Social media, online marketing hints, tips and advice – Liz Hover's Diary of a Web Gal (Winnipeg)

Today I mastered the art of Facebook markup language.

What on earth is Facebook markup language? It’s the web coding used by Facebook that allows fan page administrators to add fun stuff to their pages such as images, additional tabs and more.

I’ve battled with it for several years. It’s only after getting a better grasp of HTML that I was able to do this.

I think it’s fair to say that there isn’t a week that goes by when I don’t achieve some kind of personal goal like this.

I read all the time.

I wake up most mornings excited to go to work.

I don’t have a degree.

At school my favourite subjects were history and communications studies. I excelled at them.

I did go to university but I was a little older than most in my year because I had to re-take courses and exams.

I left after six months. I was bored rigid. My major was women’s studies with communications and sociology.

I’m 35 and until three years ago I regretted not completing my degree.

At that time I got very lucky. I found my passion – a passion that I was able to experience in my day job at the National Screen Institute – Canada (NSI) where I’m the digital media manager.

I manage the NSI Online Short Film Festival. I commission content for the NSI Online Industry Centre. I also produce content myself.

I manage NSI’s online spaces – I’m the voice of Twitter, Facebook and all the other online places you’ll find NSI. I deliver social media workshops in Winnipeg.

Why does this excite me more than getting a degree or propell me into the office every day?

Because I live my life on an ‘acclerated learning curve’ to coin the phrase from Adam Singer’s recent post on Future Buzz.

I’m entirely self-taught.

I’m hungry for information like you wouldn’t believe.

I spend a large part of my spare time learning. Learning about the internet. Learning about anything I can get my hands on that interests me.

Nobody made me do this. And nobody told me to do this. It’s just the way I choose to live.

In his post, Adam says, ‘You know nothing.’

I think that’s my motivator. I have a perpetual appetite for knowing as much as I can. And as soon as I do, more comes along.

If you aren’t happy in your job or feeling unfufiled I urge you to read Adam’s post – one of the most important posts I’ve read in a very long time.

Yes, it’s true, most people don’t live like this. But they should.

I feel extremely lucky to be one of them.

With that self-recognition I’ve been able to pay it forward.

My learning doesn’t start and stop with me. I’ve travelled to Toronto, Edmonton and Calgary to deliver workshops on social media. For me, that is the ultimate fulfilment.

Not only am I learning like crazy but I’m trying my hardest to teach others.

What purpose does knowledge serve if it sits inside one person’s head?

So if you’re scratching your own head wondering why your life seems incomplete, please remember that a passion for learning can be vital to your success.

Photo courtesy of ittybittiesforyou via a Creative Commons Licence

First, I’ll admit that this is pretty much a duplicate of a post I made today over on the National Screen Institute’s website.

But not entirely.

I don’t think much of Google Buzz, ok?

I love Google, for the record.

The basic premise: Google wants in on the social media thang. Google Buzz is their trump card.

Or something.

This is my comment on the proposition, not the product.

According to Google’s official blog:

Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It’s built right into Gmail, so you don’t have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch.

If you think about it, there’s always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don’t have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you’re sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.

So far I’m not that impressed with it – largely because I only use my Gmail accounts to log in to Feedburner, YouTube and a bunch of other Google-operated sites.

I’m also a prolific Twitter and Facebook user and don’t see the sense in adding yet another network to the list.

Sure, I can add my Twitter account so my tweets appear on Buzz but I’d rather folks just follow me on Twitter.

I can see the benefit for regular users of Gmail. Send mail and chat with your pals all in one place. Which makes sense.

Are you using Google Buzz? Let me know what you think.

Thanks to my friend, the wonderful Erica Glasier, for the illustration at the top of this page available under a Creative Commons License.

Apologies to those of you who read this link via my Twitter stream. This seemed like such a great article with so much food for thought I had to post it here too.

Noupe – a website I regularly read – posted an article about how the web might look five years from now.

The Future of the Web: Where Will We Be in Five Years? is an insightful look at emerging trends and some that are already sticking.

Some highlights include:

• There are a few unsurprising predictions such as the growing influence and use of social media (a term, some of you will know, I think is silly). What this means is social interaction on the internet will be an even bigger feature of the web spaces we visit.

• Our never-ending fight against spam and fraudulent internet behaviour may well increase but I don’t think we’ll ever really be totally safe from this stuff.

• As a chick who spends a large (some might say, excessive) amount of time online I heartily look forward to better and more online film and TV content.

• And Microsoft’s world domination of our PCs may be over sooner than you think. With Google set to launch a Chrome operating system we’re looking at a virtual online office as our operating systems move online.

This is all very exciting stuff. But as Noupe points out, predictions fly around the internet at the speed of tweets so there’s no telling what the future really holds.

“Fear and risk are vital components for personal and business development.”

I don’t usually tackle something this heavily emotional but today I read a post by Jacob Morgan on fear and risk which totally struck a chord with me.

And before you think I’m going off topic, this is absolutely tied to social media.

Talking about his own risks, Jacob says he one day he threw all his clothes in his car and moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

While I didn’t make an impulse decision, I made a big upheaval in my life in 2003 and emmigrated from the UK to Canada at the tender age of 29.

It was and remains my single most life changing event.

I fantasized about it at first telling myself there’s absolutely no way it would ever happen. But it did. I was more excited and scared than I’ve ever been. And it was by no means easy. In fact it was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done for so many reasons. Yes, there were times when I nearly gave up and headed back to Europe where I’d had a successful marketing and communications career and fabulous friends.

But I stayed. I knew I had to make this new life work because it’s not something you get a second chance at.

Thankfully things eventually fell into place.

I found meaningful work, a wonderful relationship (and my baby Sadie Shih Tzu).

This experience taught me many things which were put into words by Jacob Morgan’s post about the importance of fear and risk.

My dad always told me that the darkest part was just before the dawn. So I’ve tried to live my life knowing that when things are super hard, they can only get better.

Which brings me to social media.

About two years ago I ventured into a new job – I sort of morphed into the job and along with that came myriad new responsibilities and emotions. That job was web manager for the National Screen Institute – Canada (NSI). At the time I was discovering a whole new way of working in the form of Facebook, Twitter and blogging. Each required an element of risk on my part.

And, it seems, I wasn’t alone in my apprehension about being thrust into the online world. To manage social media effectively requires a lot of ‘self.’

There are folks I know who still struggle with the idea of a Facebook account (my mother: all this internet stuff is so anti-social.) Their fear comes from different places and sometimes has to do with feeling exposed or simply a lack of understanding.

So I’ve been ‘putting myself out there’ for a couple of years now and it’s become easier and easier.

Then in May 2009 my personal blog was hacked. You can’t get much more of scare than that – I felt violated and wondered who had access to my personal information.

After a couple of days I stopped feeling attacked and found the process of rebuilding my blog to be rather cathartic.

All this to say that for personal and business development you must take risks, put yourself out there, face your fears and even create your own challenges. It’s vital to your growth.

My favourite excerpt from Jacob Morgan’s post is a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt which every marketer should heed:

“You must do the things you think you cannot do.”

Photo courtesy of ittybittiesforyou via a Creative Commons Licence