Social Media Advisors

We are Social Media Advisors, a Social Media Speaker, & Custom WordPress Site design.

How To Get Started in Social Media in Under 4 Minutes

Custom WordPress Sites, Online Consulting, Social Media Advisors, Social Media Training

I get asked all the time by new clients how they should get started into social media.  There are so many options out there like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.  They want to know where they should begin their journey into social media mastery to get the greatest return.  I always give the same answer to every client and instead of sitting here and writing it today, I figured I would share it in a video.

So if you want to know “How to get started in social media in under 4 minutes” watch this video:

Monitoring Your Online Presence- What Are Others Saying?

Online Consulting, Social Media Advisors

Listen to What Others Are Saying

This subject isn’t that new here on the blog.  Listening and watching for what others are saying about you and your brand are so crucial to the success of your business online.  In fact, I have written about it before when I’ve shared about social media winners and asked the question if your business was an online loser. In that post I mentioned setting up Google Alerts.  I spoke briefly about the importance of the alerts to monitor, but today I wanted to delve a little deeper on monitoring your online brand.

Here are just a few of the alerts I have set up for our business here:

  • 210 Consulting- It’s a business name, so a no brainer.
  • Jeremy Blanton- My name and people mention me more sometimes than the actual business name.
  • Social Media Advisors- It’s our main keyword and I want to know when others are using it.
  • jb140- It’s my twitter handle and many times people on there refer to you by your username.
  • Jason Crouch- Jason is my business partner here at 210 Consulting, so as a business you want to know what others are saying about partners, employees, etc.  Someone could have an issue with your employee and you would never know it.

Through these 5 Google Alerts I can keep track of what is said about me, my business and those who work with my business.  Granted, not every Google Alert is helpful, but as a general whole they are very useful for seeing what is being said good, bad, or indifferent about your business.

BackType Alert ExampleIn addition to monitoring through Google Alerts, I also use BackType to monitor things in the social media realms.  BackType will track my name in the comment sections of blogs and report back on any that it finds.  Many of the alerts are created through comments I leave on blog posts, but some are where another person mentions my name.  As you can see from the image, because Kevin mentioned me by name, it sent me an alert almost instantly.

Both of these options do a great job in monitoring your online presence while delivering the results directly into your inbox. I would recommend that everyone set both of these platforms up immediately.  It’s always nice to see when someone appreciates your work and mentions or references it.  But it is even more imperative to know when something isn’t right and have the ability to take swift actions to correct the issue.

HD Video Options- What’s the Best?

Video

Over the past few weeks I have really been focusing on increasing my efforts in video and increasing my skills in making video.  The other week I shared a post on what HD Video options were the best bang for the buck.  One of the comments I received from more than one person was to do a demo of some of the different cameras mentioned.

Today I wanted to share I made of various HD video options that are out there that I currently own.  Some of the devices I tested do not promote that they do HD, but I included them for comparison.  In the video below you will see comparisons of the Kodak Playtouch, Panasonic Lumix TZ5, HTC MyTouch 4G for TMobile, an original FlipCam, and the InSight Webcam of my Macbook Pro.  I shot all the video sitting at my desk in my office from as close to the same position as possible so there would not be any variables in light, audio, or surroundings.

Also, I did not make any edits to the actual videos themselves.  They are in as raw a format as possible.  Audio has also been left alone.  I will note that I did use my Audio Technica ATR 3350 microphone with the Kodak Playtouch.  I had recently purchased a mono to stereo adapter and wanted to see if it worked in splitting the audio from a single mono L to a left and right channel. It seemed to work pretty well.

Here’s the video showing the various results:


Granted, there are many other camera options out there, but these were the only ones available to me at this time.  If anyone watching this video has an HD video camera they would like me to review, feel free to contact me I’d love testing out your products and sharing with my audience.

So which of the cameras shared in the video, which one seemed best to you and why?  Also, you can see many of the products used in my Amazon Video Store.