Tag Archives: WordPress

New social media integration in popular Web 2.0 tools

Posted on November 3, 2008 | Leave a comment
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There has been a flurry of improvements in integrating social media tools lately, which I wanted to tell you about. I’ve tried all of these new features. They all work great and offer a lot of value to users, particularly if you use more than one Web 2.0 tool.

First, if you use Google Alerts, you’ll see that they now support RSS feeds. No more having to clutter up your email inbox with alerts. Instead, you can read them at your leisure in your favorite RSS feed reader. But the RSS feed integration also makes it possible to integrate Google alerts into any application that can read and display the feeds, such as FriendFeed or your blog. Go to the Manage Your Alerts page to switch your alerts from email to RSS.

Second, LinkedIn profiles now support a lot of Web 2.0 tools, including WordPress and SlideShare. I’ve modified my LinkedIn profile to show the latest posts from this blog, for instance. It’s very easy to do; open your profile and click Add Application. These new features give you a lot of options for showing your professional network what you’re doing and helping them learn more about you.

There were some other applications that I haven’t tried but looked to be helpful if you use LinkedIn as a platform for browsing the Web and managing your Web content. For instance, you can create a reading list via Amazon and then get recommendations on similar books based on what your colleagues are reading. You can also monitor twittering about your organization or other keywords. There’s a lot of new stuff to explore, so if you haven’t dropped by LinkedIn lately, I think it’s worth a return visit.

Finally, FriendFeed has introduced backward integration with Twitter, so you can automatically tweet items from your FriendFeed. Fortunately, you can limit it to any one or more of the services in your FriendFeed, so you can choose not to tweet every Delicious bookmark or Netflix addition. But you can tweet your new blog posts, for example, without any extra effort on your part, which is what I am now doing. See this post to learn more.

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How to get started in the Web 2.0 world

Posted on October 2, 2008 | 1 Comment
Web 2.0

Image by Daniel F. Pigatto via Flickr

I have a colleague who’s interested in bringing some of our organization’s knowledge management efforts into the Web 2.0 world, and she wanted to know how to get started. My advice was, before getting an organizational blog or setting up a wiki or something like that, that she — or ideally everyone on her team — get involved on a personal level. Because I don’t think you can get Web 2.0 — and therefore your organization can’t get Web 2.0 — unless you’re doing it. It’s all about participation and collaboration, and that means you have to dive in.

So here are my suggestions for the steps you should take before you even think about setting up an organizational blog or wiki or anything like that.

1. Start bookmarking. You are soon going to be touring all over the web, and you need a way to remember the best blogs, videos and other stuff you find. You can use your browser’s bookmarks feature, but the Web 2.0 way is to share. So I suggest getting an account on a social bookmarking site. I recommend Delicious because it is so clean and easy to use, but StumbleUpon is also a good option. Both provide toolbar buttons so you can bookmark as you surf. Get in the habit of bookmarking the sites that interest you and tagging them in meaningful ways.

2. Read some blogs. Blogs are the heart of the social web. Somewhere out there, someone is writing about something you’re interested in or working on. Use Google’s blog search to find 5-10 blogs on those subjects and start reading them. Take a look at their blogrolls or the blogs they cite often, and start reading them too. Of course, there’s an upper limit to the number of blogs you can read, but you do want to be keeping up with at least 20, probably more if you can handle it.

RSS feed readers make it a lot easier to keep up with all those blogs, because they deliver new content to you, instead of you having to go out on the web to get it. I like Google Reader myself, but there are many  other choices. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer have RSS feed readers built in, as well. To find the feed, look for the orange RSS feed icon and click on it: RSS feed icon

The most important thing, though, when reading blogs is to comment on what you read and like. Web 2.0 is all about participation, and commenting is one of the main ways to join in. Once you start commenting on blogs in your niche, you’ll meet the bloggers and other commenters and begin getting to know the community that you’re joining.

3. Jump into Twitter. It’s time to up the interaction a notch, and Twitter is a good way to do it. You can start out small and build up as your confidence increases. Find a few people to follow; first check the blogs you’re reading, as bloggers are typically on Twitter too. See who they are following and follow any of those people who seem interesting, as well. There are plenty of Twitter applications that make following tweets easier.

Why are you on Twitter? You will get in the habit of sharing: what you’re working on, what you’re reading, links, whatever. And you will have a ready-made community to ask questions and get feedback from. What’s more, it’s fun.

4. Get a blog. It’s now time to join the conversation. And I don’t mean starting an organizational blog. That should come later. First, you should start your own personal blog where you can write in your own voice. You may choose to write about your work or about some other passion. What matters is that you’re adding your voice to the conversation.

Starting a blog is easy and takes less than five minutes. I recommend WordPress.com as the best free blogging platform, because even if you don’t know the software, it’s easy to learn and get started on right away. If you’re intimidated by having a full-fledged blog or don’t have the time, you can start a “micro-blog” on Tumblr and share interesting links, video, quotes and other short snippets. Remember to keep commenting on other blogs and leave a link to your blog when you do. You’ll soon find that folks who read your comments are stopping by your blog and commenting on what you’re writing.

And before you know it, you’re part of Web 2.0.

If you follow these steps, more or less, and get involved in the online community on a personal level, you’ll probably find it much easier to think of creative and worthwhile ways your organization can get involved.

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Tools I use: Zemanta

Posted on August 21, 2008 | 10 Comments
Image representing Zemanta ltd. as depicted in...Image by Zemanta via CrunchBase

Zemanta is a Firefox extension that works with your blogging platform to make suggestions for your blog posts. I use it with WordPress, and it works really well.

Here is what I like about Zemanta:

Zemanta integrates right into the WordPress blogging page, so all the new features are right there on the same page where I’m writing my post. That makes it very easy to use.

Link suggestions: Zemanta will search for relevant words or phrases in your post and suggest links for them. This is handy if you like to link to Wikipedia and Amazon a lot, which I do. It also finds home page links for organizations and people. However, Zemanta is limited in the sites it suggests links for — this feature shouldn’t substitute for you searching out and including relevant links in your blog post.

Tag suggestions: Zemanta suggests relevant search engine-friendly tags based on the content of your post. I usually end up using half or more of the suggestions. I generally have a few tags I add myself, though. Again, the software can’t replace the writer.

Photo suggestions: Zemanta suggests photos that may be relevant to your post. These suggestions are hit-and-miss. Sometimes I like the randomness, like when I am writing for my personal journal. Often, I don’t find a relevant photo, although with book covers and people, the suggestions work fairly well.

You should always check the license of a photo before you use it. You can get details about a photo by moving your mouse over it. Some photo suggestions are not freely licensed, and some are licensed for noncommercial use only. Respect copyright — don’t use a photo if you’re not sure whether you’re allowed to.

Article suggestions: This feature is the one I use least because I don’t usually find anything relevant in the suggestions. Probably that’s because I’m writing about topics that the rest of the blogosphere doesn’t care about. But I have noticed that the more articles I write using Zemanta, the more my titles are appearing in the article suggestions. That’s nice, because it might lead to more links to my content.

Zemanta does include a “Reblog” icon at the bottom of the post, which you may or may not like. This allows someone else to quote from your post and link to it when they are reading it. I like this feature for most of my blogs, because again, it increases the likelihood that someone will link to me. However, you can remove the icon if you want, which I have done in the posts I write for my company blogs.

Zemanta does slightly slow down the posting experience. That hasn’t bothered me too much. But if you don’t want your posts to become part of the Zemanta “network” of recommended articles, you probably shouldn’t use it.

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What are blogs? And how can we use them? Resources list

Posted on December 17, 2007 | 6 Comments

This is a list of resources I have collected to supplement a presentation I’m giving at work on the subjects: what are blogs, how can our nonprofit blog effectively, and what is Web 2.0 anyway? These resources include many of the examples in the actual presentation as well as supplementary reading materials.

View the presentation

About Web 2.0

Blogging Tools

Nonprofit Blogs

Blogs About Nonprofits Using Web 2.0 Technologies

The Blogosphere (finding blogs of interest)

Into Web 2.0

  • Tumblr – microblogging site
  • Twitter – microblogging site that integrates with text messaging and instant messaging (IM)
  • del.icio.us – Tag, organize and share bookmarks
  • Stumble Upon – review and rate web content
  • Digg – read and vote on web content
  • NGO Post – read and vote on web content discussing social welfare initiatives
  • Flickr – share, view and comment on photos
  • YouTube – share, view and comment on videos
  • SlideShare – share, view and comment on presentations
  • Wikipedia – world-famous collaboratively written encyclopedia built with a wiki
  • Wikibooks – collection of collaboratively written textbooks written using wikis
  • Facebook – well-known social networking site originally focusing on college students
  • LinkedIn – professional networking site
  • Dogster – social networking site for dogs
  • Causes on Facebook – nonprofits using Facebook to promote causes and raise money
  • IntraHealth Informatics’ Flickr site – nonprofits can share interesting photos to generate interest
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I heart delicious…

Posted on May 4, 2007 | Leave a comment

Of all the multitudes of Web 2.0 tools that are popping up every day, I have found Delicious to be the most useful and the most used. The fundamental basis for its usefulness is a simple idea: one set of bookmarks, no matter how many browsers or computers you use. Adding the ability to tag, bundle and share bookmarks just augments this basic usefulness.

My husband thinks del.icio.us is an evil conspiracy to track every single place we visit on the Web for nefarious but ill-defined purposes. If that’s the case, I say, then track away! If you look down the left side of this page, you’ll see all my latest del.icio.us links. This list is a real-time glimpse into what I’m thinking, reading and writing about. I like to take a look at it from time to time to see what patterns are emerging from my own web surfing and link collecting. Ideas emerge from bringing those subconscious connections into consciousness.

Because every tagged set of links has its own RSS feed, del.icio.us just gets more useful and makes my life even easier. When I am working on a project, I can capture my research links in del.icio.us and give them all the same tag. I grab the RSS feed for that tag and plug it into a feed display on a SharePoint team site or on one of my blogs. Now I can share all my links on the project with everyone else who’s interested, without the hassle of copying and pasting URLs or making sure the links list is up-to-date. I just post a good link to del.icio.us with the appropriate tag, and it appears everywhere it needs to be. It all integrates with my regular work and research habits. That’s a fundamentally useful application.

When I am working on a complicated project, I can create tag bundles with different tags corresponding to sections of an outline or project phases or whatever. As I research over days or weeks or months, I just need to post and tag the relevant links that I find. Then, when I’m ready to start compiling my research, it’s all waiting for me, already organized and labeled. del.icio.us is also useful for creating lists of things to do, such as recipes I want to make, articles I want to read or blog about, or a wishlist of things I want to buy.

David Brewster at Management:Simple recently posted about how he can’t keep up with all that’s going on the wide world of Web 2.0. I don’t think we should even try. Sure, dip your toes in every now and then, see if something that catches your eye is actually going to help you do whatever it is you’re trying to do. And once you find something that really does work for you, stick with it. For me, it’s Delicious and WordPress and Gmail. It’s even Amazon’s Wishlist, which I use in ways Amazon probably never intended — it’s a great tool for a reader like me who wants to keep track of what I’m reading, what I’m going to read next and what I’m considering reading later. My husband gets a lot more use out of Flickr than I ever will, but he’s the one who likes to take photos. Backpack, LinkedIn, Technorati and Clipmarks haven’t proved as useful as I thought at first, but the jury’s still out. Digg, Twitter, Facebook… I cruised by and just kept going.

Sure, there’s a lot going on and more coming online every day. You’ll only burn yourself out if you try to be on top of the latest and greatest all the time. Find what’s useful, use it and stick with it. Chances are, you aren’t the only one, and those are the sites and services that will make it beyond any 2.0 “bubble burst.”

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