Ryan Doom

Ryan Doom is the president of Web Ascender which he founded with Kevin Southworth three years ago.  Ryan Doom and Web Ascender specialize in the design, development, and marketing of websites and their content. 

Ryan is a computer science graduate from Michigan State University, has been involved with programming and web development for 13 years, and is a Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD).  He is on the board of the Capital Area IT Council, LINC, and was a founding board member of the Greater Lansing User Group for Microsoft .NET (GLUGnet).

Contact Information
Ryan Doom
517-455-7837
www.webascender.com
rd@webascender.com

Monday

August 4, 2008

Social Media – What is this Twitter thing?

MySpace, Facebook, YouTube; everyone has heard of them, and companies are trying to figure out how they can leverage these platforms to help their business and causes.  The social aspect of the internet and these services is what all the hype is about, it’s not just about a place kids go to watch videos on the internet or a new fancier way of doing email.  It’s different, very different.

It’s not about me watching a video, or me writing a blog, or me uploading photos so I can view them anywhere.  It is all about what others can do with it—it is time to share.

These online social services build communities.  They build communities around friends, around co-works, around causes for a greater good; it is real, and the communities work.  I was not an early adopter of Facebook, it actually took me far longer than I would like to admit to see its value and take advantage of the service.  Now, leveraging these services is a major part of my business.

Twitter is the new kid on the block, not even two years old.  However, it is starting to catch fire.  It gained popularity in the IT world, now it’s infiltrating the college crowd and it is gaining momentum every day.

Here is the premise of Twitter: 
“What are you doing?”
Friends and co-workers may ask you that many times a day.  The tribe of devote Twitter users out there don’t need to ask their friends that question.  They can see it at any time.  I can pull up my Twitter feed and see at a glance what people are up to right now, or plan on doing later.  Don’t worry; most people won’t post every excruciating detail:  “Getting coffee”, “Sitting down at my desk,” “responding to an email.”  Most of the time users will post, also known as a Tweet, about something that others may actually care about.  Such as: “Heading to the Lugnuts game in 10 minutes” or “Eating at Troppo downtown Lansing.”  People that actively follow you on Twitter can see when you updated your status and how long ago.  It’s not uncommon for other co-workers and friends to then post, “Meeting up with @ryandoom at Troppo” (the @ryandoom being my ‘twitter identity’) and in no time you can have a group of friends together sharing a ‘real’ good time.

Were you going to ask, “Why not just call them?” 
Many of today’s active youth are building larger and larger contact spheres, some of people they love and see daily, others they may have never met in real life.  You cannot call everyone, everyday.  You cannot call even your 5 best of friends ever day.  But this is any easy way to see what is currently going on this second or this evening without calling everyone—essentially keeping in touch.  You can have a good time this evening if you don’t already have one planned.

How can your business, cause, or community take advantage of Twitter?  Stay tuned.

Tuesday

August 5, 2008

How are people using Twitter and can it be used for business?

In order for you to learn how to make the most out of Twitter it is important that you get very familiar with how it works, why it works, and what problems it solves for those using the service.  You can think of Twitter as your own blog in which you only have about two sentences (a max of 140 characters) to post.  Your post is usually a status update about what you are doing or what you are going to be doing on any particular day.  A post is also referred to as a Tweet within the Twitter world.  You can Tweet from the Twitter website, an application installed on your computer, a text message (SMS), or a program on your cell phone.  You can also read all the Tweets from people that you ‘follow’ on the website, a computer program, or your mobile device.  The fact that Twitter is very simple to use and can be accessed from virtually any device is one of the reasons it is so popular.

Twitter serves as a new source

One of the amazing things about Twitter is that the most important news going on in the world will most likely appear on your Twitter page before you see it in the news or read about it elsewhere.  Someone within your network will have found the news item particularly interesting, perhaps while you were asleep and made a comment about it on their Twitter page.  If it’s worth talking about it is on Twitter somewhere.

Twitter can increase your knowledge

The people you are following on Twitter are friends, co-workers or you have some common interest that has brought you together.  As you might imagine a majority of those I follow on Twitter are in the Information Technology field.  During the course of any given day someone will put up a gripe about some technology, a solution to some problem, a question/request for help or get my attention regarding a new product or service that is available.  It is a great way for me to learn from these people as well as give them insight on issues they may be facing on a daily basis.  If you want to become better in your area of business find likeminded people on Twitter to discuss it with.

Keeping tabs on events

My friends and the people I follow regularly attend many conferences and events.  If I am unable to attend the event I am still able to track what happened and in a very odd way be very involved from hundreds of miles away.  It’s possible that 10 people I know are attending the same conference and sometimes people Tweet play by play what is going on during a presentation or session at the conference.  Even though I can’t be there I am still able to get valuable information based on their conversations, and even chime in if needed.  This can also happen with local events, ball games, and festivals.

Using Twitter to increase your business

If you only use Twitter to promote yourself or your business it may be very difficult for you to succeed in using this as a successful media outlet.  Since I don’t know what your company does, let me just give you some examples on how it can be used for a business.
It all starts with getting ‘followed.’  Until someone follows you on Twitter, you are just updating your information…but no one is listening.  You need to find your audience—your market—and this usually starts with connecting with a couple of other people you know on Twitter first, then finding people with similar interests.
I follow a couple of people who work for companies that sell products.  These are products I already have and use but I follow these people on Twitter for:  Information on updates to the product, new products they are releasing, sales or discounts and occasionally an opportunity to answer a question or give back insight on the product.  How does this help that company?  It’s great for their brand and community image.  They are represented professionally in an arena where feedback and comments are welcome.  I feel as if they care what I think, and because if this I would not ever buy from their competition.
Putting on an event in the community?  Consider creating an account to represent the event on Twitter.  Promote that Twitter account with that event and start getting active on Twitter, announcing new bands, changes in schedules, what concessions will be available, and any other promotional information.  This can also be used during the event to document what is going on and how successful the event is going.
100% promotional initiatives could work but it would require some strategy.  I could see huge retailers potentially using Twitter to announce new products, the new fall line, and links to discount coupons for buying online.  The trick would be the right message, the right timing and the proper frequency.  But, depending on how popular your business is it could certainly work. 
Remember that it is called Social Media for a reason.  The important thing to remember when starting to market in this arena is that it is about the network of people that are associated together for a common reason.  You have to do more than just push product, you have to provide more value and give back to the online community.  You have to be liked and contribute in ways where it does not appear that you are only concerned with your own objectives.  Encourage user feedback and listen to their opinions.

Wednesday

August 6, 2008

Looking for new ways to market online?

Over the last two days I have offered some insight on how to take advantage of Twitter personally and professionally.  Twitter is a great service, and is the leader in the status update arena.  However, there are many other social tools that you may consider researching. I have broken some of the leading services into some common categories.

Blogging

Systems that make it easier for you to start your own blog and start sharing news and your thoughts with the world.

• Wordpress

• Blogger

Bookmarking

Need your favorite bookmarked websites available to you wherever you are no matter what computer you are on?  These services make it easy for you to categories your important website links and share them with others.

• Del.icio.us

• Ma.gnolia

• StumbleUpon

• Digg

Social News

News sites where the top stories are determined by the visitors to the website and their opinions.

• Digg

• Reddit

Photo Sharing

Want to save or share photos from your vacation or your last political campaign?  These services make it easy and you can integrate them into your current website.

• Flickr

• Google’s Picasa

Status Updates

Keep the world up to date with what you are doing.

• Twitter

• Pownce

• identi.ca

Music

Online radio stations where you build your preferences, get recommended music and see what your friends are listening to right now.

• Last.fm

• Pandora

Video

Create your own videos and upload them for the world to view and comment.

• YouTube

• Seesmic

Social Networks

Build groups of people with similar friends, companies or interests

• Facebook

• MySpace

• LinkedIn

These are the leaders, some of these categories have dozens of close competitors that each have their own niche or take up a part of the overall market share.  If you are interested in expanding your marketing initiatives to the web, it is important that you first learn more about each of the categories, and then determine which services might be a good fit for your organization.

Thursday

August 7, 2008

Understanding RSS and website feeds

Do you recognize this little icon?  You will see them on the majority of blogs you visit or websites that focus on publishing information frequently.  It is called an RSS feed which stands for Really Simple Syndication.  But what does that mean to you?

RSS is a way to easily share published information over the web.  It could be a blog post, an event, articles, even photos can be available through RSS feeds.  Essentially that little icon links to a web page of just the data you need.  It will contain the article title, date published, and the actual content of the article.  No fancy formatting, just the information you would need to read the article.  What can you do with them?  For starters you can subscribe to a service such as www.bloglines.com or Google Reader which will allow you to bring your favorite RSS feeds together and read them conveniently in one place rather than actually visiting each of those websites everyday.  These programs are called RSS readers or feed readers.

I personally use www.bloglines.com and try to keep the feeds that I subscribe to under 100.  When I open my bloglines webpage it will show me all the websites that have updated their news, blog, or events and I can quickly read them all in one convenient place, rather than visiting each website.
As a website owner I can also include someone else’s articles on my website using their RSS feed.  For example, if I wanted to show the Michigan Municiple League’s latest news on my website I can set up a component to read their feed and display it on my homepage.  If a visitor of my website is intrigued by the title and clicks on it they will be taken to the Michigan Municipal Leage to read the entire entry.

Allowing other websites and individuals to easily reuse your RSS feeds ultimately gets you more viewers and more traffic to your website.  It is a great way to get repeat visitors and start a following of people who always read your news and information.

Friday

August 8, 2008

Friend Feed – Bringing it all together

Over the course of the week I have discussed many different ways to take advantage of Social Media services.  There is now a service which helps tie them all together and creates a simplified view of what all your friends and co-workers are sharing.  Imagine they have a Flickr account where they share their photos, a YouTube account for videos, they update their status on Twitter and they are also very active on LinkedIn.  That is a lot of different places you have to keep track of to see what your friends are doing, but there is now a service that pulls all of those feeds into one for you.
FriendFeed is the service that pulls in information about what all your friends are doing and it is growing very quickly.  It can pull in popular services such as: Twitter, Blogs, del.icio.ous, Digg, YouTube, Last.fm, Flickr, LinkedIn.  Whenever a friend updates any information on these services I can be notified and visit the site and make comments or share information about what they have posted. 
These services bring people together.  They can bring close friends closer, or allow you to become better friends with someone you have just met.  You can see pictures of them playing with their kids, home videos, blog posts, things they have added to their Amazon wish list, and see what they are up to this very second.