Twitter and Social Media
Michael | January 25, 2008
A new friend on Twitter, Christine Taylor, or MouseWords as I know her on Twitter (if you are on Twitter you should friend Christine!), recently asked me a few questions after I live-Twittered the birth of my third kid…
A daughter, born January 11!
I’m going to dig (that’s dig with a single ‘g’) into the whole social media question more in the coming weeks and thought these questions were as good a place as any for me to get started…
Why Twitter our child’s birth:
This was our third child and one of the things that we noticed the first two times through was that there were always people we forgot to phone right away.
Social media provided a great way to remedy the problem.
From my cell phone I uploaded images to my flickr account, and sent regular updates via twitter.
I also setup my twitter account to forward to my facebook profile status.
It turned out to be a great way to include our family and friends (new and old) through the whole process without having to worry about who to call next!
An unexpected side benefit was the fact that it was really exciting for us to read the real-time encouragement and congratulations sent back to us via facebook and twitter (funnelled back to my phone via text messaging).
We were really happy with how it turned out and happy to share with everyone!
What is your opinion of Social Media’s influence on society in general?
For the general public, Social Media provides a variety of great and fun tools to stay connected with friends and family as well as connect with lost friends and acquaintances. I think SM services are getting more savvy all the time and we’re going to see more and more platforms that ‘do it all’, which will be a good thing; preventing us from having to log into 10 different sites to check up on all our friends.
From a business point of view, Social Media is becoming more and more valuable as more of the general public integrates their lives in the social web. SM is quickly changing the way we look at and think about media and its influence on our buyers.
Look at it this way… When most people make a purchase, it’s an emotional decision, and logic generally only enters to justify the transaction. As a company, we need to connect with our customers more powerfully than our competitors have in order to create a brand loyalty that will see people through a transaction. The better the connection we’ve made, the greater the emotional tie people have to our brands; and social media provides incredible ways to communicate and connect directly with the people who are already looking for us.
I like to tell people that in the wild pre-internet days companies would communicate with their customers via ads, in print, TV or radio; a communication style that isn’t unlike standing on top of a soapbox and yelling through a bullhorn, hoping your voice will be heard by the right people. All the advances, and globalization of TV and Radio that occurred by the end of the last century didn’t change any of that… they just provided bigger and bigger bullhorns to yell at audiences through.
But SM HAS changed all that. Social networks and social media and the internet in general allow us to find the people who are already interested in us and our products; talk to our customers one-on-one; and even proactively find disgruntled or dissatisfied customers instantly!
SM will likely never replace the 30 second spot (TV commercial), but any company that doesn’t invest a little time and energy to at least BE where their customers are, are going to find themselves losing out to their more savvy competition who realize Social media is an increasingly integral part of any marketers toolbox.
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Topics: Conversations, Lifehack, Social Media | Comments
Twittering Peas and Flickr
Michael | December 20, 2007
Well, I did it.
I returned to 
after an extended Hiatus.
That’s about all there is to say about that for now. I uploaded a few pics (of my kids!) and added a pea pic to Frozen Pea Friday in support of Susan Reynolds.
I think it’s great to see the support that has cropped up so quickly for Susan, and also nice to see that twitter came through again as the catalyst that really allowed this to happen.
It’s always nice to see people come together and unite for something they believe in, and Twitter has shown itself to be an excellent medium for spreading-the-word.
On a side, but related, note (with odd timing)…
I heard on the radio the other day that the Canadian Doctors Association among other Canadian health type organizations, no longer recommend that women give themselves regular breast exams.
Apparently they are now saying that there’s no significant evidence that regular self-exams increases the chance of finding cancer.
What it is doing though is significantly increasing the number of false-positive cases (where women have found benign lumps I assume) which result in biopsies; which, according to the report I heard, can be very painful and always leaves a scar.
The report did continue to say that yearly mamograms were the preferred way to go.
Personally, it sounds to me like this is a report skewed in the favour of the government and the established doctors community. (For instance, it almost sounds like the system is concerned more about paying (God bless Social Health Care!?) for all the biopsies than worrying about early detection.)
Hey, I may be jaded against medical systems run like a business; but I was shocked when I heard the report… After all, I would think that 10, or 20 (or more) false negatives is a fair price to pay to catch 1 or 2 cases of cancer in it’s early stages!
I’d be interested to know what others thought about the new view on self exams…
If I had one nugget to share with Susan Reynolds it would be this:
The human body is an incredible machine, influenced heavily by our spirit, which is in turn fed by love, laughter and the support of others. I don’t know you, nor have I talked to you (although I have read your blog and twitters), but it seems like you have everything you need to see you through the tough time immediately ahead. And for what it’s worth, there are complete strangers, thousands of miles away, who are thinking about you, and sharing your story with others.
** Some of the Topic & Conversation Links:
Go donate to the FrozenPeaFund!
| 2.9 |
Topics: Conversations | Comments
Now With More Audio
Michael | December 20, 2007
I just added OdioGo to my blog and would love to hear what you think of the service!
I’ve always gotten a kick out of listening to computer voices try and read things I type in, so on one hand I’m enjoying the service for purely selfish reasons. 
On the other hand, its a great way to provide extra content and better accessability options to your blog. And it’s completely free. (With a little inserted advertisment of course, but I think that’s a fair trade for the service.)
It’s like having an instant Podcast:
http://podcasts.odiogo.com/michaelvaliant-com/podcasts-xml.php . (Just copy this link into your favourite podcast client to recieve my blog in audio format; or click on any of the links on the audio player at the top of each post for more options.)
My Odiogo home page can be found here:
http://podcasts.odiogo.com/michaelvaliant-com/podcasts-html.php .
I’ll write again once I’ve had a chance to comb through the features a little more, but I have to say I’m completely impressed so far!
What do you think?
Now with more Robot!
** Updates -
Wow! The audio was ready and available within seconds! Very impressive.
Unfortunately I will need to be more careful with punctuation now. Periods are VERY important when a computer is reading back your writing.
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Add this to my christmas wish list
Michael | November 27, 2007
If someone out there on the Inter-web really wants to buy me a christmas present… this is near the top of my ‘Completely unnecessary
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Topics: Errant Thoughts | Comments
Dates on a Blog?
Michael | November 25, 2007
Has the need for dates on a blog outlived their necessity?
Are they simply a holdover from the online journal days that don’t really have a place on a modern blog.
Reasons NOT to use dates in a blog:
- A date DATES your post. People have been trained to look at the dates in a post; even knowing this I still find myself looking. And what happens if someone finds one of your posts in the search engines that happens to be more than a month or two old? Chances are they won’t read it, or will only scan it quickly. It will be PERCIEVED as dated material, regardless of whether or not that actually matters within your subject matter.
- Duplicate Content! This is bad! Take wordpress for example. By default, most templates will offer a date based categorization of all your posts. If you click on a particular month you will be taken to a paginated section containing all the posts from the specified month. These are the same posts that can be found under the pagination on the main page of your BLOG, or from the Categories pages, but now under yet another URL. Remove this as soon as possible.
- People don’t search by date. Check your Stats. I doubt any of your date category pages have had many hits. People don’t care what you wrote in June of 2006. They DO care what you wrote about the particular topic they are searching for and you should therefore only offer category based options and a search bar.
I think we general date all our posts on our blogs for no better reason than the fact that most blogging software (or possibly even ALL blogging software) uses dates as a default. It’s a holdover; done not on purpose, but out of despondance.
We don’t date all our pages on our website (except maybe within a Google Sitemap), so unless you’re actually recording an online journal, stop using dates!
A single copy write date in the footer of your blog will suffice.
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Power of Persistence
Michael | November 21, 2007
The best quotable I’ve heard lately:
Persistent thought is your ticket.
Persistent gratitude makes it easy.
And persistent action tells one and all, “There ain’t no way, I’m settling for less.”
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Topics: Conversations | Comments
What I didn’t learn about DayLight Savings this year…
Michael | November 14, 2007
I love Daylight savings time in the fall.
Sure it’s dark when I leave work now… but for a few days, I get an extra hour of sleep (at least a perceived extra hour!)
Unfortunately that simple pleasure was denied me this year.
And in order to regain that little joy for next year, I need to learn one thing:
How to quickly reset a 2 year old’s internal clock so they don’t get up an hour earlier than they need to!
| 2.9 |
Topics: Errant Thoughts | Comments
Benefit of running an online business #32
Michael | October 18, 2007
Good Magazine has a spread on world retailers who operate the most square footage across their stores. Some of the companies that made the list (like Walmart and McDonalds) are not suprising to see at all. Here’s the image (click to enlarge):
A few things I DID find suprising:
- Some of the others on the list (like blockbuster)
- Some companies who are not on the list (like Costco, Ikea or Circuit City for instance)
- How much space Walmart actually covers! (18k + Acres! or somewhere in the neighborhood of 850 million square feet!)
Where am I going with this? Think of the money that Walmart spends on upkeep related costs (lighting, heating/cooling, cleaning etc).
I took a quick look at a recent Walmart SEC filing and they sink some huge numbers into this stuff. My wife’s the accountant not me, so I may not be reading these right, but it looks like Walmart is claiming (#’s in millions):
- Operating expenses -$ 17 130 (or 17 Billion dollars)
- Accumulated depreciation of property and equipment - $ 26, 881 (yes… 26.8 Billion dollars)
All things that most of 1ShoppingCart’s merchants as online businesses, don’t have to worry about!
(from GoodMagazine)
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Top 10 ways to create a 301 redirect
Michael | October 17, 2007
Tonight I redirected a new domain my brother-in-law purchased back to his main site. He and his wife are chiropractors in Ottawa (just setup, may 401 till it’s propogated!) and the new domain is a little shorter and easier to type in than their full domain name (PrestonFamilyChiropractic.ca).
So I thought I would take the time to talk about an important SEO tool…
The 301 Redirect
Generally speaking if you’re moving domains 
(and therefore changing post permalinks) or changing blog categories etc, you’re going to want to use a 301 redirect.
A 301 redirect tells the search engines that the page in question has PERMANENTLY moved. In most cases it’s the best and most Search Engine friendly method for redirecting web pages as it’ll go a long way towards preserving your hard earned search engine juice.
So, without further adieu:
The Top 10 Methods to Create a 301 Redirect
(Do I have to mention that you need to REPLACE www.the-new-url.com in the examples below with the actual domain name you want to redirect TO?)
1. JSP
<%
response.setStatus(301);
response.setHeader( “Location”, “http://www.the-new-url.com/” );
response.setHeader( “Connection”, “close” );
%>
2. PHP
<?
Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
Header( “location: http://www.the-new-url.com/” );
?>
3. IIS
From internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect; Select the “redirection to a URL” radio button and enter the new url. Place a checkmark for “The exact url entered above” and “A permanent redirection for this resource”
4. ASP
<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently”;
Response.AddHeader(”Location”,”http://www.the-new-url.com/”);
%>
5. Ruby on Rails
def old_action
headers["Status"] = “301 Moved Permanently”
redirect_to “http://www.the-new-url.com/”
end
6. .NET
<script runat=”server”>
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
Response.Status = “301 Moved Permanently”;
Response.AddHeader(”Location”,”http://www.the-new-url.com/”);
}
</script>
7. CGI PERL
$q = new CGI;
print $q->redirect(”http://www.new-url.com/”);
8. ColdFusion<.cfheader statuscode=”301″ statustext=”Moved permanently”>
<.cfheader name=”Location” value=”http://www.the-new-url.com/”>
9. .htaccess *
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.the-new-url.com/$1 [R=301,L]
* Ensure Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled is enabled on your account
10. HTML *
<HTML>
<Body>
<a href=`http://www.the-new-url.com/`>Click Here to Go to My Other Site</a>
</Body>
</HTML>
* I don`t recommend the HTML method as it’s not REALLY a 301 redirect!
(photo above from flickr.com)
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Thought of the day
TheCanadianFoodie | October 17, 2007
Hello everyone!
I’ve been out of town a lot recently (with the day job) as well as launching a new blog (MichaelValiant.com - warning, not food related at all!) so I apologize for not being around here much.
Thanks for the comments (that took me forever to moderate)!
I will re-kick things off with a thought for the day:
I try not to eat any veggies that have travelled more than I have!
