Tag Archives: HeadofLettuce

This week Linkedin added a new element to their platform, Endorsements. They are a way of saying amen to the bullet point skills that one is hoping to be seen as skilled in. I have a feeling this will be the new game in town; I’ll endorse you if you endorse me. Who can get the most endorsements, will popularity win? HR folk will have to decide how many endorsements equal one recommendation.  Maybe we can add points, 1 per endorsement per subject, and 25 for a written recommendation? I joke, but I know it is only a matter of time before we hear someone trade endorsements and recommendations to build your Linkedin value, vs earning it. Your picture shows as having endorsed someone, does this encourage or discourage you to endorse? Notice what happens when I hover over my picture on a friends endorsements (snapped the picture from a 3rd party account, as your own picture does not do this for you)

T his could be a good way to be noticed. Now you need to recognize the difference between endorsements of those who really know the person, and people blindly endorsing everyone to increase the possible links to their own profile. I really don’t have an answer for this yet, these are just things to consider, let me know what you think. Feel free to endorse me if you feel I deserve it, and I will reciprocate if I can do it and feel good about it:)

With the #RNC2012 (Republican National Convention 2012) kicking off this week, it begs the question, how do you take your politics, or social media for that matter. As one who makes a living from studying Social Media I love when anything major happens, because it gives us a chance to study elements of social media at an accelerated pace. A good TV show promoting their hashtag can have the same effect check out #AGT (America’s got Tallent) or #SYTYCD (so you think you can dance) on their respective nights, their audience is very engaged.

I watch the conversation using a few tools, and thought I would share them with you as this week is a great chance to test drive them and find your favorite.

TwitterFall This is one of my favorites, you can enter a few search terms, and each will appear in a different color. I often use this to observe the 45+ twitter accounts I manage personally. Their are simple options, and you do not even need to be on twitter to watch this one.

SocialBro, as I have mentioned before, I like. They are great for monitoring a Hashtag and seeing who the influencers are in the conversation or where the conversation is taking place. They also let you select people from the conversation for following or putting on a list.

 

Bottlenose is a newer tool in beta that lets you look at a great diagram around the topic, showing the other related tags and you can also tweak it to see topics and who is a leader in the conversation. This is great for spotting conversations that might be related to your primary hashtag. Check out the other tags, as there is a good chance not everyone in those ancillary tags are following the main tag also.

You can also view the data in a few formats, like live

Tagboard another new comer gives you a great newspaper style format. This one is simple to use and great for reviewing material.
SeeS.aw is like Tagboard, but will let you save searches and the stream keeps flowing where Tagboard seems to need to be refreshed (which has its own benefits). 

Geofeedia another Beta provides a map of tweets around a location, or a newspaper format. This helps you see also the conversation in the area of an event, when not everyone is using the event hashtag. I used the Tamp Times Forum as a location, even tho the screen shows St.Pete Times Forum (its name changed).

SocialMention offers a nice clean feed with highlights showing Sentiment, Top keywords, hashtags, users and sources. Great for seeing everything involved in the conversation.

Tawlk another beta is great for a live newspaper feed

Hashtracking is another favorite of mine, they are great for showing you the potential size of your audience as well as a ranking of those involved in the conversation.

These are still just a few of the tools available out there, feel free to share any I missed (my goal here was to give some tools you can use during the convention to follow the conversation).

I was recently interviewed by Ryan Parsley from Cloud Plumbing a Linxter Production. You can hear the interview here…

Antony Francis, CEO of Head of Lettuce Media, talks with me about automation in social media.

Often we have small businesses ask for assistance with their social media, but they find our one on one coaching to be to much, so we are glad to offer some group classes that will deliver quality education at an affordable price for small businesses. The first of these programs is being offered in our own backyard of south west Pasco ( Trinity, New Port Richey).

There are two options:

Option one is a two hour class where you will learn about the different types of social media and the cor principles that will help you build your following and connection with your consumers and future consumers. http://holmnpr1.eventbrite.com/

Option two is designed to follow what we deliver in our one on one coaching program, with the goal of you being self sufficient in your social media. We will train you over 4 weeks on what to do, and how to do it with each classes building on the previous weeks class. Our goal is to not overwhelm you, but share the love of social media, that so many have, and more importantly how to use it in your business. http://holmnpr4wk.eventbrite.com/

Keeping with our strong belief of giving back to the community, there are seats reserved in each class for charitable organizations, call us for details.

• 4  broken into 2 pairs for the Heroes Salute Gala featuring Darryl Worley http://www.thenashvilleconnection.com/events/gala/
• 4 individual tickets for the Workshops  http://www.thenashvilleconnection.com/events/workshops/

The fine print stuff:

• Please be prepared to travel and stay in Greenville SC, at your own cost, contest includes tickets only.
• We will announce the winner of this contest June 22nd  at 5pm EST, submissions to enter are due by 11am the 22nd of June.
• If you want to win, you must leave a comment on this blog and also mention if you would want a gala or workshop ticket.

If you are on Twitter , Tweet this blog with the #tag #NashCon12 for an extra chance in the drawing.

That’s right friends, as one of the event Sponsors and Speakers for @PRSATampabay, Head of Lettuce Media has scored 2 tickets to give away. These Tickets are for the Conference only. They do not include Travel and accommodations, and do not include pre-conference activities.

Simply comment on this post your intrest and you will be entered. Tweet the article with the #Sunshine2012 tag and you will be entered a 2nd time. We will be accepting entries until this Friday the 15th at noon EST. We will then choose 2 winners who will each be given one ticket. Winners will be announced by 3pm Friday here on this post as well as on Twitter.

This event is ideal for those in PR, You will Learn new and exciting methods for extending your own public relations practice while increasing your clients’ ROI.

Join PRSA Tampa Bay as they host the Sunshine District Annual Conference, June 21-23, 2012! Network with your peers from around the Sunshine State while enjoying St. Petersburg’s fabulous waterfront district, featuring world-class museums, restaurants, sports and recreational activities.Sunshine2012 will feature more than a dozen of the country’s top media and communications authorities, presenting on a wide range of carefully chosen topics specifically targeted at improving professional growth, learning new tactics and techniques, and exploring new media. Sessions will be split between the prestigious Poynter Institute and the luxurious Hilton St. Petersburg Bayfront Hotel.

 

Working on a social media audit for one of our customers here at Head of Lettuce, and it brings to mind how few companies know the answers to such important questions like: What percentage of the company is on Twitter? What percentage is on Facebook? How many have fanned the company page? These questions are necessary for any organization to know the answers to, and how to deal with the numbers no matter the mix.

What if you have a significant number of employees on social media, how do you monitor them? How do you protect your brand name? How do you prevent inadvertent slips? These are all important parts of a successful social media strategy. It is often said in management that you can not move forward without a true understanding of where you are, well you better figure that out.

I’ve noticed that once the executive team of an organization begins to understand the risk as well as the benefits of social media they embraces it and want to understand as much as they can. It is up to social media companies to help businesses realize this.

Social media is a disruptive innovation that is changing the way we do business and communicate with consumers. Much like e-mail made it easier and cheaper for an organization to maintain a large mailing list, Social Media is now creating relationships sought out by the consumer.

Consumers want to interact with businesses as they often feel like they are on the same team as the business. We saw a great example this week, where an overzealous fan of one of the companies we are working with, is using the company logo on their FB profile, making it look like they work for the company. This is a great problem, because this individual is that big of a fan of the company. Obviously a company can’t have this because of the inherent risks, but the intent of the customer is truly one we should all hope that all of our customers look to duplicate.

A good social media audit will uncover all kinds of “challenges”, but that’s the goal. Issues like the one I described going unchecked could result in a much more expensive result for the organization. Have a business that you are concerned about your social media interactions and employees involvement, contact us to discuss how we can help you.

Ok kiddo’s, recently I have been getting out more and more talking to people about how Head of Lettuce media can help them in their social media needs, and one question seems to keep coming up, so I thought I would share for everyone who wanted to know, but never got a chance to ask, and that is where did I get the name Head of Lettuce.

As I have mentioned before, I use to be the National Speaker for Realtor.com, and I did talks all over the country in every state but 5, well, when speaking I would tell the story of when I use to sell real estate in the early 90′s. I was doing color brochures (for those of you that don’t remember the 90′s, there were no color printers like there are today, and color photocopies were new and expensive) on all my houses and I was paying about $4 per copy for color photocopied brochures, which did look awesome by the way:) . Well, all the other agents were using black and white photocopies, some on stroke inducing neon paper. I would walk in to discuss selling a house and I would throw down the two brochures and ask “how do you want your house sold?”, they would always point to my color brochures and say, “we want that”. My response was always “Good news, I’m the only one doing those”. I would then turn to the agents in the audience, that I was telling the story to, and say even a Head of Lettuce could tell the difference between what I was doing and what my competition was doing.

The fact of the matter is that when it comes to all the elements of “Social Media” there are way to many facets for most people to understand or follow it all as studying social media is a full time study, but even a Head of Lettuce can tell you it is important, and you need to be involved in the conversation. Hence the “Head of Lettuce” was born, now go tell your friends