So from a business perspective, there are certainly applications.

What is one of your favorite things about working in the social media realm?

Experiencing “aha!” moments from coworkers, friends and clients as they get involved in social networks and figure out how to make their participation work for them. Within the past year, I’ve lived off of the personal & professional stories of first time social network users as they join the conversation.

Coworker Kira now connects with up-and-coming professionals from her alma mater, Michigan State on LinkedIn and can serve as a mentor from NH. A connection I befriended at a conference pitched a new business prospect from joining Twitter. As for Facebook, there are too many stories to keep track of. My favorites revolve around Gen Xers and Baby Boomers as they reconnect with old friends. High school pictures from the eighties have been known to surface–thankfully, I have a little while to go before I get tagged in bad hair day pics. 

Add a story of your own!

What’s the most interesting connection you’ve made on social networks?

There have been many interesting personal and professional connections so far. But for me what is most interesting to look at are how companies use social networks to make connections. I had an “aha” moment on 11/26/08, when I was in the car going to visit relatives for the Thanksgiving holiday. I was checking my Blackberry (I wasn’t driving) and that’s where I saw that there was a bombing in Afghanistan. It was the first time that breaking news was delivered to me via a social medium. The moment that day gave me a couple of reasons to pause. My second more locally relevant example was during the December 2008 Northeast ice storm. PSNH was active on Twitter giving regular updates and latest counts of homes without power. Seeing the numbers go down was encouraging. Even though I didn’t have power for several days it was clear they were making progress. I commented about this yesterday to Martin Murray (senior corporate news representative at PSNH) and he said practically overnight their followers had jumped to 1,600. A month later their follower count is over 1,900. That’s pretty powerful stuff!

Do you have a favorite social media tool to manage information?

I’m a Google Reader obsessive. In the time crunched world that we all live in this is an incredible (and free!) tool to take advantage of. Imagine all your news sources coming to you in one place instead of logging onto different websites every day to get your news fill. All you need is a Google account to get started. Google Reader is an RSS feed aggregator, which means you add, or subscribe, to a website’s RSS or “news” feed (see the familiar looking orange symbol to the right? That’s it.) and your Reader automatically updates all new posts from the feed. The beauty of Google Reader is as you continue to add more RSS feeds from different blogs, news websites, etc. they all update in one place in your Reader account, on one page. There can be different RSS feeds for each section of a website. For example, you could subscribe to the Small Business and then the Technology RSS feeds on The New York Times. No more having to visit your favorite websites individually each day to read new content. No more clogging of your inbox with email updates! Easily keep up with industry & competitor news. You can organize your RSS feeds by folder which is important for keeping personal & work feeds separate. So, for example, I have a folder for design blogs and a folder for financial marketing blogs. I’ll let you guess which one is for work!

My other favorite tool for managing digital content is Delicious. Delicious is a social bookmarking tool. I like to think of it as a traveling “favorites” folder, where you can save blog posts and articles to your Delicious page and access them anywhere, on any computer from the internet.

Google Reader and Delicious are both “social” tools since they allow you to share information you’ve saved with other similar minded people on the web if you choose to do so.

Let me know if you want to talk more on these!

Any privacy concerns with your social network profiles?

Social media sites seem to have it pretty together and offer all sorts of privacy settings for different types of information:  profiles, photos, videos and more. It’s important to be cognizant of what those privacy settings are set to and how to easily change them according to your preferences. Not understanding privacy settings can feed into the misconceptions that cause people to not get involved in social media. For example, there were a couple of people at work and a relative of mine, all parents, who believed that if their son or daughter was on Facebook that everyone could see what they were doing and posting. Once they signed up and went through the experience themselves, they understood it’s all about being smart, being aware and taking advantage of privacy options. They have all now allowed their children on Facebook. When I first signed up for Facebook my entire profile was public until a friend of mine (a Gen Xer) quickly made me aware. Thanks Lyndsay!

Is there ever a time when you’re not connected? I actually had to think twice about this question. I would have to say that Christmas Day is the only day I’m semi-disconnected. I left holiday messages on my social networks the evening before…however, I kept up on emails and messages coming to me through my BlackBerry on Christmas Day. So it’s safe to say you can always get a hold of me!

How do you find the time to update your social network pages?

I think the time commitment is what a lot of people in my generation are concerned about when they start getting involved in social networks. I also think there can be a misperception that social media is all personal. In my case, it’s more professional than personal. Twitter, LinkedIn, and now this blog are professional/work related primarily, so I update those at work when time allows or when deadlines are pressing, but I also can work on these at home. I use Facebook mostly at home. However, since you hooked me up with applications for Twitter and Facebook on my BlackBerry, that has made staying active on my social networks a cinch! Via my phone I can read Twitter and Facebook updates and create posts for each site. It’s very cool and easy. Uploading photos to Facebook from my BlackBerry is so simple too.

Tara’s ? to Meagan: How many email accounts do you have and how do you keep them all straight?

Let’s see…I have five active email accounts. One for work, one for Flickr and any Yahoo related accounts, one for personal use (friends and family), one still connected to my college account, and one older personal account that I keep going because I signed up for email newsletters from companies of interest such as restaurants and shopping websites. Whew! My BlackBerry helps keep them straight. And instead of signing up for email updates from my favorite blogs and clogging up my inbox, I manage them in my Google Reader account (this is a lifesaver). On an average day at work, I have around 10 tabs open at a time to manage social media sites and email updates. To some it’s chaos, to me it’s how I manage my digital life. (more…)

Tara’s ? to Meagan: What was it like to make the crossover from using social media for personal use to business purposes and to what extent are they still connected?

My social network participation went in phases. Solely personal with Facebook in 2004. Professional and job seeking in 2005/2006 with LinkedIn. In early 2008, I started using Twitter for personal and professional outreach (great connecting tool with people you admire in your field-for example, I read Paul Gillin’s book on social media “The New Influencers” when I was job interviewing. Later found him on Twitter and got to connect personally (communication boundaries taken down, another reason why I love social media). Then later on in ‘08 I helped Pannos Winzeler establish a business presence on both Twitter and Facebook. Interacting on Facebook has been the greatest blur to personal and business lines. You need to make a decision on whether you want a profile page to stay purely personal or not. (more…)

Tara’s ? to Meagan: When you talk social media with people what are some of the questions that come up frequently?

What is Twitter? is a question I get most often (Twitter is a micro-blogging site where you leave updates, or tweets, no longer than 140 characters, check my stream out here). I also get asked who has the time to keep up with all these sites. My answer is a little goes a long way. For example, spend a few hours setting up a profile, then determine your interaction time with your pages during the week to what you can manage. LinkedIn? Maybe you only have time to accept connection requests one week, then the next you spend a little time searching out people and professional groups of interest to build your network. Twitter? Don’t let it overwhelm you (believe me, I’ve been there)-avoid the temptation to post just to get something up. Talk when you have something to say and people will appreciate your thoughts. Facebook? This can take days out of your life if you let it, but figure out your focus (personal, professional or mixed) and use your profile in ways so that you enjoy the process of updating when you get the chance. (more…)