Exam 1
microsoft teams
This app merges chat with meeting notes and attachments, all while integrating with Microsoft Office 365 and Skype. The product can host audio, video, and web conferences, and allows users to chat with people both inside and outside the organization.
web browser
a software application for accessing and viewing Web pages
plug-in
a software component that enables new functionality within a Web browser
hashtag
a tag beginning with # that describes a tweet
login name
a unique name that identifies you to a Web site
username
a unique name that identifies you to a Web site
To minimize having to create a different account for each Web site a user may visit:
a user may register a digital identity with OpenID. Many Web sites use this service to allow users access with a common digital identity. With OpenID, you only need to remember one username and one password.
social networking applications
a web application that allows users to create profiles, share profile information, and designate friends
Chatbots
When chatbots first came into our consciousness, customers were only answered with prewritten answers to questions brands thought were common, using keywords to trigger the bot. As 2019 comes to a close, algorithms are improving chatbots' effectiveness by "understanding" what users are writing to them. Brands no longer have to stock the bots with canned answers, as chatbots can, in a way, surf the web to find the answers consumers are seeking. Chatbots are also able to talk to multiple people at the same time, offering something our current customer service teams cannot. Chatbot intelligence will only continue to grow in 2020, which will likely see more consumers taking them up, and more brands following that trend.
Software Accessible on Many Devices
You can browse Web content from almost anywhere on almost any electronic device that has a screen: an Internet-connected television set, a netbook, a laptop or desktop PC, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a gaming console, or a cell phone (Figure 1-14). Users have an expectation that software applications will operate equally well on all of these different devices and that their data will be available. User data must be stored and synchronized between many different devices. When information is stored on the Web, it is available where you are as long as you have an Internet-connected device with which to access it.
slack
With new tech collaboration tools popping up and left and right, choosing the right one can be difficult. Here are 10 solid options. Probably the most well-known option on the list, Slack is one of the smartest collaboration tools on the market. Available for both desktop and mobile, Slack lets you send direct messages to individuals and groups, as well as organize conversations into separate channels for specific projects or initiatives. Slack comes in both paid and free versions, and features integrations with Dropbox, Google Docs, and Box.
yelp
Yelp is not always the first app someone thinks of when they think of social media, but it is on this list because it does play an important role in maintaining your company's brand and image! Yelp has 178 million monthly visitors, and those visitors include people who want word-of-mouth confirmation of whether your business provides a positive or negative experience. Due to the nature of Yelp, this gives your business the chance to keep up your reputation by encouraging strong reviews and responding to the negative reviews. By doing this, you build an organic sense of transparency and trust between your business and your consumers, and this can play a huge part in growing and retaining your customer base.
6 key social media trends to watch in 2020
1) Influencer Marketing Will Continue to Grow 2) Shopping on Social Media 3) Stories Will Become Marketers Darlings 4) Augmented Reality (AR) Will Become Mainstream 5) Chatbots 6) Improved Customer Service
Corporate Social Networks
Companies can create customized social networking sites focused around building relationships with a company's employees and its customers. This can be especially important for companies with a global presence. For example, IBM's internal social network, Blue Pages, shown in Figure 5-53, allows employees to list their skills and interests in their business profiles.
How-To Video Playgrounds
Do your how-to videos live. Instructional videos take on excitement and urgency when your audience sees you demonstrating a product and providing how-to tips in real time, not recorded months ago. Build in live give-and-take banter with viewers. On Facebook, followers have the opportunity to opt in and are notified when you are live. Keep in mind that the video remains on the page after the live event.
talk slowly
speak slowly and carefully enough so that the recipient can hear and comprehend every word. Listening to messages in which the speaker is talking too quickly to be understood is very frustrating. Make sure, if you're leaving a callback number, to repeat it twice so that the person can jot it down and check it
On the Applications and Websites settings page you can:
specify which items from your personal profile, such as your profile picture, interests, education, or work history, to make available to Facebook applications. The Application Settings - Recently Used page, accessible from the What you share page, allows you to modify the settings of individual applications. Modifications specifically include whether or not you permit the application to write a record of your recent activity to your Facebook Wall, as shown in Figure 5-16.
Social networking sites:
such as Facebook and LinkedIn, facilitate the process of finding people who you already know
You also can control who can view:
the information that appears in your News Feed or Wall. Each time you update your profile on Facebook or interact with an application, an entry may be recorded in your News Feed unless you chose not to include that activity. Some applications may report your recent activity as well. Facebook will never reveal certain information about your activities to other members, such as if you view their profiles or when you add or remove someone from a Friend List.
news feed
the log of a user's activity on a social network that are shared with friends
focus
while we all like to multitask (or attempt to) refrain from tending to other things while you are on a call. You should give the person you are talking to your undivided attention. Your email, social media and games can wait
keep it short
you don't have to leave every detail on your voicemail message. Most business phone systems have a brief time limit for messages before cutting the call off. Leave a short summary of the reason for your call and close with a request for a callback
Once you have an account on a Web site:
you might be able to create a profile page on which you provide additional information about yourself that may be of interest to other users of that site. Profile pages are popular on social networking applications, as they enable users to connect with each other based on similar interests or demographics.
Even if you delete information or files from:
your Facebook profile, or deactivate your account, earlier copies of those files may be stored in backups on Facebook's servers. If you deactivate your account, Facebook will not delete your information. Even though other users will not be able to see it, Facebook will retain your profile information so that it will be available should you decide to activate your account again at a future time.
advantages of digital workplace
- more results, more quickly, as work schedules become more flexible - employee happiness and engagement increase, which means productivity, profits, customer ratings, among other stats, are more likely to increase - your business stays competitive, as Deloitte reports nearly two-thirds of professionals would take a lower-paying job if they could work away from the office
7 Creative Ways To Incorporate Livestreaming Into Your Marketing Mix
1) Product Or Service Announcements 2) Major Events 3) Newsworthy Interviews Or Appearances 4) Behind-The-Scenes Tours 5) Live Q&A Sessions 6) How-To Video Playgrounds 7) Contest Campaigns Or Promotion Kickoffs
effects of technology on business communications
1) continued evolution of email 2) project management systems and scheduling 3) automated voice systems provide service 4) artificial intelligence engages in marketing 5) easy collaboration with remote workers 6) the downside of technology in communications
Top 10 Social Media Sites for Business
1) facebook 2) facebook messenger 3) instagram 4) pinterest 5) snapchat 6) youtube 7) twitter 8) linkedin 9) tiktok 10) yelp
the 10 best workplace collaboration tools for your business
1) slack 2) trill 3) microsoft teams 4) jira 5) facebook workplace 6) asana 7) flock 8) webex 9) flowdock 10) gotomeeting
proper telephone etiquette
1) swallow first 2) name and rank please 3) manners do matter 4) focus 5) now hold on 6) don't let your caller get lost in the system 7) keep messages short and sweet 8) once is enough 9) listen first
how to leave a proper telephone message
1) think first 2) introduce yourself 3) talk slowly 4) speak clearly 5) keep it short 6) end professionally 7) try again 8) practice and test yourself
5 ways to strengthen teams in a digital workplace
1) use a knowledge sharing tool to share industry ideas 2) use an internal communications board for company messaging 3) host regular video chats 4) schedule face time with team building and in-office work 5) ask for input
effects of social media on sales
17% of the world's population makes online purchases and pays their bills online. Strong economies like the UK (78%), South Korea (74%), Germany (74%), Sweden (70%) and the U.S. (69%) have the highest e-commerce penetration, or percentage of the population that has purchased online. Interestingly, because the highest percentage of users — ages 18 to 34 years old — has the most buying power, they're likely to make a purchase with the influence of social media. A Nielsen study commissioned by Twitter revealed that one in four new vehicle purchasers in the U.S. used Twitter to help them make their decision to purchase. In a survey of more than 600 senior marketers, 39% said they saw a medium return on investment (ROI) from organic social media posts, while 20% said they received the highest ROI from this form of marketing channel. In addition, 36% said paid social media ads brought in medium ROI, while 17% said the channel provided high ROI. With all these facts, data and statistics, it would be impossible to deny the influence social media has on the consumer. Whether it be through simple brand awareness or brand loyalty that equates to sales, social media has a big impact. If you haven't given much thought to your social media marketing strategy, now is the best time.
effects of social media on brand loyalty
A 2017 survey of 5,700 marketers revealed that 69% are developing loyal fans for their brands via social media marketing. In the same vein, 66% of usersbetween the ages of 18 and 24 years old are more loyal to the brands they follow on social media, while 60% of 25- to 34-year-olds favor the businesses they follow on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. A recent survey completed by my company in Chicago confirmed the relationship between small businesses' use of social media and building loyalty among their community of followers: 60% of respondents stated that they followed the businesses they regularly buy services from on Facebook. Additionally, 54% of them said that they believed businesses that engaged with clients and followers on Facebook were more focused on providing better service than those that did not.
Augmented Reality (AR) Will Become Mainstream
AR technology is gradually evolving, with increased application for eCommerce, product discovery, special offers, and more. For example, IKEA now gives consumers the chance to see how its items will look in buyers' own homes via its AR app. There's a heap of potential in this type of technology - realtors, for example, can take prospective home owners on virtual tours of homes, during which paint colors can be changed, walls can be removed or moved to a different spot, etc. Makeup companies can enable potential customers to try on their products while on lunch break, or anywhere they are holding their phone. There's a heap of ways in which AR can be utilized, and while thus far its usage has been limited, due to technological limitations and/or cost, the barriers for entry are coming down. Expect this to be a big shift in 2020.
effects of social media on brand presence
According to We Are Social's Digital in 2018 Global Overview, Facebook is the second most visited website in the world, followed by YouTube, with Google leading the list. Facebook was also the most searched query on Google, followed again by the video-sharing platform YouTube. These numbers prove that the four billion active internet users turn to social media platforms every single day.As consumers spend more time on social media, the platforms also become the go-to source for product and brand information. With more than 60 million Facebook Pages, brands are reaching millions on the social media platform. In the same report by We Are Social, it was revealed that posts on a brand's Facebook Page reach 10.7% more people than its current number of followers. It was also revealed that 4.2% of all Facebook users who see a Facebook Page's post engage with it — be it by reading a status, liking a post, watching a video or clicking a link. Twitter also offers similar effects on businesses using the platform. According to Twitter, the top reason people come to Twitter is to "discover something new and interesting." The platform is also five times more likely to offer new videos to users than any other source. The intent of users to find something new, coupled with the platform's design to offer new discoveries, allows for higher brand recall and awareness.
use a knowledge sharing tool to share industry ideas
An internal knowledge sharing tool like the News Feed from Smarp enables your employees to engage in continuous education by staying up-to-date on industry trends. Since users are able to create their own content and share it with their employee peers, a tool like this helps to show your team members the talent that lies within your organization. As users are able to comment on and interact with posts, connections can deepen and positively impact business. A report on digital workplace and culture by business consulting firm Deloitte finds social media has a positive effect on how people collaborate at work, since ideas can be shared more quickly. By integrating the knowledge sharing tool with the social media networks your employees are already using, like Smarp does, content that is shared within a company gains extended reach as it's shared across social. This can also help to boost the reputation of your business, as employees share valuable content to engage their own followers.
asana
Asana is ideal for tracking your team and employees' progression on projects. With to-do lists for ongoing projects, reminders for upcoming deadlines, and more, Asana makes it easy to check on how your coworkers are doing. You can organize projects in a board or list format, as well as quickly search through past work
Live Q&A Sessions
Augment any product or service introductions, market trending campaign or company crisis with a Q&A. You can lead the discussion and appear more sensitive during a recall, more knowledgeable on a complex product, or more in control during a merger or acquisition. For example, Cisco's CEO Chuck Robbins staged a live Facebook Q&A from Cisco Live 2017 in Las Vegas.
Adding Social Networking Features to Your Blog or Web Site
Bloggers and Web site owners can build an online community around their Web sites by adding social networking features using third-party applications. Friend Connect is a service from Google that bloggers and Web site owners can use to provide social networking features on their sites. With Friend Connect, users may sign up as a member of a blog or Web site and then may see the profiles of other site members. Friend Connect uses your Google profile and login information to access the social network.
Contest Campaigns Or Promotion Kickoffs
Consider announcing major marketing initiates live. A live announcement creates urgency and excitement. However, be sure to deliver great video so your audience will tune in throughout the campaign. Consider your audience when selecting a social media platform. For instance, in 2015, the BMW's "Whatsnext" campaign on Periscope did just that. Periscope was an ideal platform for BMW, but other platforms may be better tailored to your specific campaign. For example, to promote the premiere of USA Network's hit show Mr. Robot, the network used Twitch, the world's largest social gaming platform. The team created a three-day livestream event that gave the appearance the stream was being hacked. It won the Shorty Award for best live contest promotion. A reachable goal is to produce at least three of these types of videos over a 12-month period. However, I highly recommend that your business or organization produces numerous live videos throughout the year. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to utilize content to drive thought leadership. But video marketing and video livestreaming can cut through the content clutter and help your brand stand out. Lastly, keep in mind that your videos are a reflection of your organization and brands. They should be engaging, look professional and communicate clear and powerful messages.
Major Events
Consider livestreaming video for a major speaking engagement, sports/entertainment event or business function. For example, Tough Mudder began livestreaming fitness events in 2014. By 2016, Tough Mudder events were viewed 14.5 million times across Livestream and Facebook and engaged more than 2.5 million participants.
Product Or Service Announcements
Create your own news by making a product launch a live media event and allowing your fans to react in real time. In 2016, Land Rover used streaming video to launch the Land Rover Discovery Landmark. Earlier this year, the brand tapped live video streaming again to launch the Range Rover Velar from the Design Museum in London.
Social Customer Relationship Management
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) describes a set of tools and processes that companies employ to manage customers throughout the company-customer relationship, including finding potential new customers, converting those potential customers to actual customers, gathering information about sales, and providing customer support after the purchase of a company's product or service. CRM systems are software applications that companies use to manage the process of attracting new customers and maintaining relationships with existing ones. CRM systems, illustrated in Figure 5-55, track a customer's contact information; product orders; dates when purchases were made, shipped, and received; service or support calls; and marketing campaigns to which that customer responded. This data is made available throughout the company. Using the information captured by a CRM system, companies are better able to support their customers.
Behind-The-Scenes Tours
Deepen customer engagement by providing behind-the-scenes guided tours. Show your audience how you make your famous sauce, how you protect the planet or what it takes to mount a live production 30 minutes before the curtain goes up.
Twitter Applications
Developers have made possible thousands of specialized applications that repurpose Twitter data to provide additional functionality that is not found on the Twitter Web site. These applications can track top Twitter users, analyze user tweet statistics, plot tweets on maps, manage lists of followers, and embed user Tweets in blogs. Samples of these applications are shown in Figure 5-45. Twittervision is one of the first applications to plot random tweets from Twitter's public timeline on a map. FriendorFollow identifies which of your Twitter followers you are not following back and enables you to follow them. TweetStats analyzes how often you tweet, including your average numbers of daily and hourly tweets.
Newsworthy Interviews Or Appearances
Enhance an existing PR event by livestreaming a major press conference, celebrity spokesperson appearance or topical interview with your CEO. Fandango used livestreaming at this year's Comic-Con in San Diego, conducting live celebrity interviews onsite that garnered thousands of views.
When you add an application to your Facebook page:
Facebook lists your friends who also have added the application, and records your activity in the application in your News Feed. It is up to you to specify appropriate privacy settings if you do not want your data to be incorporated into or accessed by third-party applications. The Privacy Settings Applications and Websites page, shown Figure 5-13(d), contains links to pages that allow you to specify how applications may interact with your profile information. The What you share page describes the personal information that you share when visiting Applications and Websites, as shown in Figure 5-15(a). The What your friends can share about you page specifies which personal items from your profile that Facebook applications can access, as shown in Figure 5-15(b).
Fan Pages on Facebook
Facebook users can become fans of products, and companies often use feedback from customers to guide future product offerings. Companies and organizations may advertise their brands by creating Fan pages on Facebook. Fan page are marketing tools with which companies can share information, promote products, and offer specials deals or coupons to customers. Figure 5-52 displays the Fan page for Pop-Tarts toaster pastries. Customers can share comments, suggestions, and product reviews on the Wall section of a company or product's Fan page. Because the companies and products of which you are a fan are listed on your Facebook page, your friends may be encouraged to try them or become fans as well. Becoming a fan of a company or product opens a channel of communication between you and the company.
flock
Flock is a productivity tool very similar to Slack, but with some more comprehensive communication features. Similar to Slack, Flock allows teams to have different channels, as well as individual and group conversations. Users are able to easily search through all messages, files, and URL and Flock will find the search query, no matter who sent it. Flock also supports audio/video calls, screen sharing, and lets users conduct polls, share notes, set reminders, and assign tasks
flowdock
Flowdock's main purpose is company or team-wide instant messaging. When someone starts a "Flow," they create an open space for teams to talk and collaborate. The conversations are color coded and organized like a thread, making it easy to visually follow. The app provides the opportunity to work with over 50 other third-party tools and services as well
Stories Will Become Marketers Darlings
For a while, Stories were exclusive to Snapchat, but then Instagram and Facebook Stories came out, and now even YouTube has its own stories format. Stories can provide viewers with more authentic insight, as the videos are often created on the spot. And there's a huge range of opportunities in the Stories format. Since Stories content disappears rather quickly, this is the perfect time for marketers to capitalize on fear of missing out (FOMO) and to offer flash sales and deals that only loyal users will learn to look for. That can then bring in new users looking to take advantage of "insider" specials, which is a way to skip taking out a sales ad, saving brands cash. Stories can also give those that use them a way to instantly grow engagement - you can add polls to your Stories, or ask questions that can be answered with a simple click.
schedule face time with team building and in-office work
Giving employees a supportive setting where they can get to know each other on a deeper level outside the office has great benefits for your business. Employees are able to learn more about their coworkers, which can increase patience and understanding in a work setting. Trust building exercises show your team members they can rely on each other, while participating in a shared experience can increase bonding. The positive sentiment that is experienced at a fun activity can be carried over into office operations, through employee recognition and milestone celebrations. Fast Company recommends bringing together all employees at least a few times a year. In addition to coming together outside the office, giving remote employees the opportunity to work in the office for a few days or weeks a year gives them more insight into day-to-day, in-office operations. Flying in employees from around the globe to your corporate headquarters can give your team valuable face time, so they can successfully brainstorm together, tackle challenges, and contribute ideas on how to increase efficiency.
gotomeeting
GoToMeeting is a simple, straightforward video conferencing application. It features a one-click meeting feature that quickly schedules meetings in Google Calendar or Outlook. The HD video conferencing attracts a lot of users, and it lets users screen share, use drawing tools, and record meetings
If your business falls within a creative industry of any kind or caters more so to females, then Pinterest is a social media platform you want to be on. Pinterest has 291 million monthly active users. Out of those users, 81% are women, 93% of active pinners said they use Pinterest to plan for purchases and 87% said they've purchased something because of Pinterest. Food recipes, lifestyle how-to articles, wedding inspiration, and outfit ideas are some of the top searches on Pinterest. So if you're business falls within any of those industries, you need to be utilizing Pinterest as one of your social media sites for business. Though Pinterest's advertising platform isn't as advanced as Facebook's, you can still use paid ads to boost the reach of your posts and track online conversions through your Pinterest ads. Additionally, Pinterest has some organic capabilities that other social platforms do not. Organic reach on a Pinterest post is determined by the amount of keywords in a post and if they align with what a user has searched on Pinterest. This gives businesses a chance to strategically plan their content to contain words that are searched a lot on Pinterest, without having to use extra advertising dollars!
If your business follows a B2B model, or targets consumers based on job titles, then LinkedIn can be a powerful tool for you! LinkedIn has 303 million monthly active users, most all of which are in the working world or close to it. Because LinkedIn is considered to be a social media platform for business, people often include more accurate information about their employers, job positions, work email addresses and more than they do on other social media platforms that are utilized more for personal use. LinkedIn's advertising platform is not as advanced as Facebook's in terms of it's campaign functions, but it does give you a lot more job positions to target than Facebook does. This can be crucial if the bottom line of your business is dependent upon targeting specific businesses or job titles.
How the Web Has Changed (2)
In contrast, the 2009 Yahoo! Web site, shown in Figure 1-4 is much more visually appealing than its 1997 predecessor. The site provides the user with a rich browsing experience with its modular, customizable layout and bold graphics. Switching between tabs updates the news block with topical headlines. The news is more accessible; users do not have to drill down through a series of pages to find it. The list of portal topics has been replaced by a list of services that Yahoo! now provides to its users, from a list of all Yahoo! content sites to Yahoo! Yellow Pages, a business portal and directory. The site also displays advertising as a source of revenue. Users must sign in to Yahoo! in order to see their customized content and layout selections. Yahoo! offers more than a search engine and directory. Other services include applications such as Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! Mail, Web-based chat and e-mail services. The My Yahoo! portal page allows users to customize the location and content of each region on the page. Supplying a zip code will cue the site to display local news and weather information. Because a Web browser is not the only device through which users will access Yahoo!, Yahoo! offers a mobile version for use on cell phones.
Instagram comes very close behind Facebook and is number three on our list of social media sites for business. Instagram is owned by the same person who owns Facebook, and has 500 million daily active users. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, saw so much potential in the platform and the benefits of Instagram that he bought it out just 18 months after it launched for $1 billion, and the platform has continued to grow since. Because Instagram is owned by Facebook, it has access to the same extensive user base and advertising platform just like the Facebook Messenger app does. So Instagram has all of the same paid benefits of Facebook, but Instagram also has its own set of organic benefits. When we use the term "organic," we mean functions you can perform or results you can achieve without directly paying for them in advertising dollars. On Facebook, you have to pay for advertising campaigns to grow your followers and increase the reach of your page and posts. On Instagram, you can grow your followers organically and therefore grow the reach of your profile and posts organically as well! This makes Instagram a great option for both businesses with and without an advertising budget. Instagram is also a visual platform, as you can only publish posts that include photos and videos (as opposed to posting copy without a visual creative). This works to your advantage as a business since people remember 80% of what they see as opposed to what they read or hear!
How to Maximize Video Content Across the Major Social Networks (instagram)
Instagram is all about creating attention-grabbing visuals that stand out in a sea of stunning photos. With a maximum of 60 seconds for posted video, Instagram requires marketers to be deliberate with their video marketing techniques. Here's how to make the most of video in your Instagram feed. 1. Square videos perform much better than landscape in a feed This trick applies to all social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. So much of social media is mobile that square videos are much more visually appealing than landscape format (vertical format, in Stories, is also rising in popularity) 2. Use eye-catching graphics or animations You've only got a minute to get your message across - or even less if your audience scrolls past your video. To stand out on Instagram, use highly-produced, graphic, or animated videos which explain your product quickly using bold and engaging imagery. 3. Capture candid moments with Instagram Stories and Live features Instagram Stories now has more than 400 million daily active users. Use the Stories feature to show day-to-day life at your company, or go live to interact with your audience in real-time. Extra tip: your audience receives a notification every time you go live
It shouldn't come as a huge surprise that Facebook is number one on our list of the top 10 social media sites for business. With 2.41 billion daily active users, Facebook is the most widely used social platform. Whether your business goal is brand awareness, website traffic, lead generation, or online conversions, Facebook should (and more than likely will) make a notable difference in reaching your goals when used properly. Facebook's wide user base and demographic of users is the main reason it's at the top of our list; almost anyone can find their target audience on this platform and get in front of them. You may be thinking, "Okay, so my target audience is on Facebook, but how do I make sure they see my business page?" The answer is Facebook advertising (and a lot of great content!). Facebook's advertising platform is by the far the most developed of all of the social media platforms (yes, even out performing Twitter and other channels that have been around a lot longer!). On Facebook, you can target by age, gender, employment, interests, purchasing behaviors, relationship status and so much more! This gives you the power to target your exact audience and put your ads and content in their newsfeed where they are already scrolling. If you're wondering if Facebook is for you; our answer 9 times out 10 is yes. There are only 2 instances when we may suggest another platform over Facebook: the first being if you do not have a social media advertising budget, and the second being if your type of business is prohibited to advertise on Facebook based on Facebook's ad policies (i.e. a vaping or tobacco company etc.). On Facebook, you have to pay to play, so while your target audience is more than likely using the channel daily, you'll need an advertising budget to reach them. But even so, many of our clients have seen significant ROI after investing in Facebook ads. Combining great content and A/B split testing, with Facebook's extensive, data, user base, and ad platform can be one powerful combination for your business!
jira
Jira is an older collaboration tool that focuses on bug tracking. However, the app also has custom filters with Jira Query Language, developer tool integrations, customizable workflows, agile APIs, and more
Business and Professional Networking with Linkedin
LinkedIn connects people with professional colleagues. Reid Hoffman started LinkedIn with five of his friends in 2003. They invited 350 contacts to join the site, and within a month, it grew to 4,500 members. By 2009, there were more than 33 million members on LinkedIn. As the company grew, in order to compete in the social networking arena, it opened its platform to third-party applications such as Reading List, with which you can share or recommend books on Amazon. Members of the site may also receive requests from other contacts regarding employment or consulting opportunities or inquiries related to their jobs or expertise. Your LinkedIn profile, shown in Figure 5-20, lists your current and previous work experience, your education, your Web site or blog, recommendations, interests, honors and awards, and other personal or contact information that you wish to share.
ask for input
Make your efforts for strengthening interpersonal relationships at your business more effective by asking for ideas from your team before you implement a strategy. Your employees will feel valued because you are listening to them and using their advice, which can make them more likely to participate in your endeavors. As you introduce elements like digital knowledge sharing, online collaboration through a professional social network, video chats, off-site team building, company summits and more, continually ask for feedback to optimize your efforts. Your team may have ideas for tools you can use, or may be able to share examples that worked for them in a previous organization they were a part of.
Rich User Experience
Many Web 2.0 sites offer users a rich experience within the Web browser, comparable to the experience of interacting with desktop applications and operating systems. Elements of a rich user experience include pull-down menus, drag and drop, and integrated multimedia. These features were formerly found only in desktop applications; now, Web browsers can mimic and, in many cases, improve upon that experience.
A Culture of Participation
Many Web 2.0 sites promote a culture of participation by inviting users to become part of an online conversation through reading and commenting on others' blogs or writing their own, editing articles on Wikipedia, sharing multimedia, or using collaboration tools. The resulting new and updated content, known as harnessing collective intelligence, encourages people to return to these Web sites. For example, the quality of an article on Wiki-pedia may improve as many different people add their own contributions to it or discuss what would make it better. YouTube and Flickr remain interesting because of the built-in ability for users to share their videos and photos online. Digg is a Web site that allows its readers to submit interesting news stories that they find online and digg, or vote for, the news stories that others submitted. Digg displays the highest-ranked stories on its Web site, shown in Figure 1-9. This process democratizes the Web, as the community's collective input determines the content displayed on the site.
Connecting with Friends on Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook in 2004 as a network for students at Harvard University to connect with each other. The site got its name from the paper booklet of students' photographs distributed to students at Zuckerberg's high school so that they could find each other. Within a few weeks of the site going live at Harvard, other colleges in the Boston area requested to participate, and within a few months, Facebook added 30 more colleges to its network. Facebook quickly grew from a network for college students to a network open to everyone. In 2009, it was estimated that there were as many Facebook users between the ages of 35 and 49 as there were between the ages of 18 and 34. In December 2009, Mark Zuckerberg reported on the Facebook blog, shown in Figure 5-5(a), that more than 350 million people had signed up for Facebook. Figure 5-5(b)contains a table from Wikipedia showing the population of the 10 largest countries in the world. If Facebook were a country, its population would be larger than the population of the United States. The number of Facebook users has more than doubled in 2009, as shown in Figure 5-5(c).
The Internet Explorer browser became popular when:
Microsoft distributed it as part of Windows 95. Windows 95 was the first personal computer operating system to include built-in features for accessing the Internet. Internet Explorer's popularity is due, in part, to the fact that it has been included with every copy of the Windows operating system sold since Windows 95. Not everyone could use Internet Explorer, however, as development was discontinued for the Mac or Linux operating systems.
Creating Niche Social Networks with Ning
Ning is a Web-based application that allows its members to create custom social networks or online communities for niche markets. Ning provides the technology infrastructure for supporting member profiles, uploading photos and videos, and conversing with other members via discussion forums or instant messaging. To publicize activity on the social networks, Ning also offers blogs, wikis, event calendars, and RSS feeds. Since it was launched in 2007, Ning has had more than 6 million frequent visitors and more than 240,000 active social networks.
Extending Facebook with Applications
One key to Facebook's popularity is the thousands of applications that are available to Facebook users. The Facebook Application Directory page, shown in Figure 5-8, displays several applications that you can include as part of your profile. Partnering with third-party developers increases Facebook's value to its users, as more applications are available for users to interact with through Facebook.
use an internal communications board for company messaging
One of the most commonly cited challenges of working outside the office is a feeling of disconnection. Misunderstandings that occur because of misconstrued or too minimal communication can cause confusion or mistrust. It's vital for digital workplace companies to emphasize clear communications across departments, so stakeholders feel they are still able to contribute effectively away from the office and fully understand developments that are happening. An internal communications board, such as Slack or Yammer, can allow teams to transparently see where individuals are in terms of progress on projects, as well as get clarity into what they're working on. While talking face-to-face may not be occurring as frequently, having the capability to contribute ideas, questions and insights in a collaborative online setting helps digital workers feel like meaningful team members.
The Long Tail
One of the reasons that Amazon is successful as an online retailer is the fact that its online shelf space is virtually unlimited. The same is true of songs for sale at the iTunes Store and videos available from the Netflix online rental service. Their collections are larger than what you would find in a physical store because their stores exist online. At physical retailers, shelf space is at a premium, so stores only keep the most popular books, albums or movies in stock. When stores are virtual, they can offer not only the most popular titles but also many more obscure titles. Economist and Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson called this phenomenon the Long Tail. The Long Tail refers to the shape of the graph shown in Figure 5-39.
How to Maximize Video Content Across the Major Social Networks (facebook)
Over the past year, Facebook has pushing its new YouTube competitor, Facebook Watch, which enables users to flick through videos created by publishers, Pages and their friends. Facebook's also been working to popularize Facebook Stories, another video-focused element. Between native video, Facebook Stories, and Facebook Live, it can be hard to choose which platform packs the biggest punch. Here are a few best practices for Facebook video marketing which might help point you in the right direction. 1. Upload videos directly to Facebook According to research, natively uploaded videos on Facebook see more than eight times more comments than videos posted through YouTube or Vimeo. Overall, native video also receives 168% more interaction than videos which come from third-party sources. 2. Add captions People check Facebook at almost all times of day, even at work and in public. More than 85% of Facebook users keep videos on silent for just that reason. If you want to get your message across, make sure to optimize your videos for soundless viewing by adding captions. You can also use charts, subtitles, or animations to communicate silently with your audience. 3. Go live Some 82% of Facebook users prefer to watch live-streams over a reading a basic social post, so it might be worth broadcasting an event to help bring some attention to your page.
James and Ben Heywood founded:
PatientsLikeMe in 2004. Their brother Stephen was suffering with ALS (Lou Gherig's disease), for which there is no known cure, and the Heywood family used the global reach of the Internet to find people and ideas that would improve their brother's quality of life. Gradually, the site expanded to include other diseases and ailments and formed partnerships with pharmaceutical companies, medical professionals, and support organizations, many of whom have taken interest in PatientsLikeMe because of the vast amount of data that its members have generated. PatientsLikeMe members may use the site to seek support from others who share their conditions as their disease progresses. They may also contribute their own health profiles, experiences, and information so that, when combined with that of thousands of PatientsLikeMe users, their information can be a valuable resource to other patients and medical professionals. Patient data can also be used to inform future research and ultimately improve medical care. Figure 5-32 displays the ALS/Motor Neuron Disease community page.
Influencer Marketing Will Continue to Grow
Research shows that 59% of marketers plan on increasing their influencer budget in 2020. We know that consumers are growing increasingly wary of ads in their feeds, and more than ever before, they're now seeking reviews from people they trust when making purchasing decisions. These people can be friends and family, but the circle of trust has now grown to people they follow on social media, ranging from celebrities to niche artists and experts in specific fields. Social media has always been great for SMBs and startups, because it allows small brands with little to no budget to compete with larger brands on the same stage. Many SMBs don't have the budgets to go after the "named" influencers, so we see a larger opportunity for the growth of micro-influencers in the new year.
snapchat
Snapchat is an app that allows users to send Snapchats (a photo or video) either directly to another user or to their Snapchat Story. A Snapchat sent directly to another user can only be viewed once, but a Snapchat on a Story (such as your business' Story) is visible for up to 24 hours after it's published. If your target market is largely comprised of a younger demographic, then Snapchat may be one of the more effective social media sites for business for you! There are over 350 million monthly active users, and 203 million daily active users on Snapchat, and 71% of those users are under 34 years old. Specifically, almost half of its users are aged between 18-24. Snapchat shares Instagram's advantage of visual content since Snapchat posts have to include either a photo or video to publish. In fact, Snapchat has more than 10 million daily video views. Are your company's videos tapping into these daily viewings? Snapchat also offers advertising options where you can pay to have a linkable Snapchat in the Discovery section of Snapchat.
Nonprofit Organizations and Social Networking
Social activists and nonprofit organizations have found the value in social networking as a tool for increasing awareness about and raising funds for their causes. Organizations that are trying to reach people of a particular demographic can create a presence on a social network that appeals to that particular group. For example, an organization that is reaching out to musicians might create a presence on MySpace, whereas Facebook may be better suited to reaching out to college students. Organizations may use Twitter to send out brief announcements about upcoming activities or may use Flickr and YouTube to post photos and videos, respectively, from their events.
Common Features of Social Networking Applications
Social networking sites let people get to know each other online. In addition to sharing and updating personal and professional information, many users of social networking sites keep their status messages up to date. A status message displays a current location, activities, or thoughts so that friends and contacts will know what a user is doing. Friends may also comment on a user's status message. All social networking applications share similar features: the ability to create a profile, the ability to designate other members as friends or contacts, and the ability to identify a friend's friends. You can ask someone with whom you share an interest to be a friend (the term used by personal networks such as Facebook and Twitter) or a contact (the term used by the LinkedIn professional network). Your collection of friends forms your social network. On most social networks, a person must confirm your friend request in order for you to join his or her network. Because both parties must agree to be friends, this helps to create trust among all members of a social network. By looking at a list of your friends' friends, you can identify friends who you share in common. Though a larger social network is generally more useful than a smaller one because of the additional potential connections, it also is important that the people who you connect with add value to your network.
Connecting People with Special Interests
Social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn typically are used to connect people with their friends, families, or coworkers. Special-purpose social networks connect targeted groups of people with similar interests or situations, enabling them to share information with each other regardless of whether or not they know each other in real life or will ever meet in person. Social networks that reach out to special interest groups, such as people who enjoy similar activities or support the same charitable causes or organizations, bring people together because they share common goals.
Privacy Concerns
Social networks have a privacy policy that describes how they will use your personal information. Figure 5-11 shows Facebook's Privacy Policy page.
Social and Technological Developments that Led to Web 2.0
The Internet advanced to the point where connectivity is available almost everywhere. The personal computer evolved into an appliance that is found in many homes, schools, and offices. Mobile phones emerged as devices capable of both making calls and accessing the World Wide Web. The Web browser became a widely available and easy-to-use tool for exploring the Web. Web-based applications were developed for use on many different devices. Web developers used the Web to deploy new versions of software applications. Society embraced these technological changes to the point where they are not only encouraged but expected.
Special Purpose Social Networks
The Web has become the home of many niche social networks that allow users to connect with each other for very specific purposes. The following are just a few examples of these targeted social networks. Meetup is a social network that enables people who live near each other to gather in person and engage in common activities. PatientsLikeMe is a social network for people to provide support and information for each other as they live with life-changing illnesses. Slideshare is a social network for people to share their PowerPoint presentations with others. These examples illustrate the range and diversity of social networks.
The Web as a Platform for Running Applications
The World Wide Web is increasingly being used as a platform for supporting software programs hosted on remote Web servers. Users interact with these remote applications using a Web browser. Although many people use the terms World Wide Web and Internet interchangeably, there is a difference, shown in Figure 1-11. The Internet provides a hardware foundation for exchanging information over a computer network. It encompasses the worldwide network of computer networks, containing servers, routers, and switches needed to facilitate the transfer of data from one computer to another.
Finding and Following People on Twitter
The ability to search Twitter opens many possibilities to find and follow people who are interested in or are tweeting about topics that interest you. WeFollow, shown in Figure 5-44, is one of several directories of Twitter users. So that others may find you more easily, you can add yourself to WeFollow using appropriate tags to describe yourself and the topics that you are most likely to tweet about. Following your friends' followers is another way to expand your Twitter network. It is perfectly acceptable Twitter etiquette to follow people whose profiles or tweets you find interesting, even if you do not know them personally. A personal note introducing yourself to someone whom you choose to follow helps to strengthen the connection between both parties.
facebook workplace
The appeal of Facebook Workplace is its ability to act as a corporate intranet portal, but with a very user-friendly interface. Groups and teams can collaborate through their own portals, as well as through Facebook's own Pages, Docs, and Notes. Work Chat allows for easy communication via messaging and voice/video call, and built-in machine learning bots automate certain tasks
The Web Browser
The continued development of the Web browser was one of the key elements that contributed to the evolution of Web 2.0. A Web browser is a software application for accessing and viewing Web pages. The Mosaic Web browser (Figure 1-6), which was later marketed commercially as the Netscape Web browser, was the first graphical interface to the World Wide Web. Mosaic was developed for computers running the Unix operating system and later became available for personal computers running the Mac and Windows operating systems. It was one of the first software applications that looked and worked the same way on different operating systems. Mosaic was distributed for free to more than a million educational and noncommercial users in its first year, making the World Wide Web easily accessible
How the Web Has Changed
The fact that users of Web 2.0 sites can contribute to their content makes popular Web sites today very different from early Web sites. Initially, Web pages contained mostly text and small graphics that only the developers of a site could update. The earliest Web sites were often a collection of hyperlinks to other resources on the World Wide Web. Founded in 1995, Yahoo! is an Internet portal and service provider and one of the earliest and most successful Internet start-up companies. Figure 1-2 shows the Yahoo! home page as it appeared in 1997. These images were obtained by using the Wayback Machine, an application hosted on The Internet Archive that has been taking regular snapshots of pages on the World Wide Web since the mid-1990s. The 1997 Yahoo! page is representative of how many Web pages looked at that time. Because connecting to the early Internet was slow by today's standards, Web designs were simple and the content was often static. Very few graphics appeared on a Web page, with the exception of a few small icons on the top of the page. Graphics were minimized in order to reduce the amount of time that a page took to load. The original Yahoo! Web site served as a portal page containing hyperlinks that formed a directory of resources on the Web Figure 1-3 . To see the day's news, users had to click the News link on the home page to view a page with a list of hyperlinks to news by category. After selecting a category, it took a third click to get to a list of headlines. A fourth click was necessary to actually read a news story.
How to Maximize Video Content Across the Major Social Networks (linkedin)
The professional social network is the most recent to add video to its feed, first for individuals and more recently for business pages as well. Make sure you maintain an educational and professional tone on LinkedIn - busy business-people are unlikely to stick around for a frivolous post which might work well on Facebook or Instagram. 1. Leave your sales pitch behind Professionals use LinkedIn to expand their networks and keep updated about relevant news in their field. Use the platform to share your expert knowledge on a topic, or to provide customer service for one of your products. 2. Keep videos under two minutes long Although LinkedIn allows you to upload videos up to 10 minutes long, 53% of users prefer videos that are 90 seconds or fewer. Remember, most LinkedIn users are busy professionals looking for career growth and development. 3. Add subtitles - someone might be watching at work Much like on Facebook, many LinkedIn users watch videos silently. Make sure they can receive your message either way by adding captions to your videos, so they don't need to turn the sound on. Social media video is an incredible tool for interacting with your audience - but there's no 'one-size-fits-all' approach that will work for all content types, and all platforms. Use these tips to tailor your video marketing to each of your channels, so that you can optimize your reach and spread your message to your audience.
Business Uses of Social Networking
The social Web, a term referring to the combination of social networking and social media applications, can be defined by conversations between people and organizations over many channels of Web-based communication. Online interactions take place in or on blogs, social networks, videos, images, and text messages, as suggested by the Conversation Prism in Figure 5-50. Created by social media thought leader Brian Solis, the intent of this diagram is to show the vast choices available in social media and their applications to business. With so many social media alternatives available, companies need to identify those that best apply to their business, industry, or brand in order to locate the conversations that are the most relevant to them.
Shopping on Social Media
This is a trend that began this year and I predict will continue to grow. Increasingly, you no longer need to leave a certain site or platform in order to make a purchase or a product you've found. Now, with just a few clicks, you can go from seeing something you like while scrolling Instagram to sharing your credit card information and making a purchase right then and there. Giving consumers this type of ease and speed can cut your sales funnel almost in half. I believe we're going to see more brands shift in this direction, and while currently it's mainly being used by larger, well-established companies, I think 2020 will give smaller brands, and hopefully even startups, access to such tools.
Improved Customer Service
This is really a second part for chatbots. We know that, every day, the time a consumer will allow from when they contact a brand to when they expect an answer is shortening. We know that having a live 24/7 customer service team for every single company isn't realistic. Utilizing chatbot technology, in combination with your live staff, enables for this type of round the clock coverage. Of course, bots can't answer every single question, nor do they allow the personalization of talking to an actual human - but a lot of time can be saved for the customer service workers by handing over the common questions, changes to addresses and passwords to the chatbots. Chatbots haven't caught on in a major way as yet, but they look set to become more prominent in 2020, with potential cost savings and improvements potentially leading to a larger shift. These are the key areas where I see significant progress being made in the next year - though of course, many new elements will pop-up, and many new tools and shifts will also take place. But in terms of actionable marketing potential, these are where I expect to see the most relevant shifts. Hopefully these notes will help you prepare your strategic approach.
Phone Systems
Throughout the semester, we're going to talk about a lot of technologies you may encounter in the workplace. Keep in mind that even if your job uses a different program than the one we investigate, many programs have similar features. Technology is changing the workplace rapidly; however, one "older" form of business communication technology that hasn't been completely replaced is the telephone.
tiktok
TikTok is a new social media platform that was launched last 2018. It's an app that allows its users to create their own 15 second video clip and share them. Now it has 1.2 billion users worldwide with 500 million monthly active users. With these figures, it has now surpassed Twitter, LinkedIn and Snapchat - platforms which are obviously older. However, although it has so much potential capturing the attention of Gen Z, it still has a long way to go when it comes to advertising. The only way for marketers to use this platform for advertising is through influencers. And since it is still not that saturated compared to other social media giants like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, a lot of brands now are using it to reach Gen Z - a market that seems quite hard to reach.
how social media can move your business forward
To question the power of social media in society is to question the importance of sunlight on earth. It's no longer a want, but a need. Just imagine what life would be like without platforms that allow people from all over the world to connect. Imagine having to pay hundreds if not thousands on phone bills just to reach loved ones. Imagine having to email an entire album's worth of photos so friends can see what you've been up to. It would be a very lonely world. Thankfully, with the dawn of online networking, catching up with loved ones, interacting with friends, learning about the latest updates and connecting with customer service is as easy as the click of a button. As of January 2018, there are 4.02 billion internet users around the globe — that's 53% of the world's total population. Active social media users make up 3.2 billion, or 42% of the population. These numbers alone prove that social media is here to stay, if not to flourish further. With such penetration, its significance to society cannot be ignored — especially in the marketing world. The reach and influence of social media is a treasure in the business and trade industries, where the need to engage and persuade the market is of top priority. With the slow death of print and radio, social media has taken over as one of the leading channels for marketing and advertising.
trello
Trello is a project management software perfect for those who like to stay organized. Users can create boards or lists that can be assigned to and shared with other teams. The software features deadline reminders, email notifications and has Evernote, GitHub, Google Drive, and Slack integrations.
Twitter and Popular Culture
Twitter has become a source for connecting with celebrities and reading about breaking news stories as they unfold. In June 2009, after the Iranian election, the Iranian government cracked down on Web communication by shutting down text messaging, Facebook, YouTube, and news services. Posts on Twitter tagged with #iranelection became a lifeline for supporting democratic expression and getting information to the outside world. The use of social media as a news source made the front page of the New York Times, as shown in Figure 5-46. Note that news and information reported on Twitter (or Wikipedia or anywhere else on the World Wide Web) is as reliable as the person who posts it. Twitter has taken steps to verify accounts belonging to high-profile individuals, such as politicians and celebrities, in order to confirm that they really are associated with the person whose identity is suggested by the account name.
URL Shorteners
Twitter is an effective tool for sharing the URLs of a new blog post that you wrote or of an interesting article or resource that you found on the Web. However, the permalink to a blog post or the URL for an article or Web site may be too long to include in a tweet while leaving a sufficient number of characters to write a brief introduction. In this case, a URL shortener service such as Bit.ly or TinyURL, shown in Figure 5-47, can help. URL shortener are Web applications that encode a long URL in order to create a shorter, equivalent URL often with 18 to 25 characters. Shortened URLs contain http:// followed by the shortening service's domain name, and often a four- to six-character key that uniquely identifies the original URL. When a user enters the shortened URL in the browser, the shortening service looks up the key in its database, finds the corresponding original long URL, and redirects the user's browser to that location. This appears to the user as if the shortened URL takes the visitor to the desired location automatically. Because accessing a Web site via its shortened URL requires a visit to an intermediate Web server (where the URL-shortening service resides), the URL-shortening service may track the number of clicks and other statistics about the shortened URL's usage. This information allows those who add shortened URLs to their tweets to view the number of people who click through to the recommended sites.
Twitter is one of the older social media platforms, and it has 336 million monthly active Twitter users. You can post photos and videos along with character-limited copy, but Twitter is most known for its feed of real-time updates. Is the term "live-tweeting" ringing a bell now? Twitter is also great for engaging new potential customers through its use of hashtags. Similar to Instagram, you can search a hashtag and find other posts from consumers and businesses alike that have used that hashtag. This means that you can find consumers searching for something that your company offers and vice versa! For example, if you're a car wash company, you can literally find people tweeting about how they need to get their car washed depending on how they've used hashtags in their tweet. You can then tweet them with a discount for your car wash, and wa-la, you've most likely got a new customer.
Twitter clients such as Twhirl and TweetDeck offer:
URL-shortening features directly in their applications. The Twitter Web site does as well. Before posting tweets, Twitter automatically converts long URLs found in messages submitted via the Twitter Web site into shortened URLs. Shortened URLs also are useful to replace long hyperlinks in e-mail messages. The URLs accompanying online maps, permalinks to blog posts, or items for sale by online retailers often contain more than 100 characters. Some e-mail programs cannot handle URLs that span more than one line and may break them onto two or more lines, rendering the hyperlink unable to be clicked in an e-mail message. A danger of using URL-shortening services is that, like all free Web-based services, the companies that host them might go out of business, resulting in broken URLs. URL shorteners are a useful short-term solution to provide easy access to Web resources but should not be relied upon indefinitely. Shortened URLs are also useful for posting links to images within tweets. Twitpic is one of several similar services that facilitate posting images on Twitter. Posting images on Twitter is especially popular when tweeting from a cell phone that has a built-in camera. Images of breaking news stories have been posted on Twitter in this way, as shown in Figure 5-48.
How to Maximize Video Content Across the Major Social Networks (twitter)
Video performs surprisingly well on Twitter, seeing around 6x more retweets than photos. Take advantage of Twitter marketing using these tips. 1. Use native video features to extend reach Just like Facebook, Twitter's algorithm rewards native video much more than external links. The autoplay feature makes users more likely to watch and interact with videos, so upload videos directly where you can. 2. Keep videos short, like a tweet Users log onto Twitter for quick bursts of information. For top results, capture attention in the first three seconds of the video as people scroll by, and don't post videos longer than 45 seconds.
Features of Web 2.0 Applications
Web 2.0 is a revolution resulting from both technology developments and a social shift in how people use the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 encourages a culture of participation by providing tools that facilitate the creation of online communities that link people as well as the information they share. Web 2.0 is characterized by fully featured applications that run within the browser and offer rich user experiences. With Web 2.0, data is stored separately from instructions for how the data should be displayed so that content can be accessible from a variety of Internet-enabled devices.
A Database-Backed Web
Web 2.0 is often referred to as a read/write Web or a database-backed Web because Web-based applications read from or write to a database when they access or update content. Unlike simple Web sites whose pages do not change unless someone manually writes the code for them, many complex Web sites, including Web 2.0 sites, rely on online databases, from which the applications access and process the data to display. A Web server. processes requests for Web pages sent over the Internet from a Web client, such as a personal computer, and responds by sending back the Web pages that the client requested. This is known as the client-server model. Figure 1-12 illustrates the steps involved when a client computer requests a static Web page from a Web server. When you enter a URL of a Web site in your browser, your computer makes a request to a Web server to obtain that page. If the page contains static content, the Web server will locate the content and send it back as a response to the Web browser.
webex
WebEx is a go-to collaboration tool for companies that communicate primarily through video, so it could prove itself very useful for businesses that have a lot of remote workers. The platform provides personalized video meeting rooms for team collaboration, training, webinars, customer support, and more
facebook messenger
While Facebook Messenger is a part of Facebook, you have to download the Facebook Messenger app separately from Facebook to use it. It contains a few additional features outside of the ones mentioned above for Facebook! Thus, Facebook Messenger is number 2 on our list of social media sites for business. Facebook Messenger is an app that allows Facebook users to send direct messages to one another, and lucky for you this functionality also extends to business pages! Because Facebook Messenger is a part of Facebook, it has the same access to Facebook's large user base and advertising platform. You can definitely use this to your advantage! Facebook has advertising campaigns that are specifically developed for Facebook Messenger. When someone clicks on an ad, they will be prompted to start a Facebook Message with your business page, and if they do, your business page can follow up with them in messages from that point on. If your business model is more focused on lead generation as opposed to ecommerce or more immediate online conversions, then this may be a good option for your business! Outside of using Facebook Messenger advertising, you can also set up automated messages for your business page. This way, if someone messages your Facebook business page organically, Facebook Messenger will send an automated message back to them (one that you have crafted). Oftentimes, these automated messages say something as simple as, "Thank you for reaching out to us! Someone will respond back to you within 24 business hours. Thank you and have a great day!" Even a message as simple as that one helps build trust between your business and potential or existing customers. Therefore bettering the chances of you making a buyer or repeat buyer out of them.
host regular video chats
While research studies have shown problem solving is more efficient in a digital setting, more positive impressions are formed of a person after interacting with them face-to-face compared to online. A study published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior found those who communicate face-to-face compared to online also have greater self-other agreement. Even a business that has completely embraced a digital workplace model still needs face-to-face interactions to thrive. Video chats can help. Businesses that rely on visual elements to propel their operations, such as designers and product developers, can also use video chat to easily convey ideas in real time no matter where they are. Look for a solution that enables participants to ask questions or add comments in real time so they can contribute, such as Skype. Some ways to incorporate video communication in your business include: Weekly team meetings over video Quarterly company-wide video summits, with segments hosted by various department heads Promotion of regular video communication among teammates, such as in situation where a 15-minute face-to-face conversation will bring more clarity to an issue compared to what hours of email communication would Archive video chat meetings so those working remotely in off-hour time zones can access them later. Provide your employees with reliable technology so they can log in to a video chat easily and securely.
youtube
YouTube is a video platform that allows users to watch videos and/or upload them. YouTube has 2 billion monthly active users, giving your business the chance to share company content wither over 30+ million daily active users who are likely to watch it. Similar to Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat, YouTube has the benefit of visual content, but unlike the other social media sites for business that we've listed so far, it has the unique stance of being owned by Google! Because of this, YouTube has access to Google's advertising platform, and you can use this to your advantage when running YouTube ads. It also mimics its parent company in that you can optimize the search of your company's YouTube videos with the proper keywords. Without having to spend extra money on advertising dollars, you can make your YouTube videos have higher search rankings by including the searched keywords in your title, video description, and actual list of keywords in the keywords tool.
Connecting with Facebook
Your profile on Facebook contains a variety of pages and tabs where you can share information with your friends. For example, the Info tab of your Facebook profile, shown in Figure 5-6, displays personal information that you want to share with friends, classmates, or coworkers on Facebook.
Selecting a Username
Your username for personal or professional accounts might be your e-mail address or your first initial or first name followed by your last name. If you prefer a username that is more anonymous or more playful, you might select a nickname (such as Web-girl) or some part of your name with a meaningful number appended (such as rhonda2000). To make it easier to remember and also promote a common identity on the Web, many people try to register the same username across different applications.
flickr
a Web site for uploading and storing digital photographs, provides a space for its users to share their photos. Users can take advantage of tags, or keywords, to identify and organize photos in personally meaningful ways
microblog
a blog in which each post contains a limited number of characters
gmail
a browser-based e-mail application, is similar to e-mail applications you might expect to see installed on a desktop or laptop computer. Gmail users also may communicate with each other using an integrated instant messaging application that runs within the browser
wikipedia
a collaborative online encyclopedia, relies on its contributors to write, review, and update the millions of articles it contains
dot-com
a company that conducts business over the World Wide Web, so-called because of the .com suffix in its name
An environment that supports creating and running software applications is known as:
a computing platform. The Internet is a platform for running both Web and non-Web applications. The protocols for transferring files, sending e-mail messages, instant messaging, and Internet telephony (Voice Over IP) are all examples of applications that run on the Internet and operate independent of the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web is an Internet application that itself supports the creation of applications that run within a Web browser. Web 2.0 applications provide browser interfaces to collaborate, create or publish online content, or support social networking. Web 2.0 applications may also interact with non-Web Internet applications, enabling you to upload files, check e-mail messages, send instant messages, or make voice and video calls from applications running within a Web browser.
To assist in categorizing tweets:
a convention has evolved to include a hashtag, which is the hash symbol or number sign (#), followed by a descriptive tag in tweets related to specific topics or events. One of the first widespread uses of hashtags on Twitter came in 2007 when the hashtag "#sandiegofire" was used to organize tweets about this disaster. An example of one of the #sandiegofire tweets is shown in Figure 5-42. By searching for posts with this hashtag, people were able to get help and updated information from those on the scene via Twitter. As with tags on Flickr or Delicious, hashtags on Twitter add additional context and metadata to your tweets. Hashtags bring order to a series of tweets, whether posted from an event or in response to current news, which makes conversations on Twitter easier to follow. Anyone can follow a conversation marked with hashtags by entering the desired hashtag on a Twitter search page, regardless of whether he or she uses Twitter. In addition to using the Twitter Web site to send their tweets, many people interact with Twitter through a client application that runs on a personal computer or cell phone, shown in Figure 5-43. Client applications notify users of new tweets and often provide additional features not found on the Twitter Web site. The ability to post messages and photos to Twitter from an Internet-enabled cell phone has enabled people to tweet about what they are doing or thinking from virtually anywhere.
Web applications, hosted on a Web server, access data stored in:
a database server available on the World Wide Web. Figure 1-13 illustrates the steps involved when a client computer requests a Web page containing dynamic content. If the requested Web page contains dynamic content, such as a blog, the application on the Web server will connect to the database server to obtain that blog's posts. The blog application receives the data from the database server and assembles it into the blog's Web page. The Web server then returns the Web page to the browser to display.
social graph
a diagram showing the connections between people, groups, and organizations in a social network
think first
a good portion of the incoming calls a business receives go to voicemail, so be prepared for what you'll say if the person you're calling doesn't pick up. Before picking up the phone, pause for a second and go through the call in your head. Narrow down its purpose to one or two sentences and leave a concise voicemail message that states your purpose and gets right to the point.
Facebook's Friends page, linked from the top navigation bar, displays:
a list of your current friends, helps you to find new ones, as shown in Figure 5-4(a) and offers recommendations about people who you might know.
password strength
a measure of how well a password resists being discovered
web-based mobile applications
a mobile application written as a collection of Web pages, accessible via a URL that runs on all mobile browsers, regardless of phone platform
database-backed Web
a name for Web 2.0 that refers to applications that read from or write to a database to access or update content
read/write web
a name for Web 2.0 that refers to applications that read from or write to a database to access or update content
status message
a notification message of a user's current location or activities
a popular social networking Web site originally created for college students to keep track of their current friends, has grown to become an online directory where people of all ages turn to find long-lost friends. It is effective because of the large number of visitors who regularly update their profiles or status messages to inform their friends of their latest happenings
To use Meetup, users first create:
a profile, and then they can either browse the site for groups that they would like to join or create their own Meetup Group. Many Meetup Groups hold activities in public spaces to safely bring members together. Figure 5-30 shows the locations of all of the Dining Out Meetups Groups, where people around the world who share an interest in trying various cuisines have gathered.
profile page
a web page that contains information about you available to other members of your social network
Friend Connect can be enabled in a blog or Web site by:
adding a gadget to a blog's sidebar or by embedding HTML code supplied by Google. Using Friend Connect, a blog or Web site can offer functionality to let members connect with each other. Whenever you join a site with Friend Connect, your Friend Connect profile will include a list of blogs or Web sites that you have joined. Other members who view your profile may see this information. Go2Web20, an index of Web 2.0 applications, uses Friend Connect to create communities on their site. Figure 5-26 shows the members page of the Go2Web20. Clicking any one of the profile icons displays that member's profile, favorite links, and sites that they have joined.
By default, the Friend List provided by Facebook includes:
all of your friends. You might, however, create a list named CollegeFriends to include friends from your college and a CoWorkers list to group the people with whom you work. Other lists might include a Family list of family members on Facebook and an Acquaintances list for friends of friends or other people you don't know very well. Friend Lists are like tags you assign to organize your friends: one friend might be a member of more than one friend list. The Friend List page provides options for creating new Friend Lists, adding and removing friends from lists to which you assigned them, and deleting unneeded lists.
manners do matter
always be polite regardless of who is on the other end of the line. Whether you are talking to a receptionist or the company president never forget to say please and thank you. Aside from the fact that everyone deserves respect, the person who answers your call can make sure it gets dealt with appropriately
URL shorteners
an application that generates an abbreviated URL that redirects to a longer one
social media application
an application that informs, educates, and entertains people through shared online content
native application
an appplication written especially for a specific mobile phone platform, such as Google Android, Apple iPhone, or Windows Mobile Phone
A Blue Pages profile contains:
an employee's contact information and an area where an employee can update a status message regarding current projects. The site integrates internal organizational data, such as a reporting chain that includes the name of an employee's supervisor and his or her supervisors and links to their profile pages, as well as an employee's professional information, as posted on LinkedIn. The profile page also displays the tags that the employee uses to describe internal corporate resources and links to internal Web pages that the employee has bookmarked. IBM employees use the Blue Pages network to connect with others who share professional interests, such as software development or healthcare and life sciences. These virtual communities provide employees an opportunity to connect with colleagues throughout the company with whom they may not directly work.
platform
an environment that supports creating and running software applications
youtube
an online community Web site for people to upload and watch videos, stores videos that also can be embedded in other Web sites
project management systems and scheduling
another use of technology in business is the implementation of project management systems for collaboration between employees. Workers no longer need to be in the same building or sit in a lengthy meeting to share their ideas. Whether they're at the corporate headquarters or working from home, individuals can create task lists, assign work, upload content, set appointments and track progress all in one online application
Because Facebook is designed to accommodate:
applications developed by third parties, it has become a platform for all of a user's social networking activities, including multiplayer games, e-mail messages, and instant messaging.
artificial intelligence engages in marketing
artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are being used to predict and influence future sales based on consumer preferences. Knowledge of customer preferences in real time can assist marketing departments in determining where to spend their money by tracking trends more closely and adapting promotional and sales efforts. The streaming entertainment industry, for example, suggests additional programming based on shows already being watched. "Because you watched this ... you might enjoy this
Biz Stone and Evan Williams started Twitter:
as a way for people in their office to keep in touch with each other by exchanging short messages about what they were doing. They limited the size of each message to 140 characters so that people could send and receive messages using text messaging on their cell phones. Twitter has experienced rapid growth despite modest beginnings, as shown in a blog post on TechCrunch in Figure 5-40, and is now used by technology and social media enthusiasts, journalists, celebrities, politicians, and others. Twitter is an online application for creating a social network in which you interact by sending and receiving short messages from two groups of people: people from whom you receive messages, known as your following, and people who receive messages from you, known as your followers. Every time that you send a message, or tweet, on Twitter, the tweet is broadcast to every one of your followers. Every time that one of the people who you are following sends a tweet, you will receive it, as will all of their other followers. Users can access Twitter through their cell phones, desktop applications, or other Web sites. Messages on Twitter can spread virally. If one of your followers forwards a message that you sent, or retweets your message, all of his or her followers will receive it as well. Retweeting drastically expands the reach of any message that you send. Searching Twitter has become a useful way to get a pulse on what people in the Twitterverse (slang for everybody on Twitter) are collectively talking about.
If your friends are organized into Friend Lists, you can:
assign specific privacy policies to each list. Doing so gives access to only those parts of your profile that you want members of each list to see. For example, you might want to make your mobile phone number available only to your college friends who you actually know. Figure 5-19 describes the process to assign these settings.
automated voice systems provide service
automated voice response systems are another way to provide customer service while allowing employees to stay focused on other tasks. Instead of a "live person," the automated system handles the call and either directs the customer to the appropriate individual or retrieves data and communicates the basic information requested by the caller. Similarly computer "bots" handle online requests for information through live chats. Customers feel like they are being served by a live representative, but often the site is served by a computer programmed with basic responses to routine questions
The professional network that you build on LinkedIn can:
be helpful when you are seeking employment. Your LinkedIn network can help you find professionals who can introduce you to people employed at companies where you might like to work or people working in or hiring individuals for positions that are similar to those that interest you. Because your contacts recommend them, you already have a connection. To search for a job, click the Jobs link on the top navigation bar, enter your search terms in the keyword text box, select your country and zip code, and then click search. When you search the employment database on LinkedIn, the job search results, shown in Figure 5-21, often contain jobs posted by people who are in your extended network.
introduce yourself
begin every voicemail message by introducing yourself, so the recipient knows who calling right away. It should include your full name and company name: "Hello, this is Jim Smith calling from Company X about your account." You should also make sure you know how to pronounce the name of the person you're calling. You don't want to insult unintentionally before you've even established contact.
A Facebook profile contains:
biographical and contact information, as well as information about favorite activities, interests, networks, and other items. Facebook uses this data to connect you to other members whose profiles contain similar information.
Pizza Hut uses Twitter to promote its:
brand and offer special incentives, service, and support to customers. Comcast uses Twitter to provide technical support and service to its customers and to reply to their inquiries.
World Wide Web
changed the way that people do business, communicate, and share information with each other. Since its inception in the early 1990s, the World Wide Web has evolved from a collection of Web sites containing pages of static or infrequently changing text, images, and hyperlinks to support interactive Web applications for performing business transactions, sharing and viewing photos and videos, chatting, and collaborating. Web 2.0 is a name given to these many new uses of the World Wide Web that have emerged since the beginning of its second decade
You or your friends can write:
comments, greetings, or other messages on your Wall. A Facebook Wall also displays a log of your activities, such as becoming friends with new people or writing a message on a friend's Wall. Posts on your Facebook Wall are stored online indefinitely and form a record of your life activities for all of your friends to see.
tag
descriptive key words
the downside of technology in communications
despite the savings to companies, there are some negative effects to this surge in technological integration into business communications. Some studies have shown a decrease in productivity over the long term due to an "always connected" lifestyle fueled by easy access to information. Many employees may never actually take a break from the work routine because they are always checking email or status updates on a project through a mobile app, resulting in high levels of stress and increased illness. Additionally, many workers are lacking in proper sleep, less connected with people outside the office and lacking the ability to relate to each other in face-to-face interactions
By answering questions, you can demonstrate your:
expertise on a particular topic. In addition to helping those who asked the questions, future employers can get a sense of your writing style and knowledge by looking on LinkedIn to see any answers that you contributed to questions. You can rate the quality of the answers that you read. Members whose answers are rated highly appear on LinkedIn's list of experts. Most social networking sites do not charge users a fee to create profiles or use the basic functions of the site. Because social networks are the most effective when a large number of people participate in them, sites like Facebook and MySpace rely on advertising rather than user fees as a source of revenue. In contrast, LinkedIn uses the freemium model. LinkedIn provides basic functionality for free but charges users a fee for additional services. These premium services include the ability to send out more than five introductions at a time and the ability to contact other members directly by sending InMails, which use LinkedIn's internal e-mail application. Figure 5-25 compares some of the premium features available to users who upgrade their account type from Personal to Business, Business Plus, or Pro.
Unlike search engines, whose goal is to provide:
external links to needed information as quickly as possible, Facebook's approach is to integrate as much information as possible into the site so that users will stay there longer. The more time that a user spends on Facebook, or any social networking site, the more attractive it may be for advertisers to place ads on the site.
fan pages
facebook page for sharing information about a company or product with its followers
The Applications Directory page displays:
featured applications, applications organized by category, recommended applications that you may like, and information about applications that your friends have recently used. Many applications show you which of your friends are also using them. Because you and your friends can share information about which applications you interact with on the Applications Directory page and as entries in your News Feed, Facebook applications can become popular very quickly. When you add an application to your profile, it displays in the Boxes tab, shown in Figure 5-9.
now hold on
first of all, you should avoid all other conversations while you are on the phone. Reality sometimes gets in the way through. You may have to talk to someone who comes into your office or cubicle or pick up another call. Excuse yourself and then limit your other conversation to just a few seconds. Don't leave someone waiting on hold indefinitely. If you can't take care of the other matter quickly, but it must be dealt with immediately, instead of putting the person with whom you were speaking on hold, ask if you can call back at a time that is convenient for her
Facebook allows you to select which:
friends or third-party applications can see each piece of information associated with your Facebook account. Figure 5-13 shows the pages available from the Privacy Settings page.
Personal information on a Facebook profile includes:
gender, birthday, hometown, interests, and favorites. Professional information on a LinkedIn profile includes current and past employment, education, and a summary of professional skills. Both sites allow you to list your friends or contacts. On LinkedIn, adding a recommendation to the profile pages of people who you know enhances the value of the profile to potential employers.
practice and test yourself
if you are unsure or feel nervous about leaving business messages, practice with a friend or colleague. Leave them a sample voicemail message and ask for a critique: Are you speaking too quickly? Is your voice too low? Are you difficult to understand in any way? It might also be worth leaving yourself a voicemail to hear firsthand how you sound
once is enough
if you leave a message and the person for whom you left it doesn't get back to you immediately it may be because she can't at the moment. There is no need to call again and again. If it is a pressing matter, you can try calling the next day again or following up with an email stating that you also left a voicemail
Many Twitter clients and phone applications include:
image-posting capabilities. Whether a user uploads an image from a computer or takes a photo using a cell phone, the processing is the same, as shown in Figure 5-49. A user uploads a photo to Twitpic. Twitpic stores the image and generates a short URL to access it. Twitpic sends the image's short URL and the user's tweet to Twitter on the user's behalf. When the shortened URL is clicked in a tweet, Twitpic displays the uploaded image.
Although all three of the networks' Web sites:
in Figure 5-38 have a highly customized appearance, they all include several of the same social networking features. For example, all three include the capabilities to display groups and the network's latest activity, along with the option to join the network.
swallow first
in other words, your mouth should be unoccupied when making a call or answering the phone. You want to be able to speak clearly and that is impossible if you are chewing or swallowing
On MySpace, shown in Figure 5-3, profiles of bands may include:
information about the type of music they play, samples of their music as recorded audio files, information about the members of the band, and details about upcoming concerts.
Twitter can be a great source of:
information for companies looking to see what their customers are saying about them and their products, as shown in Figure 5-51. Companies such as Pizza Hut (a chain of pizza restaurants) and Comcast (a cable, Internet, and phone service provider) can use information about them posted on Twitter to improve their customer service and build their social networks.
Traditional CRM systems must be:
installed, configured, and maintained on servers located within a company's data center. In contrast, in Web-based CRM systems, both the CRM application software and a company's customer data are stored on the server of the CRM service provider. Customers can connect to the service by logging in to the application that runs within a Web browser. Under this model, the CRM service provider hosts and manages the application, and customers pay for a license to use the software for a given period of time. When a software application and the data that it interacts with are located on the Web, data from other online sources also can be integrated. Social CRM is an extension of traditional CRM systems that allows organizations to monitor the conversations on various social networks for keywords related to their products in order to provide improved customer support. Traditional CRMs and social CRMs differ in the types of customer information that they capture. Traditional CRM systems focus on campaigns that generate customer leads and ultimately new customers. Social CRM relies on harnessing user-generated content from Web-based social networks to enable companies to build relationships with their customers through online conversations.
try again
instead of hanging up after you finish, hit the pound sign on your keypad. In many systems, this gives you several options, including replaying the message. Try doing so, and if you don't like what you hear, feel free to re-record it. If you believe your voicemail message was dropped by the system before you were finished, call again. Start the follow-up call off by explaining that your previous message may have been dropped or cut off and then quickly recap.
Your profile information includes your:
interests, activities, birthday, religious and political views, family and relationship information, education and work experience, photos and videos. Your contact information includes ways others can contact you, such as by Instant Messenger, phone, on the Web, or in person. You can block users from accessing information about you on Facebook. When you do, any Facebook ties you have with that person will be broken, however blocked users may still be able to find out about you by examining search results from other Web sites. You may also specify who can see your Facebook information in search results within Facebook or on the Web.
After creating the social network, you can use Ning tools to:
invite members from your other networks or contact lists to join your social network, modify its appearance, or add new content. Ning supports the ability to use custom logos and styles so that an organization's social networking site created with Ning can have a look and feel similar to their existing blog or Web site. Ning also maintains a directory of all social networks created using Ning so that users can find and join them.
the digital workplace
is better for your business, is beneficial for your employees, and is only expected to increase in prevalence
web 2.0
is characterized by interactive applications that allow users to participate in contributing, organizing, and creating their content. As a result, the overall quality of the site improves. Figure 1-1 shows several popular Web 2.0 sites, displayed in different Web browsers
In order for Web applications to run on different devices:
it is important that they are designed in such a way that separates the process of accessing information from the process of displaying that information. Applications that distinguish between the data and how the data is displayed are easier to adapt to run on many different devices. For example, content stored on the Web, such as Google maps or blog posts, is the same regardless of the device on which it is accessed. Figure 1-15 shows Google maps on an iPhone and in a Web browser. Note that the maps are the same, but the platform (in this case, the device, its operating system, and the browser used) for displaying them differs.
end professionally
just like concluding a professional business letter, you should end your voicemail with your contact information. If the person is unfamiliar with you or might have trouble placing you, repeat your name and company along with the best way to reach you. If you already have a relationship, you may skip repeating your name, but you should still be sure to note the best number to call you back and what times you'll be available
The Privacy Policy is a:
legal document that describes how Facebook may share information from your profile with other Facebook members, third-party applications, and advertisers, and use it for internal market research. Although Facebook and other social networking sites provide recommendations for default privacy settings, the responsibility lies with users to establish appropriate privacy settings for their personal information. By leaving your information open, anyone, whether on Facebook or not, may have access to information found in your profile. By restricting search engines and third-party applications from accessing your profile information, you can limit the information that they present to others about you.
Because every blog or Web site that you join using Friend Connect is:
linked to your Google ID, they also appear on your reading list on your Blogger blog's Dashboard page, shown in Figure 5-28.
The Privacy Settings page contains:
links to pages where you can decide who can see information from your profile page, how other users can find you, which of your activities will be visible to other users, and how Facebook applications and search engines can use information from your profile.
Facebook's Privacy Settings page, shown in Figure 5-12 contains:
links to pages where you can specify privacy settings for your personal information. It is accessed from the Settings menu.
listen first
listen to a voicemail you've received in its entirety before returning the phone call. You may learn that it isn't even necessary to call back (wow, what a time saver) or that you need to take care of something first. For example, the caller may need information that you can have ready when you get back to her
The Meetup home page displays:
listings of happenings around the world. Meetup members can also create their own groups to find local people who share their particular interests. A search capability allows users to find nearby Meetup Groups on topics of interest.
By 2001, the aftermath of September 11 and a changing economy caused:
many of the dot-coms to go out of business. The collapse of the dot-coms, or the bursting of the dot-com bubble, left in its shadow a transcontinental fiber-optic network infrastructure that was beginning to be used in new ways. While infrastructure improvements were connecting servers around the world to the Internet, computers in homes, offices, and schools were connecting to the Internet using fast wireless and broadband access. The increase in bandwidth meant that more data could be downloaded in less time. Web sites took advantage, offering Web pages that contained many more graphics, animated graphics, audio files, and, occasionally, small videos than before. Larger data files demanded larger hard drive capacities on personal computers to store all of this information after downloading it. Faster transmission speeds and larger storage spaces at lower cost had a positive impact on the kinds of information that people could share. The commercialization of digital cameras and video equipment and their convergence with mobile phones, along with the growth in personal computer usage, allowed the average person to easily create and share multimedia with others. A shift was taking place in how people were using the World Wide Web. It was no longer simply a tool for disseminating information and facilitating commerce, as in the past, but it was becoming a platform for social networking, collaboration, and communication. The Web browser had become the tool through which all of these applications were possible.
Because each tweet must be 140 characters or less:
many tweets make use of shortened URLs that redirect a user to a Web site whose original URL contains many more characters. Shortened URLs permit users to include hyperlinks in their tweets. You can view the profile page of any user who you follow on Twitter by clicking his or her profile name or icon. Twitter also publishes your Twitter stream, which is your collection of most recent tweets, as an RSS feed to which you or other Twitter users may subscribe. The Trending Topics section on a Twitter page describes popular current topics across the entire Twitterverse. Each topic listed is a hyperlink to a Twitter search results page that contains recent tweets associated with that topic. You can send a tweet in four basic ways: to every one of your followers, as a reply to someone (who may or may not be following you), as a retweet of a tweet that you received from someone else, and as a direct, or private, message to another Twitter user. Direct messages also appear in the recipient's e-mail inbox. Table 5-1 summarizes the syntax for each of these.
Google Friend Connect allows:
members to join a site with an existing Google, AIM, or Yahoo ID, as shown in Figure 5-27, without having to create another new account for each site that a member wishes to join.
Using Meetup, people can find:
nearby activity partners who share common interests. Since Meetup was started in 2002, approximately 4 million people in 130 countries have joined the site, which averages more than 80,000 meetings each month. Meetup groups, shown in Figure 5-29, range from the Anchorage Adventurers Meetup Group, for people from Alaska who share outdoor interests, to the Baltimore Guitarist Group, for people from the Baltimore area who enjoy playing guitar together. Meetup uses the connecting power of the Internet to allow anyone to organize a group of people in their local community to connect with each other in person for a shared purpose.
The power of social networking comes when:
networks of friends and contacts overlap. Your friends also have networks to which they belong; you can often browse their friends and invite them to become friends of yours or connect with those people directly. Immediate friends of your friends are known as your second-level contact. They and their friends are your extended contact. Your extended contacts give you even greater access to people in many places. Extended contacts may be especially important when using social networks for job seeking or to find people with specific knowledge or skills that could be helpful to you. By completing your profile and participating regularly online in blogs and social networks, you place yourself in a good position to be found by others looking for people with your skills.
Third-party companies, organizations, or developers who are:
not affiliated with Facebook develop many of the Facebook applications, shown in Figure 5-10. Some applications are interactive games, such as Farmville, which users can play with their friends. Flixter and iLike are popular applications that allow members to read about and provide reviews of movies and music. SuperPoke adds features to Facebook's standard Poke feature, allowing users to say hello to their friends with humorous or meaningful greetings. Third-party applications may also include external content, such as Twitter posts and RSS feeds.
While traditional CRM systems are:
ogging a company's conversations with customers made by phone, mail, e-mail messages, or online chat via a company's Web site, customers and potential customers are talking about their experiences with a company's product all of the time on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social networks. Whenever someone blogs, tweets, tags an article, or posts a video or product review online, the transaction results in a new piece of data about the company. Social CRM applications monitor content from social networks and social media sites in order to find out what customers are saying about a company or its products. Social CRM applications may analyze that information to find trends regarding product inquiries or issues and to respond to requests from current or potential customers. Social CRM systems allow a company's support representatives to identify conversations that people are having about their products in order to provide solutions. A support representative might use a social CRM system to monitor conversations on Twitter or Facebook about the company's products by searching for keywords, such as product names. For example, Figure 5-56 shows a screen from the Salesforce Service Cloud software that monitors Twitter posts related to a company's headset product with model number KC770. Salesforce. com is one of the pioneering companies in providing Web-based CRM software services.
tweet
one message on twitter
SlideShare is an:
online community and repository for people to share PowerPoint presentations and other documents. Some people might use SlideShare to store their presentations online so that they can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection, whereas others might post presentations online and send a hyper-link, instead of the presentation itself, to attendees. Finally, because presentations are shared, many people use SlideShare as a source of information to browse for presentations on topics of interest. When a presentation is stored online, it can be embedded on another Web site. After you create an account on SlideShare, you can upload a presentation. SlideShare converts a PowerPoint file to Adobe Flash, which allows the presentation to play from within any Web browser that has the Flash plug-in installed, as shown in Figure 5-33. You can also establish privacy settings, including who can view or download the presentation.
The Facebook Causes application displays:
organizations or causes that you wish to support. The New England Patriots Fans application connects you with other Patriots fans and notifies you of upcoming games. The Applications menu in the toolbar displays all of your installed applications and allows you to organize and manage them. A chat feature, accessed by clicking the Chat button in the toolbar, displays a list of your friends who are currently online with whom you can exchange instant messages.
On the PatientsLikeMe Web site:
patients with life-changing conditions reach out to others in similar situations to discuss their symptoms, treatments, and experiences and to provide words of comfort and support. The PatientsLikeMe site, shown in Figure 5-31, has created an online community of doctors, patients, and supporting organizations who can give patients the information that they need as they live with their illnesses.
continued evolution of email
perhaps one of the most obvious developments in business communications has been that of direct correspondence through email. Although it's existed for almost 50 years, email has experienced continual change. It's gone from being simply a method of sending a message to becoming a means of workflow management. Within an email system users can: - flag priority messages and set tasks for follow-up - program alerts for when messages from VIP senders arrive - send automated responses when out of the office and unable to personally respond
By checking the Allow indexing checkbox in Figure 5-17, you give Facebook:
permission to share information from your profile with search engines such as Google or Bing. Facebook will make your publicly available information and any information you have set as visible to everyone available for search engines to include in search results for searches on your name. If an image of you stored on Facebook appears as part of a Google image result, and you would rather that it did not, you can remove the image from Facebook. Search engines only show those items to which you give them access.
profile
personal information about a user that is shared on a social network
TweetDeck, shown in Figure 5-43(a), is a:
popular Twitter client application that organizes tweets into columns based on who sent them, the type of tweet, or the results of a search for a keyword or hashtag. TweetDeck's columns in Figure 5-43(a) display tweets from all of a user's followers, those that mention the user, any direct messages, and recent tweets containing the #flickr hashtag. Twhirl, shown in Figure 5-43(b), is one of several Twitter clients that integrate URL-shortening and photo-posting services into their applications. Twitterific, shown in Figure 5-43(c), is a Twitter application for the iPhone that uses the location from the iPhone's global positioning system (GPS) to search for tweets from other nearby Twitter users. As the number of local organizations posting their events on Twitter increases, displaying tweets from people nearby becomes a new way to connect with people in your community.
The Causes application page displays:
popular causes on Facebook. Members may browse for causes by category, view each cause's own page, or create new causes for a specific organization. The Causes application allows Facebook users to support the charity of their choice and to help recruit volunteers and donors. The application also keeps track of the number of donors or volunteers, the amount of a member's donations, and the amount of money that a member raised to support his or her causes. Because the Causes application is listed as part of a Facebook profile, friends can see each other's causes and choose to join them as well. Figure 5-35 displays the page for the Global Warming cause.
Because friends, family, colleagues, and present and future employers can:
potentially have access to your information on social networking sites, be cautious about the information that you post. Postings on social networks may last forever. Whereas disabling or closing an account is relatively easy, it is virtually impossible to remove your information from archives on the social networking site or a search engine's database.
When creating a social network on Ning, you must:
provide a name and a short description. Figure 5-37(a)on the previous page illustrates several features that you might want to display on your social network's page, including the network's latest activity, a list of members, RSS feeds, events, groups, blogs, and photos. In addition to creating events and posting photographs, Ning provides a blog associated with the social network so that its creator might share thoughts and ideas with its members. The Groups feature allows members to organize themselves with a social network according to special interests. You can drag desired features from the list on the left to their place in the layout diagram on the right. Figure 5-37(b)shows what the completed social network page looks like on Ning.
Whereas AJAX relies on standard Web technologies to:
provide an engaging user experience without having the user install any specialized software components, two other popular technologies, Flash and Silverlight, require the installation of browser plug-ins. A browser plug-in. is a software component that enables dynamic, animated display and functionality within a Web browser. Flash and Silverlight plug-ins are available for many browsers and multiple operating systems. Using a browser plug-in ensures that a user's experience with the application will be consistent, regardless of the Web browser used to access the application. Many rich Internet applications allow users to create, stream, or view video. To capture video from a Webcam connected to a user's computer, Web applications commonly use a Flash component. Figure 1-18shows an example of the Flash component to capture video as implemented on Viddler, a Web application for creating and publishing videos within the browser.
predictive look-ahead
provides suggestions of valid responses based on user input in a text box
Employees can also use Blue Pages to:
quickly find other employees who have a desired skill set or expertise in a particular area or to find work opportunities on projects of interest within the company. Search results can be refined based on location or degrees of separation within a person's social network. This encourages collaborative projects that involve employees who need not be physically located in the same place. Blue Pages relies on both prepopulated organizational data (such as name and job history, which are part of a person's employment record) and user-entered personal and professional information. Many organizations and businesses also encourage employees to create blogs that are only available internally. Employee blogs are forums to share the employee's personal expertise or interests; teams may share a blog to write about current projects and lessons learned; management may use a corporate blog as a way to share organizational information with employees and solicit feedback. Because blogs are linked to an employee's professional profile within the company's social networking platform, they can become a valuable source of information and knowledge sharing within larger organizations. Starbucks, an international chain of coffee shops, launched My Starbucks Idea in 2008 to solicit feedback from customers about its products and services. My Starbucks Idea, shown in Figure 5-54, takes the traditional suggestion box that might be found at a store location and moves it online, allowing registered users to offer suggestions and propose new ideas.
Companies looking to use social media and social networking to:
raise awareness about their brands should develop a strategy for doing so. A first step might be to search for relevant keywords on both large and niche social networks (not only Facebook and Twitter) and see what conversations people are having about their company and their competitors. Doing so will give a sense of the networks on which a company should have a social presence, because competitors are there also or because they want to attract customers from the membership of a particular network. Developing a strategy may help a company build its social network and find friends who become actual customers.
My Starbucks Idea combines:
ranking feature of Digg with the commenting feature of blogs so that customers may rank or comment on ideas posted by other Starbucks customers. The most popular suggestions appear at the top of the list of ideas in each category. This feedback, combined with an online survey on the My Starbucks Idea Web site, gives Starbucks a sense of their customers' opinions about what the company is doing well and how the company might improve.
The Salesforce Service Cloud software provides:
real-time search results containing tweets about this product. A customer support representative who sees these tweets may select those that seem the most urgent to monitor or follow up on. By clicking the Monitor button, the support representative can create a record for this case in the CRM system and then log the customer's name and note that the issue was discovered via a post on Twitter. After researching a potential solution, the representative could contact the customer on Twitter to share the solution and follow up to confirm that the solution worked. Recording the entire interaction in the CRM system documents the issue so that if other customers have the same issue, support representatives can find a solution that worked and pass it along.
Users can join Network for Good to:
search for charities that they wish to support and to make donations online. For each donation received, Network for Good charges a percentage for providing the service of enabling donors to give to charitable organizations online and for processing the associated credit card transaction. Organizations rely on their supporters to reach out to new donors. Though Facebook Causes and Network for Good provide the tools and the Web infrastructure for publicizing a charitable organization and its activities, the challenge is building up an organization's social network. Regularly updating content on Facebook or on an organization's blog can extend an organization's reach and be a useful tool for recruiting donors and volunteers.
As real-time search becomes a common feature of most search engines:
search results on your name may contain your most recent updates to Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks, unless you explicitly turn off this feature.
Your News Feed is a log of:
several actions that you might take on the site, such as adding a comment, changing your relationship status, adding a friend, posting on a friend's Wall, commenting on a photo, or removing an item from your profile. As you update your profile with new information, Facebook will add a record of the activity to your News Feed, which is displayed on your Wall.
The map image is a composite display of:
several smaller rectangular images. Each time that the user repositions the map, Google Maps loads images from a mapping image server and displays only those images of the new parts of the map that appear as a result of the repositioning. Google Maps uses AJAX to make this smooth display possible. Prior to the development of AJAX, the Web page would have to refresh entirely for each incremental step until the desired location on the map appeared in the browser window.
the latest telecommuting statistics
show regular work-from-home, full-time positions have grown nearly 10 times more quickly than the rest of the workforce, and up to 90 percent of employees want to work from home at least part of the time
Several online tools enable the creation of:
social networking sites and online communities. One way to connect targeted groups of people is to add social networking capabilities to a blog or Web site. These capabilities allow people who visit the blog or Web site to connect with each other and create a community. Nonprofit organizations use social networking tools such as Facebook's Causes application or Network For Good as a way to raise both awareness and funds for their organizations. Individuals and businesses who wish to create their own social networks to meet people online who share similar specialized interests may use an online service such as Ning for creating new social networks.
Ning is used for a variety of:
social networks, as shown in Figure 5-38. Burnt Marshmallows is a social network for people who like to go camping. Movie Fans is a social network in which members can discuss videos from Netflix, an online video rental service. The site is customized to have a look and feel similar to the Netflix corporate site, although Movie Fans is not affiliated with Netflix. Movie Fans navigation contains links to the Netflix site, which further gives the appearance of being integrated with Netflix. The United Way built their social networking site, Live United, using the Ning platform. Live United provides a way for volunteers of the nonprofit organization to connect with each other about ways that they have made a difference in their home communities.
As people discover you through your use of:
social networks, they may send requests asking you to join their networks. Social networking sites themselves may also make recommendations of members who you might know through common friends or overlapping education or employment histories. If you know these people, you might choose to invite them to join your social network. You should only accept requests from people whom you know, people who come recommended to you, or people whose profiles indicate that they would add value to your network.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
software tools and processes for managing all aspects of the relationship between a company and its customers
ne of the best ways to have people follow you on Twitter is to:
take a meaningful part in many conversations. By tweeting messages that are of value to your followers, people who follow you will be more likely to retweet your messages to their followers. Some of those people who find your tweets to be of interest may choose to follow you themselves. If you maintain a blog, sending tweets to announce a new blog post and providing the permalink to it will help to draw traffic to your blog. Once your network reaches a critical mass, it can be a beneficial source of information. The wisdom of crowds principle suggests that in a large group, many people know more than any single person about a particular topic, so asking a question of your Twitterverse is likely to result in finding someone who may know the answer.
speak clearly
talk directly into the mouthpiece of your telephone in a clear and adequately modulated tone of voice. Holding the phone between your cheek and shoulder is fine while you're dialing or while the phone is ringing on the other end, but you should avoid having the mouthpiece positioned by your neck when you're leaving a message, as it muffles the sound
Smaller companies can also make use of:
the Conversation Prism. For example, a travel company might monitor sites such as TripAdvisor and WikiTravel to see what people are saying about their services. They might use Twitter to offer special deals to customers. The company could post images and video about popular vacation destinations on Flickr and YouTube and then embed this multimedia in a corporate marketing blog. They could bring in external content about international currency conversion rates from an RSS feed to provide an additional service to their customers on their Web site. Finally, creating a presence on Facebook might help to attract customers who use word of mouth and the recommendations of friends when selecting travel opportunities. Many companies are using social networks to help employees communicate with each other within the organization or to connect with their customers. Social networking platforms offer a means by which companies can provide continuous feedback and support to customers by creating online communities both internal and external to an organization. A presence on many different social networks helps an organization to promote itself and its brand through the use of blogs, video, rankings, music, wikis, and social networks.
Other tabs shown in Figure 5-7 include:
the Photos tab, the Boxes tab, and the Notes tab. The Photos tab shows pictures that you wish to share on your profile or photos in which you were tagged, which have been uploaded by other Facebook members. The Boxes tab shows the applications that you have associated with your Facebook profile. The Facebook Notes tab may be configured to import and display content from a blog. As you post new articles on your blog, they will automatically appear on your Notes tab.
For application developers:
the ability for applications to be deployed over the Internet and run within a Web browser represents an important shift in how companies can provide software to their customers. For example, the costs of deploying a Web application are significantly lower than printing, packaging, and distributing software on CDs and DVDs. The process of updating software is easier. In traditional software development, beta refers to a state of testing of software applications prior to their final release. Unlike software that you might purchase on CD at a store and install on your computer's hard drive, Web 2.0 applications tend to be in a state of perpetual beta in which developers continually release incremental updates. With perpetual beta, each time that you log in to a Web application, you access the most current version of the application.
perpetual beta
the ability to offer frequent, incremental software updates over the Web
When a user interacts with an AJAX-enabled Web page:
the browser sends each interaction to the Web server without waiting for previous updates from the server, which results in updating only those parts of the Web page that change as a result of each interaction, instead of requiring the user to wait for the entire Web page to refresh. AJAX is often used to facilitate user interactions, such as navigating maps within a browser or offering typing suggestions as a user enters data in text boxes on a form in a Web page. Google Maps uses AJAX to allow the user to reposition a map or zoom in and out by dragging the map or maneuvering the scroll bar (Figure 1-16). When doing so, only the map portion of the window will be updated in the browser.
easy collaboration with remote workers
the gig or freelance industry has also grown dramatically because of technological advancements that allow talented workers to be hired and perform remotely for an organization. Needs can be posted online and workers hired, sometimes within hours. Freelancers can collaborate with managers and employees through project management platforms, without any one-on-one interaction. The cost savings by using contractors adds up as companies save time and effort by not hiring and managing long-term employees
In the 1990s, many new companies took advantage of:
the global reach of the Internet and used the World Wide Web to conduct business. These companies conducted business almost exclusively on the Web and were called dot-coms because they established themselves by registering a domain name with a.com suffix. These companies included Internet service provider America Online, bookseller Amazon, and travel discounter Priceline. In addition, existing companies that traditionally conducted business in physical stores also created Web sites and began to sell their products and services online. This expansion in using the Internet for commerce required its infrastructure to support global communication. Many companies invested in laying fiber-optic cables across the ocean, resulting in a truly global Internet.
second-level contacts
the immediate friends of friends on a social network
The area beneath the left portion of the curve represents:
the more popular items that meet the needs of larger numbers of people. These are the items that you are likely to find in your local bookstore, music store, or video store. The area beneath the right portion of the curve represents the Long Tail. These are the niche market items with a smaller following, which you can only order online. Retailers would not allocate shelf space for these items because of their low sales volume. On the Internet, because information is digital rather than physical, shelf space is unlimited, and as the cost of online storage continues to rapidly decrease, retailers can reach more people who have an interest in specialized items. The Long Tail refers to the ability to reach a larger number of people with a large number of narrowly targeted items, even though each single item may appeal to a much smaller number of people than its more mainstream counterparts. The concept of the Long Tail can be applied to the social networking world. Many people join Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn because of the likelihood that their friends and colleagues are also members of those social networks. These networks would fall under the left portion of the curve in Figure 5-39. Specialized networks, such as those for sharing similar life-changing situations, camping interests, and movie reviews, make up social networking's Long Tail. These networks will attract fewer people than a more general social network, yet those who join them find greater value in them precisely because of their narrow appeal. Ning and Google Friend Connect are two tools that facilitate the process of creating such specialized networks. Advertisers also are interested in niche networks because ads placed on them are more likely to reach their target customers.
SlideShare provides:
the necessary embed code to embed the presentation into a blog or Web site or share it on other social media sites. Users can tag presentations to make them easier to find, comment on each other's presentations, and search for presentations on topics of interest. Some presenters display their presentations stored on SlideShare in full-screen mode when giving their presentations to an audience.
For each job listing found, LinkedIn displays:
the person who posted the job and your first-level contacts who know that person. This may give you an inside connection to the company so that you can request an introduction to find out more information before applying for the job. Advanced job search options allow you to specify the location, experience level, job function, industry, and company, in addition to a job title or keywords. The appearance of a "2nd" or "3rd" logo near a person's name indicates that that person is a second- or third-level connection or someone who is a contact of one or more people in your network. LinkedIn identifies the people in your network who know the people that you want to meet so that you can ask your contacts to help make the introduction. LinkedIn's people search capability also helps you to identify people who share the same professional interests, who work for companies that you might like to work for, or who have jobs that you might like to learn more about. Figure 5-22 displays the results of a search on LinkedIn of people in a user's extended network who are involved in social media.
authentication
the process of checking your username and password with those on file before giving access to a web site
retweets
the process of forwarding a tweet to a user's followers on Twitter
Twitter suggests that your tweet respond to:
the question, "What are you doing?", although many people also use Twitter to share what they are thinking about, blog posts that they have written, or other interesting resources that they find online. Your most recent tweet appears beneath the text box in which you enter a tweet on the Twitter Web site, as shown in Figure 5-41. After entering a tweet, click the update button to post it on the Twitter network.
client-server model
the relationship between Web client and server for requesting and obtaining Web content
friend
the relationship between users who share common interests on a personal social network
contact
the relationship between users who share common interests on a professional social network
extended contacts
the second-level contacts on a social network and their friends
password
the security code associated with your username that is needed to access a Web site
Web 2.0 is the name given to:
the shift in how people have come to use the World Wide Web, from a tool for sharing documents to a platform for linking people and running Web applications. Many Web 2.0 sites allow users to share their knowledge, opinions, images, or videos. Web 2.0 promotes a culture of participation, where users participate in creating content that improves the overall quality and value of Web applications. Users interact with Web 2.0 applications in a Web browser and from many different Internet-connected devices. Many Web applications make use of software technologies such as AJAX, Flash, and Silverlight to provide a dynamic, interactive experience.
bandwidth
the speed at which information travels over the Internet
beta
the testing phase for software applications prior to final release
social CRM
the use of social networking information as part of a CRM process
Web 2.0 makes use of several technologies to enhance:
the user's experience so that the experience of interacting with these online applications feels similar to interacting with applications that are installed on the desktop. A Web application is accessed via a Web browser over a network. Because the application and the data that it accesses actually reside on a Web server, Web applications are different than applications that are installed on your computer's hard drive. For example, your Web browser, productivity software such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, and Apple's iTunes are all software applications that are installed on your computer's hard drive, as are the data files that you might create or manage with them (the documents, spreadsheets, or songs, for example). By comparison, each time that you access Web-based applications such as Gmail to check your e-mail messages, you interact with the application in your Web browser. The application, hosted on a Web server, accesses your user data stored on a database server on the Internet. Your data is available from any computer connected to the Internet, as soon as you log on to the application and regardless of the operating system that you may be using on your own computer.
A challenge in accomplishing dynamic display in Web applications lies in:
the way that a Web client and a Web server communicate. Every time that a client sends a request to the Web server, the server responds with the entire Web page. This often causes the content in the browser to appear to flicker as the browser renders the entire page. Web developers avoid this behavior by using technologies such as AJAX, Adobe Flash, and Microsoft Silverlight to create Web applications that feature consistent user interfaces across different browsers and that fully support integration of multimedia, including images, audio, video, and animation.
As faster ways to connect to the Internet developed:
the ways that people used the World Wide Web changed. Personal computers first connected to the Internet through dial-up, in which a home telephone line was connected to a modem, tying up the home phone while online. Dial-up was the most common way to access the Internet because it was easy to set up and the service was inexpensive. Wider availability of digital subscriber lines (DSL), cable, satellite, and fiber-optic service providers enabled many home users to replace their dial-up services with high-speed broadband technologies. Broadband connectivity uses a cable modem or DSL to bring the Internet into the home either through copper or fiber-optic cables or home phone lines. Broadband connections are permanent—allowing your computer to be constantly connected to the Internet. Broadband connections also provide greater bandwidth, the speed at which information travels over the Internet, which makes it easier to download digital images, audio and video, large files, documents, and software applications (Figure 1-5).
At the center of the Conversation Prism is:
the word "brand," suggesting that building a brand is the most important goal of a company's Web presence. Building and reinforcing a brand identity extends to the use of social media tools as well. The innermost ring of the Conversation Prism encourages companies to make use of the social Web by discovering and listening to the various online communities where people talk about the company's brand and products. The middle ring identifies the different parts of an organization (Marketing and Public Relations, Community Outreach, Corporate Communications, Support, Product Sales) in which social media may be used to build relationships and respond to customers. Various social networks and social media providers that appear in the colored petals serve as ongoing sources of information for businesses to monitor and sometimes participate in to reach their customers.
Modern Web browsers have streamlined:
their appearance to increase usability and to leave a larger area for displaying a Web page. Because early browsers could display only one Web page at a time, users who wanted to view many Web pages at once opened many browser windows, which required more computer resources. To simplify the problem of having multiple browser windows open at the same time, tabbed browsing became a common interface element. Tabbed browsing. allows users to open new Web pages in a single browser window and to navigate between multiple Web pages by switching between tabs at the top of the browser window. Browser developers have continued to innovate as shown in Figure 1-8: Chrome uses the address bar for entering either a URL or a search term. Chrome and Safari 4 both display thumbnail images of a user's most recently visited Web sites when creating a new tab page. Internet Explorer 8 uses the new tab page to introduce the user to new features of the browser.
Individual members of nonprofit organizations also can use:
their profiles on social networks to help raise awareness. For example, volunteers might link to an organization's Web site from their LinkedIn profiles, where they list their service to the organization as relevant work experience. These activities use social networking tools to raise awareness about nonprofit organizations. Charitable organizations also may register themselves with a social networking site for charities, such as Network for Good, shown in Figure 5-36.
don't let your caller get lost in the system
there are times when you won't be able to help the person on the other end of the line and will have to transfer him to someone who can. When you do, make sure he knows to whom you are transferring the call and why. Let him know what to do if the call doesn't go through or if the person you are sending him to isn't there or can't help
In order for Web sites to reach the maximum number of people:
they have to be able to be displayed by as many different Web browsers as possible. Competition among Web browser developers plays a part in the continued development of the browser. New features are introduced in successive versions to keep up with or outpace the competition. Web browsers such as Internet Explorer 8, Safari 4, Firefox, and Google Chrome have implemented additional features to respond to developments in Web technologies; however, many user interface features in these popular browsers are the same as those found in the earliest versions of Mosaic. Figure 1-7 compares features of Mosaic running on a Macintosh computer in 1996 with the Firefox 3 browser.
Another use of AJAX employed by many Web sites is:
to limit the number of appropriate choices based on a user's input. Predictive look-ahead, or AutoComplete, provides suggestions of valid responses based on letters that a user enters in a text box. This technique is often implemented on search engines to help the user decide on a search term and on travel sites to locate airport codes of travel destinations. On the travel site Kayak, as the user types the letter N in the destination window, the application queries a database for all airports that begin with N. As the user enters the next letter, E, Kayak updates the drop-down list with only those airports that begin with NE. When the user enters a W, as shown in Figure 1-17, the drop-down list in the browser displays all of the destinations that begin with the letters NEW. Upon typing the next letter, A, Kayak finds that only Newark is a valid airport destination. At any time, the user may click on the desired choice, and its value will fill in the text box automatically without requiring the user to enter the remaining letters.
In order for the conversation to take place:
users of Web 2.0 sites need to create accounts on these sites. A username, or login nameis a unique code name that identifies you to a particular Web site. Your password is a security code associated with your username. The password that you enter should be easy for you to remember but hard for others to guess. Many sites require a minimum password length and a mix of uppercase, lowercase, numeric characters, and other keyboard symbols to achieve greater password strength a measure of how well a password resists being discovered. During the authentication process, the browser sends your username and password to the application to check that the credentials that you entered, generally your username and password, match those on file in the application's user account database. If they match, you are able to access the site. Figure 1-10 shows the screen in which a user enters a desired login name, checks its availability, and chooses a password when creating a Gmail account.
keep messages short and sweet
when you leave a voicemail message for someone, speak slowly and clearly especially when you state your name and phone number. Too many people leave very long and rambling messages only to quickly mumble their names and numbers at the end which leaves the recipient unable to return the call
name and rank please
when you receive a call at work you should identify yourself and your company and department if applicable. If the caller has been transferred to you from the company's main line, you can state your name and department only. The person who initially answered the call most likely gave the company name. When you are the caller, identify yourself in the same way before asking for the person you are trying to reach.
Before using a social networking application:
you must register with the site and create a profile. Your profile contains personal information, including name, e-mail address, gender, age, location, and a photograph, as shown in the Facebook and LinkedIn profiles in Figure 5-2
You can designate the friends or lists of friends who:
you would like to allow or remove access to see each section of your profile. After assigning permissions, you can enter the name of a friend to preview how your profile will appear when your friend views it.
Allowing a social networking site access to:
your e-mail address book is one way to find people who you already know are registered on that site. Each site will search its user database to find registered users whose e-mail addresses match those in your address book. The site will notify you about which of your contacts are also members and invite you to connect with them on the social networking site. Both Facebook and LinkedIn also suggest people whom you might know because you share common friends or profile information, such as the same educational institution or employer. You can often search for people based on their screen names, real names, e-mail addresses, or Instant Messenger names. On Facebook, you can also search for groups of people, such as members of a high school or college class, members of an organization, employees of a company, and people with common interests. On LinkedIn you can search for contacts, classmates, and colleagues. You can also look for people who have particular jobs or who work at companies of interest.
An effective way to both organize:
your friends and control which items from your profile are available to different groups is to create a Friend List. Friend Lists group your friends based on your relationships with them, as shown in Figure 5-18.
You can connect with people of interest by adding them to:
your network, requesting an introduction, or using InMail to contact them via LinkedIn's e-mail service. LinkedIn is not only used by people who are seeking employment. Many members of LinkedIn are already employed but list themselves on the site because they may be open to hearing about new job opportunities, they want to professionally network with others in similar positions at other companies, or they want to keep in touch with coworkers from their current or former positions. Many companies use LinkedIn as a recruiting tool for finding prospective employees. LinkedIn offers an effective way to review an applicant's credentials and reviews prior to a job interview because you can search across many dimensions. LinkedIn provides Web-casts, a blog, and other online resources to help companies learn how to use LinkedIn to reach out to potential job candidates, as shown in Figure 5-23. Customer testimonials allow companies to share their stories about using LinkedIn to find successful hires.
Facebook applications may gather information from:
your profile that is available to your friends and use that information as part of applications or product advertisements. For example, an application that sends birthday cards may use your date of birth and your list of friends in order to invite your friends to send you a birthday greeting. The Friends Quiz application, shown in Figure 5-14, creates a quiz by randomly choosing a profile item from four of your friends' profiles and asks you to guess the friend to which the profile item applies.
Other Friend Connect members who view:
your profile will see the blog and Web sites of which you are a member. This type of endorsement can increase the visibility and overall traffic to a blog or Web site.
client
a computing device that sends requests for Web content to a Web server
web server
a computing machine that processes requests for Web pages sent over the Internet from a Web client
tabbed browsing
a web browser feature that uses tabs to navigate between multiple pages in a single browser
credentials
username and password for signing in to a Web site
