08/30/2012
Engage, Don’t Just Broadcast.
0August 30, 2012
When using Social Media for work, there is a massive temptation to simply dole out information to the masses. While it’s important that you tell folks what’s going on in your business or industry, simply blaring out links to press releases is a sure way to lose followers and influence.
Twitter, Facebook and other networks are designed to be interactive platforms. This means that you need to both speak and listen in order to get the most out of this form of medium, and broadcasting is only half of that equation. Stated another way, if you’re shouting continuously, you can’t hear what people are saying around, about, and to you.
Instead, take a cooperative approach. Definitely tell folks what’s going on, where you’re headed, who you’re seeing, etc. Share customer stories (where appropriate) and successes, as well as lessons learned. But, also ask questions and pose theories about your industry and products. Ask about general ideas, even some that may not be directly related to something you’re selling. This gets people talking with you, and means that more people see the replies and re-posts, increasing your audience dramatically.
For each RT, there’s a chance that someone else will discover your Twitter account and read your non-engagement tweets. Put simply, every time you show up in someone else’s timeline, you get seen by more potential customers. Broadcasting will indeed get some RT’s and re-posts, but frankly nowhere near as many as talking to your customer base and listening to their replies will.
Added to that fact, you will also see your influence rise as you engage. One-way communication is static, services like Klout and Kred tend to discount static accounts. By interacting with customers and potential customers, you can generate more activity overall, and dynamic activity at that. This leads to more strength and influence from ranking systems and analytic services.
Finally, engaging activities can uncover new leads and opportunities for your business. Posting a press release may be ignored by the masses — they see dozens of those every day and have learned to ignore them. Posting questions gets people to answer them, and if the answer is “We have that problem and haven’t figured out how to solve it yet,” then you have an opening to suggest using your products to fill the need. More engagement means more traffic to your website and more interest in your products.
So, by all means, do share white papers, case studies and press releases; but don’t stop there. Pose questions, offer answers to other users’ questions, and make your Social Media activities interactive. Doing so will gain you influence, followers, and probably some new customers to boot.
08/30/2012
Mountain Lion Upgrade is Done!
0by Mike Talon • newbie2mac
Aug
30
2012
I mentioned a few posts back that I was holding off on OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) until the first major patch was released. Well, 10.8.1 is here, and so I took the plunge.
“So far, so good.” is my verdict, though with a few qualifications on that statement overall.
First, upgrading. As I had recently reinstalled 10.7 due to a goof in deleting pref/kext files, I had already removed all applications that I didn’t run or need. This is a good thing, as not every app out there is ready to roll on 10.8. SoundSource, a small tool used to flip which output (headset, speakers, etc.) audio is played through, for example, isn’t available for Mountain Lion yet. So I do suggest going through your installed apps and properly uninstalling any you don’t use, don’t need, or don’t want. Use an app delete utility (like AppDelete or CleanMyMac) to completely uninstall them, as just dragging them to the trash can leave bits of the app behind.
After you clean up what you no longer need, have a look at what’s new in OS X 10.8. There are many new features, several of which you will probably want to shut off. For example, I don’t want my Mac to natively talk to Twitter or Facebook, as I have several accounts (home, web, work) that I use those services with, and don’t want anything automatically posted to the wrong one. So before you even start downloading Mountain Lion, find out what features you will use, which you won’t, and make plans to turn off the unwanted ones.
Make a backup of everything on your Mac. You could use Time Machine, but I prefer a 3rd-Party tool such as CrashPlan or ChronoSync. It’s rare that a 10.8 upgrade causes any kind of issue, but it has happened, and you should be prepared.
After that, provided you’re on 10.6 or higher, head to the Mac App Store (Apple menu, App Store) and purchase Mountain Lion for US$19.99. The software will first download – which could take some time as it is a 4GB file – then pop up a window offering to begin the upgrade. Close all applications except the upgrader, and you’re ready to roll.
The upgrade itself happens in two parts. First the upgrade app will configure settings and write out new files within your OS X session. This prepares the Emergency Recovery system and sets the Mac’s boot system to load up the rest of the installer. When that’s done, you’ll see a prompt to reboot (the system will reboot automatically in about five minutes if you do nothing here).
Once the Mac reboots, you will automatically see the OS X installer come up. If you have used FileVault, you’ll be prompted for your disk password, but otherwise the process is completely automatic. A progress bar tells you about how long you have left before the upgrade is complete, and like all progress bars, it lies. For my iMac, it took about 40 minutes to perform the upgrade, start to finish. The MacBook Air took about 30.
In my case, after the installer was done, I found myself at the normal Emergency Recovery screen. Varied reports say that you may or may not see that screen when the install is complete, but if you do, all you need to do is go to Apple Menu and choose Restart. This will reboot the Mac into the newly-upgraded OS.
All settings and preferences that exist in both 10.7 and 10.8 were maintained, and the new feature sets were in their default configuration. This means that you will need to — for example — define your settings for the new Notifications Area, but not change your display and power settings.
One special note on 3rd-Party applications: GateKeeper is a new security system in OS X 10.8 that blocks any app from running if it does not have a signed Apple Developer signature on file. This means that many apps will be unable to run, unless you change your GateKeeper settings in System Preferences. Turning GateKeeper off is a matter of some debate, if you’re unsure, then you should leave it on. Apps already installed to your Mac should run fine, and you can set exceptions and/or turn it off later if necessary.
And there you have it. Mac OS X Mountain Lion installed and ready to roll. I’ll be blogging more about features and settings in future posts, but I can indeed verify that the upgrade process is smooth and easy.
By Mike Talon •
General Info, OS X Mountain Lion •
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