(hint: you'll need a barcode scanner app that can read QR codes... i recommend Mobiletag.)

I've been a fan of Tamar Weinberg for quite a while now. I enjoy reading her blog, tweets, facebook updates, and the little bit of what I've been able to read thus far from her new book, The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web. She is an expert in every sense of the word, and is a big part of the reason why I now have a "Karl Ribas Consulting" fan-page on Facebook. Let me explain.

In our industry, "friend requests" and "follows" from colleagues, conference buds, or even from people you've never heard of before but share the same job description as is quite common. I've learned to accept this. I understand that building up social profiles is a big part of what it is we do for ourselves and our clients, and therefore I play ball. However, I've always felt that Facebook was a different animal altogether.

In a recent blog post, Tamar touched on a topic that was, coincidently, something I too had been dealing with for quite some time - handling work-related friend requests on Facebook. Tamar writes:

"One of the questions I get asked very often is how employees are supposed to cope with incoming friend requests from their clients, bosses, and individuals they have a working relationship with through their place of employ. While there's no clearly defined rule (it's a question of personal preference), I usually urge the person not to be resentful or offended if the relationship gets ported over to a professional network or other public space (such as a Facebook Fan page)."

For me personally, Facebook isn't a social media platform where I feel that numbers even matter - at least when it comes to personal pages. I would much rather have a smaller, more relevant list of friends that know me, interact with me on regular basis, and understand my need for privacy, than to have my personal life syndicated to individuals that don't, or otherwise became my friend to learn and share work-related information. My problem, up until a few days ago, was determining where to draw the line. I didn't want to snub my fellow marketers by ignoring their friend requests, but at the same time I knew my personal Facebook page was not the appropriate medium to share "work-related" updates. This is where the Fan Page comes in.

As Tamar outlined in her post, I created a Facebook Fan Page for the following reasons:

1. A Fan Page allows me to engage my business contacts on a professional level, thereby providing website design and marketing related tips, tricks, ideas, and updates, without annoying my family and friends.

2. A Fan Page provides business contacts with a way to connect with me through Facebook that doesn't otherwise subject them to updates regarding my personal life, such as which video games I'm playing, TV shows I'm watching, movies I'm renting, food I'm cooking, or restaurants I'm dining out at. These contacts are only interested in my life as it pertains to work and through a Fan Page they can get that information, and only it.

3. A Fan Page allows me the freedom of being both personal and professional on Facebook. I am no longer having to second guess my updates wondering if they were too personal, or too business related for my stream.

With that being said, if you'd like to connect with me on Facebook and engage in some true geek-speak from a website design and marketing point-of-view, then I certainly encourage you to check out my new business Fan Page, and become a fan today.

Happy 2010 everyone! I hope you all are off to a great new year.

A couple of weeks ago while I was attending SES Chicago, I did a little shopping at the conference book store and had picked up a few quick reads. In addition to purchasing some of the more popular titles written by our industry's leaders, I also bought a few books pertaining to social media marketing - specifically ones on marketing with Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. With my recent surge in downtime due to vacation and holiday hours away from work, I decided that now was a great time to dive in.

I just wrapped up a quick little read titled "Twitter: Tips, Tricks, and Tweets" by author Paul McFedries, and thought I'd share my thoughts on it. First off, I'd like start by saying that I am an avid Twitter user and have been Twittering since June 2008. I am very familiar with the Twitter platform and the countless number of applications that are available and can assist with improving one's experience. I purchased this guide not because I needed a crash course on the subject, but rather for two other reasons - I value learning other points of views on such topics and I'm a firm believer that no matter how experienced a marketer is one can always find a "gold nugget" if they mine in the right places.

One excerpt from the book highlights what we marketers believe to be true:

"If Twitter can influence our political opinions, could it also determine what we buy? Some of the world's biggest brands hope so, and many have jumped into Twitterland with both feet. Some use the service for product announcements, while others post responses to questions and complaints from customers; some even hosts contests to win free products and services."

So, did I find a gold nugget? Yeah... I found value in this read. Among other things I learned that Twitter accounts can be downloaded via a hidden XML feed and imported into excel for evaluation. I also read about all the exciting things that twitter bots are capable of, that there is an entire directory of twitter text commands for mobile use, and that apps such as TweetBeep and TweetVolume can be leveraged for competitive analysis and brand management.

This book was an easy read and written in away that made learning the many social quirks of using Twitter easy to understand. Without a doubt, I am recommending this book as a beginners guide to using Twitter for those individuals and companies looking to start using twitter. However, at the same time, I certainly wouldn't discourage veteran twitter users from picking up a copy either.

Labels: book-reviews

I've been using Google Voice for a few months now, and for the most part I am fairly pleased with the service.

Google Voice, for those that may not know, provides users with a phone number (new, free, and your choice) that you can use to tie in all of your phones. This means that you can give out one number to family, clients, and friends, and depending on your settings you could have all calls associated with that number transferred directly to your cell, office, home or any other phone you might own. In addition, Google voice offers some pretty neat features such as a digital voicemail box and the ability to transcribe voicemails to text and email.

As cool as the service is though; I do have 5 suggestions that I'd like to share in which I believe would make the service better.

Day-Parting Features
I think it would be really great if Google Voice had day-parting features. A day-parting feature would allow users the ability to outline basic rules for how they would like Google to handle their calls. For example, while I am home for most nights and weekends, I do put in 40+ hours of work a week at the office. It would be great if I could program Google Voice so that during those "work hours" it transfers all calls associated with my number to my "work phone". Additionally, I'd want Google to transfer calls to my cell, home phone, and my voicemail during other specific day and time slots. How awesome would that be!

Caller ID Rules
I may be on an island with this idea, but I think it would be fantastic if I could create individual rules for how Google is to handle calls from specific numbers. For example, I'd like to have all calls from those individuals on my "A" list (close friends and family) to be transferred directly to my cell. Meanwhile, I'd like to have all calls from those individuals on my "B" list (my bosses, co-workers, and clients – jokes) to be transferred directly to my digital voicemail. Lastly, I'd like to have all calls from those pesky people in my life who can't seem to take a hint to be transferred nowhere - let it ring on their end, and do not notify me of any missed calls.

Usage Analytics
I'd like to preface this idea by letting you all know that I am a person that is really big into tracking and analytics. With that said, I think it would be great if Google Voice featured a reporting section that shared basic usage stats such as the total number of calls your Google number has received, a breakdown of how those calls were transferred throughout your numbers, the average call time, and other basic stats.

Multiple Voicemail Messages
While this is a feature that is said to already be included with the Google Voice service, I have yet to discover exactly how to utilize it. In any event, I'd like to be able to create multiple voicemail messages that can be applied to specific groups of callers. For example, I'd like a custom message that only my friends would hear. In addition, I'd also like one created for my family, one for my clients, and one for others. I should probably consult a technician or a help file, but in the event this isn't a feature, it definitely should be.

Voice Translation
While this feature is very cool in theory, I believe that it still needs a little work as many of the voice messages that were transcribed for me were in fact way off. I originally thought this was a one time issue or a mumbling caller issue, but it seems to happen quite a bit.

Labels: tools