1. Chrysler’s F-Bomb

In March of this year, a tweet emerged from the Twitter account held by Chrysler, that read as follows:

“I find it ironic that Detroit is know as the #motorcity, and yet no one here knows how to (expletive) drive.” (Image taken from Forbes)

The Story: An employee of the marketing firm that managed the Chrysler account had posted content to the account earlier in the day from his phone. Later, having forgotten to log out, he unknowingly posted to the company’s account thinking it was his own.

The Repercussions: The backlash was intense. The marketing firm fired the employee responsible and Chrysler firing the marketing firm the next day.

Lesson Learned: The world is watching your every move when you market through social media. These new social media tools are out there to connect people, and to allow everyone to post things that are important to them. When you post something on Twitter it is ‘out there,’ so be mindful of what you are writing. Don’t post things that you wouldn’t want your boss or employers to see because those types of things have a way of coming back around. With a few clicks or retweets your content can be seen by millions of people.

2. Kenneth Cole Offends the World

The Story: In an effort to create a clever advertising campaign Kenneth Cole capitalized on globally trending topics (often around tragic situations) with tweets like this, sent out to his nearly 13,000 followers:

“Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available” (Image taken from Mashable)

The Repercussions: Facing an overwhelmingly negative response, Cole later apologized for making light of a bad situation.

Lesson Learned: It is never okay to base your advertising schemes off of unstable current events, they will blow up in your face and you will end up making a public apology like Mr. Cole. If something like this does happen the best way to handle it is to face the facts immediately. You were wrong and you must apologize as quickly as possible. Many times the press generated by a big mistake, coupled with a quick turn around, and truly remorseful apology will help build your company’s image back to what it was before the comment. History has shown that sometimes this technique even leads to a boost in public opinion of your brand. The worst thing that could happen is if you try to hide something from the public, or to act as though you were right. In these situations types of situations you can never be ‘too quick’ to apologize.

3. Honda’s Secret Agent

The Story: Honda took to advertising through social media in late 2009 with the release of their Crosstour CUV (crossover utility vehicle). They created a Facebook fan page for the vehicle and then released several photos in an attempt to introduce this new car into their fleet. What they received in return was a slew of negative feedback from less-than-impressed fans. In response to all of this feedback, Eddie Okubo decided to write a comment stating his positive view of the car – how he found it novel and useful. (See image to left – taken from CNN Money) The only problem was he did not disclose the fact that he was the manager of ‘Product Planning’ for Honda, and more importantly, participated in the development of this vehicle. Needless to say his opinion was skewed.

The Repercussions: Within two minutes of his posting, Okubo was being outed in comments on the page. People even linked to his LinkedIn profile and called him out on his purposeful lack of disclosing who he was. Honda ended up deleting his comment and releasing a press statement diverting attention from his comment stating there would be better pictures of the vehicle out soon.

Lesson Learned:

1. Never let the success of a product be overshadowed or influenced by your own personal ego. Okubo thought it was about him and forgot that he represented a brand. As marketers, it is not our job to try to boost our own self-image and ego through our jobs; we are supposed to boost the image of our product and brand, always. The moment this is forgotten is the moment a mistake of huge proportion can be made. Okubo could have simply disclosed his position at Honda and stated his positive comment and it would have been taken for what it was worth, but instead he tried to deceive to create positive feedback about something he was invested in and it didn’t work.
2. Do not delete comments. Face the music and accept criticism – it can be very helpful. When you make a mistake as a marketer don’t try to hide it – use the negative feedback and respond to it. Most of the time there is some good that you can take away from the feedback. The minute you start deleting comments or try to hide the negative is when your brand and/or product looses all credibility.

Social Media Lessons Learned: Summary

• Do not forget that the world is watching you as a marketer, with every ad or promotion you run be sure it represents the company in a positive way.
• If a mistake is made in a marketing promotion you can never be too quick to admit it and apologize. The faster you do this the faster you can go back to marketing the actual product instead of doing damage control.
• Never let the success of a product be about your own personal ego. When that happens you are unable to see clearly what is usable criticism, it becomes all about you and not your product.
• Finally do not delete, or try to hide from the public eye, mistakes that you make. Simply admit them and move on, deceitfulness will never take you far.

Related Social Media Content:

• Jack Daniel’s hopes to garner buzz on Twitter and Facebook with new Honey Liqueur
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“NewsiT believes people want their news portable, personalized and participatory. Our mission is to ‘reinvent’ news content creation by engaging citizens as mobile reporters all collaborating via social networks to produce multimedia coverage of relevance, quality and value.” 

Their first official assignment is on DC Metro’s fire safety and evacuation plans. To participate, just create a profile on the NewsiT.net site (use your real name and photo) or login via Facebook or Twitter. Then, accept a couple of text, photo or video tasks for the Metro assignment: Time yourself to see if you can get from platform to street in less than 4 minutes in rush hour; try to find and document stairways and emergency exits; map the broken escalators! (For all of us DC-ers, we are more than familiar with the headaches of metro and this is a great way to get involved.)

There are a number of other assignments to participate in, including bicycling, blood donation, internet scams, and nuclear power. You can even submit a story if you are at the right place at the right moment. If you have any problems at all with the site or with the assignment, they want to know. They are continuing to develop this summer – iPhone/Droid apps are coming soon – and so need your input. You can learn more on their website – check out their About NewsiT page for sure.

I think it sounds like a really cool way for citizen journalists to start formally sharing what so many of us are already documenting on Twitter, blogs, and other sites. It’ll be interesting to see how the journalism community embraces NewsiT (I know NPR utilizes similar crowd-sourced data). I’m off to sign up and check it out.

UPDATE 5/26/11

So I signed up with NewsiT and I have to say, it was the easiest thing ever – it was two clicks. Having been already logged in to my Facebook account, I just clicked the Facebook icon to register, clicked yes when presented with the authentication screen, and I was in! So easy. It pulled in my photo, location, name, birthday, and gender. Once logged-in I can link my Twitter account as well. …There are definitely a lot of ads popping up on the site (not pop ups). Navigation is pretty easy and there is a high level of integration with both Facebook and Twitter… Hmm… looks like they need some work on their buttons though. When I clicked “Tweet” to share the Subway Fire metro Assignment with my Twitter followers, the only thing autopopulated in the Tweet box was a shortened url…

The Facebook “Like” Button appears to be working normally though – attaching the link, description, and a photo and allowing me the option of prefacing it with something…

If the idea of grown adults playing an online virtual farming game (and often shelling out real cash to do so) doesn’t surprise you, then check out FarmVille‘s newest neighbor: Lady Gaga. Yup, the Pop Princess of Weird has partnered with online social gaming wizards Zynga to bring you the future of cross marketing. And it hurts so good. 

If you are unfamiliar with the FarmVille sensation (which boasted 11 million players in August 2009 one month after its release, 33 million in September 2009, 80 million in February 2010 and now numbers are in the hundreds of millions worldwide), it is a virtual online game available on multiple platforms now including: Facebook, MySpace, iPhone, Android, Farmville.com, MSN Games, and Yahoo!. As the name implies, players build a farm complete with crops that need planting, watering, and harvesting, animals that need tending, and buildings that offer unique benefits. Players (or “neighbors” as they are called in the game) can visit each other’s farms helping out and giving virtual gifts. While the game is free to play, in-game items can be purchased to enhance game-play or give certain advantages.

In a cross-marketing play, Zynga has partnered with Lady Gaga to promote her newest album “Born This Way” through the game. One leg of the promotion is that if you purchase a $25 Game Card (like a gift certificate for in-game “money”) from Best Buy, you will receive Gaga’s new album and other game items as a free download upon redeeming it in FarmVille. Not a bad deal if you play FarmVille and had planned on buying “Born This Way” anyway. [See banner ad above.]

FarmVille players can also visit a Gaga-themed farm titled “GagaVille” featuring crystals, unicorns, and colorful trees where they can unlock and listen to songs from “Born This Way” after completing tasks. The music streams are powered by radio giant Clear Channel’s digital radio service iHeartRadio, marking the first time they have partnered with a social gaming firm. “In addition, Lady Gaga will announce codes that unlock exclusive Lady Gaga-inspired limited edition virtual items on 148 Clear Channel stations on May 17, including New York’s Z100 and LA’s KIIS-FM.”

“I want to celebrate and share ‘Born This Way’ with my little monsters in a special way that’s never been done before,” said Lady Gaga. “Zynga has created a magical place in FarmVille where my fans can come play, and be the first to listen to the album.”

That “magical place” comes complete with a Gaga-themed shopping experience. Players must spend real money to buy virtual items like the unicorn “Purple Ponytail”, a “Fame Sheep”, “Sparkly Glasses”, other outfits for your character,  a “Crystal Stage” and fountain. (But don’t worry – items like the “Bedazzled Tractor” and “Violet Gem” can be bought with coins earned in the game.)

The promotion also reaches across other Zynga games and platforms. Words With Friends (basically Scrabble), the popular mobile social game available iPhone, iPad, as well as Android devices, will feature a daily “Words with Gaga” contest, giving players a chance to win Gaga prizes including tickets to an upcoming concert and a signed copy of “Born This Way.” Zynga is also rewarding players with limited edition Lady Gaga virtual items on RewardVille.com.

This is the second time Zynga and Lady Gaga have teamed up. In March 2011, the two entertainment icons teamed up to raise more than $3 million for Japan relief efforts.

UPDATE: 5/19/11

I just ran across a banner ad for the Gaga/Zynga promotion on YouTube. The video insert features a farmer and his family planting real crystals and brushing pink haired ponies – pretty funny actually….

There are a lot of different contests you can run on Twitter – giveaways being the most popular – you can offer prizes for tweeting a particular update (like a product launch), for following a particular user (to build your company’s following), or for posting updates with a specific hashtag (to advertise an upcoming event). (See Twitter Promoted Trends and Keurig’s Coffee and a Cruise Campaign for an example of a Twitter Contest) But before you jump in and arbitrarily start tossing ideas and prizes out, you’ll want to take a look at some of my and Twitter’s recommendations:

Have your rules, deadlines, and information ready – You will get questions from your contest entrants and whoever is handling your account needs to be prepared to answer them. When is the deadline? How many times can I enter? How are winners chosen? If its a prize, will it be mailed or does the winner have to pick it up? Make sure you think through how the contest will be run, how the winner(s) will be chosen, and how prizes will be awarded.

Ask users to include an @reply to you in their update so you can see all the entries – Trust me, you don’t want to have to dig through search results and mentions of your company/brand name to determine entrants to your contest. Make sure that including your Twitter @username is part of the requirements so that you can track the entries. This will also be better for your advertising reach as every tweet will link back to you directly.

Consider establishing a hashtag specific for your contest – A hashtag will make sure contest entries stand out from normal @replies and @mentions to your account as well as raise awareness around your target goal. The hashtag should be relevant to your content, and you should encourage entrants to keep their messaging related as well.

Discourage the creation of multiple accounts – If you’re giving away something really awesome, users may be tempted to set up duplicate or dummy accounts in order to enter your contest multiple times. You’ll want to make sure you address this in your rules and contest announcement.

Discourage posting the same tweet Repeatedly – This is straight from Twitter: “Posting duplicate, or near duplicate, updates or links is a violation of the Twitter Rules and jeopardizes search quality. Please don’t set rules to encourage lots of duplicate updates (like saying, “whoever retweets this the most wins”). Your contest could cause users to be automatically filtered out of Twitter search. Plus, instead of their followers seeing your cool contest, their followers might start getting annoyed by your contest. You might want to set a clear contest rule stating that multiple entries in a single day will not be accepted.”

Related Twitter Content:

• Twitter: All your mobile are belong to us
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• Twitter Statistics and Info on Usage
• How Do I Send Public and Private Messages on Twitter?
• How Do I Post Updates to Twitter?

• Anatomy of a Tweet – A Closer Look at Twitter
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If any of you are following the Tweetdeck-Twitter-Ubermedia battle then you may recognize this as a bid to get current Twitter.com users to go with an “official” mobile Twitter app when accessing the service on the go – rather than a Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Cotweet or other third-party application. As the need to monetize grows, these other companies- like Twitter itself – are recognizing that advertising dollars will go to whoever controls user eyeballs. And with so many people accessing Twitter’s services through third-party applications – whether mobile or desktop – Twitter is realizing that unless it grabs the reigns, they may not be able to cash in on their own members.

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Visibli calculated that Facebook posts receive 50% of their likes in the first 1 hour and 20 minutes, 80% in the first 7 hours, and 95% within 22 hours. Compare that to Twitter where 95% of ReTweets occur within the first hour!

In a review of Pages with over 100,000 Likes, Visibli gives car manufacturer Audi the crown for most engaged fans. Each Audi post received over 225 Likes per 100k fans, surpassing even the most popular Artists – like Justin Bieber (2nd)  and Lady Gaga (4th). This is particularly interesting because Pages for Artists scored notably higher than Pages for Media or Brands. On average, artists’ posts receive 92 Likes per post, which is almost twice the number of Likes for media organizations and brands – who receive an average of 57 and 54, respectively. “Surprisingly, the same is not true for Comments. Media organizations receive significantly more Comments per post (43 per post) than artists (17) or brands (only 9). While people are more likely to comment on current news, they will simply Like an artist’s post and then move on.”

You May Also Be Interested In:

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Jack Daniel’s on Twitter

By purchasing a Promoted Trending Topic for the day, Jack Daniel’s is guaranteed eyeballs on the new product launch and are generating enough responses to be trending worldwide. Promoted Tweets are an excellent way to get people aware of your product/brand/service and get people talking about it – if only to ask “what is _____??”  The #JackDanielsHoney hashtag from their promoted tweet is being used pretty aggressively and shows up in my local (Washington DC) trending topics as well as for the United States and Worldwide. (For another example of a company using Promoted Tweets recently, check out Keurig’s Coffee and a Cruise Campaign.) [UPDATE: Three Promoted Trends were actually purchased in a seven day span and appeared on April 16th, 21st and 22nd.]

Clicking the hashtag in the Trending Topics section takes you to a search results page with all of the tweets utilizing the hashtag appearing in chronological order (newest first) but witht he most ReTweeted and sponsored Tweet appearing at the top. Here you can see what people are saying about the topic, what they think, and how they are interacting with the brand and each other. Though the whiskey maker does not appear to have an official “Jack Daniel’s” twitter account, they did set up an official @JackHoney account to specifically advertise the product. (There is an unofficial @JackDanielsFans account though with over 16,400 fans. Do you think JD is a little late to the party here?)

If you visit the @JackHoney twitter account you will notice that where you normally link to your website in your profile, they are linking to the Jack Daniels Honey facebook page instead of the official Jack Daniel’s website. In fact, a visit to their website showed zero sign of the new honey liqueur. I even did a search for “honey” which if I hit the Enter/Return key on my keyboard after typing in my query, simply booted me back to the default page – showing no results whatsoever- not even a message saying “No Results Found”. If I click their “Search” button after entering my query, I am taken to a results page only showing a link to cocktail recipes (which after clicking I am taken to a list I have to scroll way down for to even find a recipe calling for honey – which hasn’t even been branded with the Jack Honey yet) and a link for grilling, where I again have to scroll all the way down to find a tiny mention on the last article about using honey teriyaki in a BBQ recipe (again – unbranded). If there is ANY official Honey presence on their website, I cannot find it nor do they link to it anywhere I can see. Branding Fail? I think so.

*A special last thought on Twitter. I think its very interesting how in EVERY tweet that @JackHoney sends out, they include “(Msg 4 21+ only. JD Distillery, Wsky Spec)”. I’m not sure if this was a requirement imposed by twitter, a mandate by JD’s legal team, or just part of their “Responsible Drinking” philosophy, but it’s a nice (albeit useless) thought. [UPDATE: ClickZ reports that "Alcohol brands had previously been restricted from buying ads on Twitter as its audience consisted of too many users below drinking age. Over 70 percent of the network's audience is now over 21 years of age, according to Nielsen and comScore, satisfying self regulatory requirements put in place by the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS.) ...In line with DISCUS regulations, all promoted tweets for the product also had to include a disclaimer, which stated, "Msg 4 21+ only. JD Distillery, Wsky Spec.]

Jack Daniel’s on Facebook

If you want more information on the Honey liqueur, your only recourse is to follow the trail to their Facebook Page where you are greeted with what we are calling a “Like Wall”. A Like Wall is like a paywall, but instead of having to shell out your credit card to gain access to the content you have to “Like” the page. I’m not sure who in their design department thought it would be a good idea to make the graphic so ridiculously vertical that you have to scroll twice the length of the page just to see the branded product bottle, but its a good looking image regardless. (I had to blow up my browser window on my second monitor and then zoom way out to capture it all one screen!)

After “Liking” the page you have to click one of the tabs in the left hand navigation or you will be stuck staring at the oversized image forever. I clicked on the “Info” tab first which has some odd content itself… In the product section (among other items) they say: “If you would like to contact us directly, please email us at: jackdaniels_facebook@lynchburg.jackdaniels.com” but in the Email section they say: “@jackhoney on twitter: reply to our DM within one hour to continue receiving tweets.” First of all, I have no idea what THAT means, and second… why not put the email in the email section as well? Just some odd stuff going on with JD here…

As far as content, they have some photos and videos. Their Wall is pretty standard – they allow their fans to comment on their wall publicly which is great, but unlike on Twitter, they don’t seem to be replying to any questions or comments from some very enthusiastic fans which is a shame. They have a Recipe tab which has the branded honey-including recipes missing from their official site. (I may have to try some of these actually – they look good!)

Jack Daniel’s does have an official Facebook Page – boasting over 1 million fans – which is integrated with their website (if you are logged in to Facebook and visit their website it shows who of your friends already “Like” Jack Daniel’s). (With so many fans on Facebook it makes me again wonder why they don’t have an offical presence on twitter.)

Conclusion

Overall I think Jack Daniel’s has the right idea and will most likely get a great return on their Promoted Tweet investment. They seem to be struggling slightly in some areas, but as long as they continue to adapt and embrace these new marketing channels, I think they will see successful results. My advice to them on this campaign would be: Revisit your Facebook profile; Start engaging with your Facebook fans more; Create a presence for the product on your website to complete the circle; and, Its time to add Twitter to your website and marketing channels.

What do you think of the Jack Daniel’s approach? Do you have comments or advice for them? Does the Honey liqueur sound like a smart, forward thinking move? Or are they betraying their roots? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

5/3/11 UPDATE on Jack Daniel’s Campaign

ClickZ just published an article about last month’s Jack Honey Twitter campaign and had some new information that readers may find useful. They quote Marjorie Dufek, interactive marketing director at Brown-Forman (who owns Jack Daniel’s) as saying ”Twitter reported ‘significantly higher than average’ engagement rates for the campaign, as well as greater use of the brand name within tweets than its advertisers usually experience… The advantage for us is that people see Jack Daniel’s as a friend, it’s a very social brand by nature. We have an unprecedented opportunity to have real conversations with our consumers via social media.” Though Brown-Forman works with agencies for some of its marketing functions, Dufek said the majority of its social media activity is handled by in-house teams, which it views as an extension of its 50-year old consumer relationship program. (Thanks for the interview ClickZ!)

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• “I believe whats presently happening in business and social media and how people are connecting is fundamentally changing everything we know about business.”

• Question posed to Google’s “Analytics Evangelist” Avinash Kaushik by a senior retailer marketer: I believe everything you’re saying about this whole Web 2.0 and social media… We tried it. We hired a 24 year old person just out of university, we brought them in… they had tattoos, earrings – theY really looked the part – it was perfect. We put them in charge of everything. They were in charge of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, everything and… Nothing. “I’m sitting there thinking to myself, these changes are so huge and so dramatic, are you really telling me that you took a 24 year old and put them out by themselves in charge of all this? Its crazy!… The social web is over ten years old… but people make the  miss-assumption that you need to be young and someone who’s on Facebook to understand how this works… we have to change our perceptions and the idea is not to hire and initiate a bunch of digital natives into your organization, the idea is to get a transfusion!”

• “The Web has been around forever and yet it is not in the blood of the executives who staff the top echelons of companies. Make no mistake, the are smart, they are successful and they want to do better. But the Web is such a paradigm shift that if it is not in your blood it is very difficult to imagine its power and how to use it for good. How do you demand innovation and creativity and radical rethink if you can’t imagine it?” – Google’s “Analytics Evangelist” Avinash Kaushik

• “Last year, last quarter, there were more smart phones sold than PCs.”

• The biggest thing is the humanization of technology. Swipes, touch, move, feel [like on an iPad] – these are human gestures that create a humanization of the web. As social media humanized the interactions that people have, the devices are catching up and humanizing the experience and taking away the technology. Its a game changer when we make technology simple and easy to use.

• “When I hear people talking about the social WEB or your WEBsite, in my brain I’m going ‘we need new vocabulary,’ because we are no longer in that world when it comes to social or understanding what people are saying anymore… See we live in the world now of ‘Web,’ ‘Mobile’ and ‘Touch’ and they are three very different experiences. And if you are creating content for it and you are listening to what people are saying about it and how they are talking about it, they way the interact with and use things on these platforms is fundamentally different too.”

• “We will never have an opportunity like this as marketers again, to literally remap what it is people do with our products, brands, and services and how to push these ideas forward.”

• We all agree that no one buys anything any more without researching it online and reading reviews, but how many of you allow reviews (good and bad) on your company’s website? Whats wrong with you? You’re scared. You’re scared someone will say something negative about you, how you will respond, etc…. According to Bazaarvoice out of 150 billion online product/service reviews, average review rating is 4.3 out of 5. Statistically, if you open up and allow anyone to say anything about you, they say nice things. But with the star caveat: You can’t suck. If your products or services suck, social media can’t save you. Marketing can’t save you. Advertising can’t save you. Only you and your desire to not have a sucky product can save you…

• Bazaarvoice data showed that a negative review converts more effectively to a sale than a positive review. How?? 1) When consumers see you confident enough to allow a negative review they find you trustworthy and have faith in your product and will buy from you. 2) Just because the negative reviewer didn’t like you, their negatives may be a positive to someone else.

• Its not just monitoring and responding. Other stuff happens. Communications and engagements are highly distributable. Paradigm shift in not “How many people am I reaching?” but instead “Who am I reaching?”. You have to have real interactions with real human beings.

• “Who’s better to talk about your product or service: you, your brochure, or a really satisfied customer? …And thats the real story here.”

• “Your brand isn’t what you say it is, its what Google says it is.” – Chris Anderson

• Treat every page [on your website] as your home page. People use direct links – especially through Google searches.

• Being on Twitter and Facebook isn’t enough, you have to leverage these channels in a unique and interesting way… Theres an opportunity here; an opportunity to connect, to create these real interactions between real human beings. And the brands that actually evolve are the brands that understand these relationships and do what they can to bring their consumers together and connect them.

• Digital Marketing is a “with” not an “instead of” in regards to traditional marketing.

• “Don’t write checks with social media that your website can’t cash.” - Avinash Kaushik

• We aren’t really “marketing” anymore, we are publishing. Emphasis needs to be on authenticity and honestly – not on “sales”.

• Don’t ask “WHAT are we doing on Facebook”. Ask “WHY are we using Facebook”. What do you MEAN by social media? What are your goals? You must have a strategy.

• Your customers don’t care about flashy technology, they want a good experience. They want simplicity.

Related Articles:

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• Actionable Steps to Better Inbound Marketing Success by Brian Halligan, Hubspot
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• A Project Manager at What’s Next DC: The Good, The Bad and My Hopes for Next Year
• What’s Next DC Conference 2011 – Wrap Up: Marketing Best Practices and Social Media Takeaways

• Takeaways from the Government Video Expo 2010 in DC
• Recap of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s “Tour and Tweet”
• Nonprofit 2.0 Unconference Keynotes by Beth Kanter, Allison Fine, Wendy Harman
• Digital Capital Week 2010 – “A Slice of DCWEEK”
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• GoPromoIt.com – Discounts for sharing with your social network.

“NonProfit 2.0 is more than just a conference on the next generation web. It’s a next generation conference in format. Ever attend a conference for a keynote, and find the rest of the content to be wanting? NonProfit 2.0 delivers the best of both worlds — offering great keynote sessions led by Robert Wolfe, Co-Founder of Crowdrise, and Stacey Monk, Executive Director, Epic Change — but in an unconference way with with no PowerPoint. Instead Nonprofit 2.0 will focus on open questions and dialogue for fantastic conversations . Then from midmorning forward, NonProfit 2.0 shifts into a full-on Unconference.” 

Check out podcasts and videos from Captico’s covergae of last years Nonprofit 2.0 Conference!

Who is invited?

Are you working in the nonprofit community? Are you a an online advocacy guru, a fundraiser, or grassroots organizer? Perhaps you manage a communications team and want to dive into social media but you’re a little old school. This event is for you! We invite nonprofit staff and do-gooder consultants from a diverse array of fields to come join us at NonProfit 2.0. This includes people who work in:

• Online Advocacy and Outreach
• Grassroots Organizing
• Social Media
• Fundraising
• Communications
• Nonprofit Technology
• Nonprofit Consulting
• Public Affairs
• Programming

What is an unConference?

Following the keynote sessions – at 10:30 AM we start with a blank wall and, in less than an hour, with a facilitator guiding the process attendees create a full day, multi-track conference agenda that is relevant and inspiring to everyone in the room. All are welcome to put forward presentations or propose conversations that you would like to have with others and:

• questions you want answered
• information you want to share/present
• a project you would like help on

As people register we will be posting proposed topics on our wiki.

What happens During Sessions?*

As sessions happen people volunteer to document the outcomes on a wiki (The notes of what was said is even better). Photos of any whiteboards are also important along with any slides that were presented.

End of the Day

At the end of the day everyone gathers in one place to share highlights of the day.

Why Charge?

The $45 fee covers event costs. While leading the organization of NonProfit 2.0 as a way to educate the local nonprofit community on social media and contributing some financial resources, the founders do not want to go in debt on the community’s behalf. Secondarily, PodCamp Boston 2008 received more than 1000 registrants and only a few hundred showed up. The resulting financial loss was significant. We want people to commit to their registration, and there is no better way than to charge a cover. The event is significantly cheaper than most events at this cost, and folks will get a big bang for their buck.

Please note that net proceeds will be donated to a local charity. Catering will be provided by DC Central Kitchen.

Refund Policy: Tickets are refundable until May 15, 2011.

Sponsored By: Rad Campaign, Zoetica, and Digital Sistas

When it comes to Twitter, there are two schools of thought. 1) Find out when your followers/audience are most active. More people online, more people actively retweeting and engaging, more likely to have conversion conversations. 2) Find out when the Twitter-verse is LEAST active. Less content clogging people’s news-streams means that your tweets are more likely to be seen.

If you’re at a loss, you can try a tool like Timely to help you schedule your tweets based on your track record with your own audience. Timely analyzes your last 199 tweets and then shortlists the ones that have been retweeted. The more retweets you get in a particular time slot, the more you may want to focus on that timeslot… or just post similar content. There is no “one right way”.

You also don’t want to forget about things like time zones if you are working with an international crowd or even cross-country. While you are reading the morning headlines in New York, Silicon Valley is still asleep!

When it comes to blogging, frequency will pay off more than anything else. Publishing multiple times per day greatly increases traffic (as well as provides fodder for social networks).

Ok, so lets get into Dan’s findings:

The best time of day to get Retweeted: Between 3pm-6pm

The best day of the week to get ReTweeted: Friday

The best time of day to get shared on Facebook: 9am

The best day of the week to get shared on Facebook: Saturday

The best time to get your blog read: Morning

The Best Time of day to Tweet by Dan Zarrella

The Best Day of the Week to Tweet by Dan Zarrella

The Best Time of the Day to Share on Facebook by Dan Zarrella

The Best Day of the Week to Share on Facebook by Dan Zarrella

Based on these findings, a good strategy may be to post new blog articles at the end of the week and in the morning. And then reshare them on social networks in the afternoon.

Related Social Media Articles:

• 8% of online Americans Use Twitter. Are Your Customers There?
• Twitter Promoted Trends and Keurig’s Coffee and a Cruise Campaign
• How Do I: Send Public and Private Messages on Twitter?
• How Do I: Post Updates to Twitter?
• Whats Quora? And Should I Care About Another Social Media Tool?
• Lance Armstrong, Twitter, and Google – Why Link Building and SEO Works
• 12 Tools for Tracking Twitter Sentiment
• Consumers Engaged Via Social Media Are More Likely To Buy

Captico is happy to both set up your Facebook and Twitter accounts for you and manage them as well. Contact us if you would like more information on these services or would like to schedule one-on-one tutoring in developing your social media presence and strategy. Thanks for reading and please share any tips or advice you may have – or ask any questions – in the comments section below!

The micro-blogging service Twitter launched on July 15, 2006. Just five years later it is an international phenomenon connecting companies to customers and some might even say enabling revolutions. “It is one of the most popular online activities among tech enthusiasts and has become a widely used tool among analysts to study the conversations and interests of users, buzz about news, products or services, and announcements by commercial, non-profit, and government organizations.” – PewResearch Center

In November 2010 PewResearch asked online adults: “Do you use Twitter?” In this survey, 8% of online adults said they do use Twitter—with 2% doing so on a typical day. This survey also showed that 74% of American adults are internet users, meaning that the Twitter cohort amounts to 6% of the entire adult population.

• Young adults – Internet users ages 18-29 are significantly more likely to use Twitter than older adults.
• African-Americans and Latinos – Minority internet users are more than twice as likely to use Twitter as are white internet users.
• Urbanites – Urban residents are roughly twice as likely to use Twitter as rural dwellers.
• Women and the college-educated are also slightly more likely than average to use the service.
• One-quarter of Twitter users check in multiple times per day for tweets from others.
• One in five Twitter users never check for new material on the site itself

According to deeper Omnibus surveys on Twitter usage conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, “Twitter users are nearly equally divided between those who check the site on a daily basis (or multiple times per day) and those who check the site infrequently or never. Just over one-third of Twitter users (36%) check for material posted by others on a daily basis or multiple times per day—this is roughly comparable to the two in five (41%) who say they check the site less than every few weeks, or never do so at all. The remaining one-quarter of users say they check the site for updates a few days each week or every few weeks.”

In addition to frequency, users were also asked what they shared on Twitter. Personal and professional observations were the most popular types of updates, while location-based tweets and links to videos are the LEAST commonly mentioned.

• 72% of Twitter users say that they post updates related to their personal life, activities or interests. 1 in 5 (19%) say they post personal updates once a day or more.
• 62% say they post updates related to their work life, activities or interests, with 12% doing so on a daily basis.
• 55% share links to news stories. One in ten (12%) do this at least once a day.
• 54% of these Twitter users say they post humorous or philosophical observations about life in general, with 16% doing so on a daily basis.
• 53% use Twitter to retweet material posted by others, with 18% doing so on a daily basis.
• 52% send direct messages to other users, with 11% doing so on a daily basis.
• 40% use Twitter to share photos with others, with 12% going so at least once a day.
• 28% use Twitter to share videos with others. Fewer than one in ten Twitter users (8%) do this once a day or more.
• 24% use the service to tweet their location (through services like foursquare), with 7% of users doing so on a daily basis.

Related Social Media Articles:

• Twitter Promoted Trends and Keurig’s Coffee and a Cruise Campaign
• How Do I: Link My Facebook Page to My Twitter Account?
• How Do I: Connect My Twitter and Facebook Accounts?
• How Do I: Send Public and Private Messages on Twitter?
• How Do I: Post Updates to Twitter?
• Whats Quora? And Should I Care About Another Social Media Tool?
• Lance Armstrong, Twitter, and Google – Why Link Building and SEO Works
• How Does Twitter See Itself and What Are Its Plans and Priorities?
• Are our websites getting too crowded with social media apps?
• 12 Tools for Tracking Twitter Sentiment
• Consumers Engaged Via Social Media Are More Likely To Buy

Captico is happy to both set up your Facebook and Twitter accounts for you and manage them as well. Contact us if you would like more information on these services or would like to schedule one-on-one tutoring in developing your social media presence and strategy. Thanks for reading and please share any tips or advice you may have – or ask any questions – in the comments section below!

“We tend to take our time signing deals with stadiums as there just isn’t really any competition in the blimp messaging business,” says Bill Pmilb, Director of Dirigible Marketing at Goodyear, “We just never saw this coming – especially from an internet-focused firm like Google. They really caught us with our pants down on this one.” 

Google’s new mobile advertising delivery platform, or gBlimps, as they are being called, promise to offer clients even bigger audiences for their AdWords campaigns. If you already have an existing AdWords account, you don’t have to modify your listings at all, as gBlimps are designed specifically to display your existing text ads in their original format.

Google isn’t limiting customizability options either. Just like with other display ads, you can specify the height and location of the blimp, as well as the time you want the ad to run. You can even target special events like football games, outdoor concerts, meteor showers, and more.

While this may be great news for advertisers, Goodyear is contemplating a lawsuit. “I just don’t know why they would do this to us,” says Pmilb shaking his head, “We’re a good client of Google’s – we pay for ads and listings and everything… It may be the end of an era here at Goodyear.”

***UPDATE***

The Goodyear Blimp has come out with an official statement: “Contrary to some reports (cough, cough, Captico), we welcome the search giant to the aerial advertising world we pioneered more than 85 years ago. There are more events than we can cover. Colorado, for example, doesn’t see many blimp visits.”

To learn more, visit the Goodyear Blimp Facebook Page or Twitter account.

What Are Twitter Promoted Trends?

As we mentioned at their first launch (Twitter: Promoted Tweets and Trends… They’re Heeeerrreee), Twitter’s Promoted Trends gives advertisers a highly visible and coveted space on users’ Twitter home pages in the “Trending” category. Topics that appear here normally, do so because a lot of people in that city, country, or the world (depending on your settings) are talking about a particular topic. If a celebrity dies, for example, they are almost always a trending topic for a day or two as people tweet and share news and remembrances.

Hashtags and memes are also often dominant Trends as people jump on board participating in game-like posts or live-tweeting from a large event. In the image above actor Jackie Chan is listed as a rumor went around that he had died and then the correction that he was in fact very much alive followed. The AMC show “Mad Men” is trending as a lot of people are discussing the delay in the next season’s production due to contract negotiations. At the top of the list we see the “Love Keurig?” Trend next to a “PROMOTED” graphic – letting everyone know that this trend was started by and paid for by a company. The image above is from Captico’s homepage which has its Trending City set for Washington, DC (this is changeable). Here are other Trend Lists from other cities… you can see that some Trends are the same, some are different, but all of them have the Promoted Trend “Love Keurig?” at the top.

What is the “Love Keurig?” Campaign?

Clicking on the “Love Keurig? Trend will take you to a Search Results page (as if you had typed the phrase into the search box) listing everyone using the phrase “Love Keurig” in their tweets.

As you can see the top tweet is from icedkcups whose account is primarily being promoted with this campaign. Brew Over Ice K-Cups is the newest Keurig product and so to launch it, Keurig and Green Mountain turned to Twitter, trusting their rabid fans would be eager to spread the coffee love. And for non-keurig users, theres always the cruise. Yup. They are giving away an Alaskan cruise to one lucky winner. See the landing page they link to below:

So in what turns out to be a huge social media campaign, the promoted trend leads you to the product’s special twitter account, which takes you to the giveaway landing page. The first 2000 people who enter get a free “Brew Over Ice” tumbler. 1000 of those people win a 2nd place prize of a sampler pack of Brew-Over-Ice K-cups (only useful if you have a Keurig). 100 people win a 1st prize os a new Keurig brewer. 1 grand prize winner receives an Alaskan trip for two with roundtrip airfare. Sounds pretty awesome, but they make you follow all 7 of their Twitter or Facebook accounts to enter. I actually had a lot of trouble with the iframes on their site, so I didn’t enter, but its a straightforward enough approach. Sure you could go back and unfollow all of the accounts after the contest ends, but I imagine they are hoping most people are too lazy to go back and do so, meaning an immediate and big audience for all of their news and product releases in the future.

Conclusion

This is a great use of Twitter’s Promoted Trend feature. By choosing something simple and inviting to add onto like “Love Keurig?” it encourages people familiar with the brand to engage it, sharing the tweet and thus promoting the topic, as well as hooks in curious users who have no idea what Keurig is. They are immediately drawn into the conversation, reading reviews, and seeing people who love the product. On top of all of it they offer a lot of great giveaways that people will want to try to win. Would you follow (perhaps temporarily) 7 accounts with one click for the 1/2000 chance of winning a cruise? Keurig is betting you will.

Related Social Media Articles:

• How Do I: Link My Facebook Page to My Twitter Account?
• How Do I: Connect My Twitter and Facebook Accounts?
• How Do I: Send Public and Private Messages on Twitter?
• How Do I: Post Updates to Twitter?
• Whats Quora? And Should I Care About Another Social Media Tool?
• Lance Armstrong, Twitter, and Google – Why Link Building and SEO Works
• How Does Twitter See Itself and What Are Its Plans and Priorities?
• Are our websites getting too crowded with social media apps?
• 12 Tools for Tracking Twitter Sentiment
• Consumers Engaged Via Social Media Are More Likely To Buy

Captico is happy to both set up your Facebook and Twitter accounts for you and manage them as well. Contact us if you would like more information on these services or would like to schedule one-on-one tutoring in developing your social media presence and strategy. Thanks for reading and please share any tips or advice you may have – or ask any questions – in the comments section below!

Here’s a sample of the code:

require 'speech'
audio = Speech::AudioToText.new("i-like-pickles.wav")
puts audio.to_text.inspect
# {"captured_json"=>[["I like pickles", 0.92731786]], "confidence"=>0.92731786}

Let us know if you have some interesting ideas for how to use this.

The thought of complete strangers posting negative comments or inappropriate material on a Page’s public Wall seems to be the first thing to pop into many business owners’ minds. So let me first say, that yes, you can delete any comment and even block individuals from ever posting to your Page again. But that should be a last resort action and not the first button you push.

Why do people post mean things on my Facebook Page?

1. You screwed up. Lets distinguish “mean” from “negative”. If someone takes the time to find your Page and comment on it – even in a fit of rage – it is because they care enough to be irritated. Be honest, chances are you messed up an order or your service technician was having a bad day or maybe they just couldn’t assemble your product and are frustrated. Regardless, most negative comments come from customers who are having a bad experience.

How To Handle It: Respond quickly, calmly, and publicly in order to rectify the situation. An unhappy customer is not a lost customer. You would be amazed at how angry people can quickly turn into people more loyal to your brand than before. Its all about how you handle the situation. Did you mess up? Own up to it and make it right. Are they just frustrated? Put them in touch directly with the person best suited to handle their issue – and follow up to make sure it was resolved. Do not use boilerplate responses. Treat each person as an individual. Respect them.

How you handle negative feedback will matter more to people than how you respond to positive feedback (though be sure to always thank those people to!). By allowing people to post negative things on your Page, you are keeping them posting in a place that you have control of – where you can respond to their comments PUBLICLY. If they don’t do it there, on your page, they will do it elsewhere.

2. They are obnoxious trolls. A common internet phenomenon, these people “troll” internet forums and discussions leaving mean and often vulgar comments just to stir up controversy. Check out almost any YouTube video and you will see a ridiculous amount of irrelevant comments made by annoying people with nothing better to do.

How To Handle It: If the comment is intelligible, respond to it publicly. Even if its just a warning or question like “Are you having an issue with our products or is there another issue we can help you with?” If it is garbled and off-topic nonsense, delete the comment – but be absolutely sure. You don’t want to get in the habit of (or develop a reputation for) arbitrarily deleting comments – it will irritate your fans and make people suspicious of what you may be trying to hide.

How Do I Control Who Can Post to my Facebook Page?

While I advocate letting your Page’s fans post to your Page at will, you can control these settings. Go to your Page and click the “Edit Page” button in the far right corner. This takes you to your settings where you can edit and control many aspects of your Page. Click on “Manage Permissions” in the left-hand navigation.

As you can see in the image above, you have options to control not only who can access your Page, but also what they see. The above settings are for the Captico Facebook page. We have our Wall set as our default Landing Tab – meaning that when you visit our Page, you come to the Wall. This can be changed to any other Tab (such as Info, or Photos, or Blog) or even a custom Tab. Our Wall shows “All Posts” meaning, all posts by us and by our fans. This can be changed to only show posts by us, if you don’t want comments from your fans made public on your page. We have our Posting Ability set very open – any of our fans can post on our wall, add photos or add videos. Unchecking any of these boxes removes that ability.

If you are having an issue with profanity or SPAM, you can utilize Facebook’s built in moderation filters. Typing words into the Moderation Blocklist means any comment posted by a user that contains a word on your Blocklist will automatically be marked as spam. Or you can just set the Profanity Blocklist Filter at Medium or Strong and Facebook will block the most commonly reported words and phrases marked as offensive by the broader community.

How Do I Remove Comments from my Facebook Page?

Removing a comment is incredible simple. Below is a comment left on the Captico Facebook page by a great guy named Mike (contact him if you ever need fencing) Simply mouse over the right hand corner of the individual comment and click on the gear image that appears. You can now choose from 4 options:

1. Remove Post - If this were an accidental duplicate post or irrelevant or vulgar, I might click this option which would simply remove the post from my Wall.
2. Remove Post and Ban User – Selecting this would remove the post from my Wall and block them from ever posting anything on my Wall again.
3. Hide Post – Would simply “hide” the post from the public but would not delete it. Hidden posts are accessible under your Page’s profile picture  in the navigation links. You might use this option if you had multiple Page Admins and a lower ranking Admin wasn’t sure whether to delete it or not and so “hid it” until it could be reviewed.
4. Report as Abuse… - This is a very serious option and should only be used in terms of serial spammers or severe harassment. Clicking this will bring up several reasons which you must choose from as it will report the user to Facebook Authorities. Select your reason (from the options listed below) for reporting them and then check the box if you want to permanently ban the person from your Facebook Page and remove all content they have posted.

• Spam or scam.
• Contains hate speech or attacks an individual
• Violence or harmful behavior
• Sexually explicit content

With social media you will get out what you put into it. Be real. Be transparent. Be authentic. Treat people the way you want to be treated and you will be successful!

Related Social Media Articles:

• How Do I: Link My Facebook Page to My Twitter Account?
• How Do I: Connect My Twitter and Facebook Accounts?
• How Do I: Send Public and Private Messages on Twitter?
• How Do I: Post Updates to Twitter?
• Whats Quora? And Should I Care About Another Social Media Tool?
• Lance Armstrong, Twitter, and Google – Why Link Building and SEO Works
• How Does Twitter See Itself and What Are Its Plans and Priorities?
• Are our websites getting too crowded with social media apps?
• 12 Tools for Tracking Twitter Sentiment
• Consumers Engaged Via Social Media Are More Likely To Buy

Captico is happy to both set up your Facebook and Twitter accounts for you and manage them as well. Contact us if you would like more information on these services or would like to schedule one-on-one tutoring in developing your social media presence and strategy. Thanks for reading and please share any tips or advice you may have – or ask any questions – in the comments section below!

Based on feedback from our recent Social Media Training Workshops for Small Businesses, we will also be releasing a series of blog posts on how to get started in social media featuring fresh new information geared toward the small business owner. As always, we love to hear your questions and help out wherever we can so feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts or inquiries! 

Facebook Fan Pages / Company Pages

Pages (formerly called Fan Pages) are a way for companies, brands, products, bands, organizations, etc to have an official presence on Facebook. While you “can” create a profile page for your company, Facebook frowns upon it and will shut it down if they come across it. Profiles are for people, Pages are for everything else. Like Profiles though, Pages can be enhanced with applications, “Like” other pages, post pictures and updates, receive comments, and comment on other Pages. Pages cannot send messages to individual users though. If you send a message to a user, it will appear to come from your personal account.

Creating a Facebook “Fan” Page

1. Go to the Create A Page Landing Page. This is accessible several ways, but the link http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php will work easiest for now.

2. Select your Page type. Are you a brick and mortar store that people can visit, like a boutique or restaurant? Choose “Local Business or Place”. Are you a business that operates out of your home or on the road? Choose “Company, Organization, or Institution”. Each of the 6 types will give you different options and fields for information, so make sure you pick the best one for you. After clicking on a Type, fill in the information that type requires. (Feel free to click around and see what each type asks for initially to get you started.)

In this example I have selected “Company, Organization, or Institution” as my type, “the vague “Small Business” as my Category, and named it “Test Company”. Check the “I agree to Facebook Pages Terms” box after reading it, and click “Get Started”!

3. You have now arrived at your Page. Start building it up! Add a photo or logo to be used as your avatar (profile picture). Suggest to your friends (friends of your personal Facebook profile) to “Like” of Fan your new page. Import your existing contacts from a file or from your email client in order to reach customers you arent connected with on Facebook. Post your first update! Add a Facebook Like Box to your website to encourage visitors on your website to join your Facebook Page (You will need to be able to embed HTML code on your website).

4. Edit Page. Click the “Edit Page” button in the top right hand corner to customize your page’s settings, including who can post to your wall or upload photos, where you want notifications sent, and additional details about your company.

5. Congratulations! You just created your very own Facebook Page for your company or business! See, it was easy! Now create some photo albums and share pictures from events or your products or your staff. Write “notes” with longer-form information – like recipes or advice. Having an annual blow-out sale or hosting a booth at a tradeshow? Create an Event and invite your fans to it! If you’re a B2B, connect with other business’ pages by “Liking” them as your Page – comment on there walls, RSVP to their events. Be active, and be social!

Privacy and Admins for Facebook Pages

By creating a Page you are automatically its sole Admin. Pages can have as many admins as you would like, and I recommend having at least two as a safeguard for your Page. To give administrative control to another person, click “Edit Page” in the top right hand corner of the Page, and select “manage Admins” in the left hand navigation. Here you can remove Admin access and add additional Admins. Simply type their name (if they are connected with you on Facebook) or the email address they use to access Facebook. Be careful who you give control to though as they can access all of your Pages settings (though not your personal ones) and all posts they make to the page will appear to come directly from the page itself. They cannot, however, remove admin power from the creator of the page.

Admins are NOT made public. You can be an Admin of a page and not have anyone know you are associated with that page. You don’t even have to “Like” the page. If you do wish to be visibly associated with the Page, click “Edit Page” in the top right hand corner of the Page, and select “Featured” in the left hand navigation. Here you can set which Pages that your Page “Likes” as Featured Pages on the left of your Page and you can also set Featured Page Owners – which will also appear highlighted on the left of your Page – visible to all who visit your Page.

For information on how and when to moderate comments on your Facebook Page, check out our next blog.

With social media you will get out what you put into it. Be real. Be transparent. Be authentic. Treat people the way you want to be treated and you will be successful!

Related Social Media Articles:

• How Do I: Link My Facebook Page to My Twitter Account?
• How Do I: Connect My Twitter and Facebook Accounts?
• How Do I: Send Public and Private Messages on Twitter?
• How Do I: Post Updates to Twitter?
• Whats Quora? And Should I Care About Another Social Media Tool?
• Lance Armstrong, Twitter, and Google – Why Link Building and SEO Works
• How Does Twitter See Itself and What Are Its Plans and Priorities?
• Are our websites getting too crowded with social media apps?
• 12 Tools for Tracking Twitter Sentiment
• Consumers Engaged Via Social Media Are More Likely To Buy

Captico is happy to both set up your Facebook and Twitter accounts for you and manage them as well. Contact us if you would like more information on these services or would like to schedule one-on-one tutoring in developing your social media presence and strategy. Thanks for reading and please share any tips or advice you may have – or ask any questions – in the comments section below!

“A headache or cephalgia is pain anywhere in the region of the head or neck. It can be a symptom of a number of different conditions of the head and neck.[1] The brain tissue itself is not sensitive to pain because it lacks pain receptors. Rather, the pain is caused by disturbance of the pain-sensitive structures around the brain. Several areas of the head and neck have these pain-sensitive structures, which are divided in two categories: within the cranium (blood vessels, meninges, and the cranial nerves) and outside the cranium (the periosteum of the skull, muscles, nerves, arteries and veins, subcutaneous tissues, eyes, ears, sinuses and mucous membranes).” – Wikipedia

As a video editor, a headache or migraine can be absolutely brutal to your productivity during a project (and I know its no picnic for web developers either). With several projects on my plate for the day, the last thing I wanted was to be dragged down by distracting pain. I tried taking traditional pain meds, eating, sugar, and I even tried a little caffeine (in the form of hot tea). Nothing worked. So I reached out to “the crowd” via Twitter.

I started getting some great suggestions that I hadn’t heard before and good feedback, so I promised to compile all the remedies people sent me into a post. Hopefully it will help you the next time you are fighting a headache!

“Primary headaches account for more than 90% of all headache complaints, and of these, episodic tension-type headache is the most common. Almost everyone has had a headache of this type. Although chronic tension-type headache occurs in only slightly more than 2% of the population, it accounts for a large number of visits to the physician’s office and missed work days…Migraine is three times more common in female patients.”

Headache Remedies

1. Running / Working Out – the thought here is that by getting the blood flowing, it should ease the headache. (But what about that pounding impact? I’d worry that it would rattly my brain all the more…) @MrTosh1980

2. Eat a banana – Bananas contains potassium which is a folk remedy for tension headaches. @nicalderton

3. Soak your feet – Supposedly soaking your feet in hot water draws the blood to your feet and eases the pressure in your head (either way it’ll feel nice!) @funkydeeeva – Hot showers are also recommended for those suffering headaches.

4. Acupuncture – This treatment is growing in popularity and is used for many types of pain. It is often used for chronic tension headaches and migraines.

5. Meditation – Spend 5 mins breathing slowly and deeply to relax upper body stress. (This is good for your body and health in general – try to do it every day!) @nicalderton

6. Eating – You could just be hungry and a headache is your body’s way of telling you it needs fuel! Following a regular eating schedule can decrease your migraine frequency. Some foods, food additives, fasting and/or skipping meals can also cause migraines.

7. Drinking – Similar to the need for food, you may be dehydrated. Throw back a bottle of water and see how you feel.

8. Pressure – Sometimes just applying some pressure to your temples or the spot of the pain can help alleviate it. Try a cool bean bag pouch over your eyes or on your forehead as you lay on your back.

9. Caffeine Cocktail – Sometimes headaches are caused by a lack of caffeine (if you are a soda or coffee addict especially). @reneealarid says two Excedrin and a Red Bull works like a charm and @ShannonRenee is an Aspirin/Excedrin/caffeine devotee as well.

10. Cold – An icepack is thought to bring down the swelling of veins and lighten the pressure of a headache. For a more sophisticated route, @FenceMike is a Biofreeze believer.

11. Sleep – If you can’t beat it, close yourself up in a dark, quiet place and try to sleep it off! Also, following a regular sleep pattern can decrease your migraine frequency.

These are the remedies suggested to me over the course of about an hour or two on Twitter. What do you like to do when you get a headache? Any cures or rituals that help you ward one off? Have you tried any of the things we listed? Let us know in the comments below!!

Our first workshop will be an intermediate (201) level session dedicated to three of the social networking platforms including: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It will be held on March 17, 23, and 30th at 8am-9:30am with the same material presented at each session.

This seminar, developed with small businesses in mind, will empower you with the knowledge and resources to manage a Facebook Page and Twitter account for your business and introduce you to LinkedIn as a professional networking tool.

Sample Social Media Training Workshop Agenda:

Facebook

• Difference between a Profile, a Page, and a Community Page
• Setting up a Page
• Admins (Creating them, managing the account, privacy concerns)
• Managing the Page (Tabs, Photos, Videos, Posts, Filters, Settings)
• Moderating Comments by Users
• Insights

Twitter

• Anatomy of Twitter (Language, Terms, Symbols)
• How to Send Public and Private Messages
• The differences between Tweets, Replies, Tags, and Direct Messages
• Twitter Etiquette
• Setting up an Account and Customizing Your Design

An Introduction to LinkedIn

• Your LinkedIn Profile
• Customizing Your Profile with Widgets
• Groups
• Company Pages

Q&A Review of Material Presented

• If time permits, those with access to computers may also receive individual instruction and guidance in setting up and managing their accounts.

Interested in Attending?

If you are interested in attending, you can register through the Severna Park Chamber of Commerce website or call 410-647-3900.

Cost is: $30 for members, $40 for non-members

We HIGHLY recommend you bring a laptop.

Class size will be limited to 8 participants in each session.

We have also set up Facebook Events for each session.

• Thursday, March 17th, 2011
• Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011
• Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

_____________________________

P.S. If you want to nerd out your home or office, those fun pillows in the featured image are available for sale on Etsy from Craftsquatch for $19.99.

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<link href="/stylesheets/application/typography.css?1298313118" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/navigation.css?1298232561" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/borders.css?1298232561" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/tables.css?1298232561" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/forms.css?1298313118" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/sprites.css?1298232561" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/graphs.css?1298232561" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/buttons.css?1298232561" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/application/new.css?1298406234" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<script src="/javascripts/application/jquery-1.4.2.min.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/jquery-ui-1.8.2.custom.min.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/jquery.maskedinput-1.2.2.min.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/jquery.tag.editor-min.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/jquery.validate.min.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/jquery.timers.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/jquery.dropshadow.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/jquery.colorbox-min.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/raphael-1.5.2.min.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/sprintf-0.7-beta1.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/buttons.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/rails.js?1298232561" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/application/application.js?1298311734" type="text/javascript"></script>

into this:

<link href="/stylesheets/bundle_application.css?1298411714" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<script src="/javascripts/bundle_application.js?1298411715" type="text/javascript"></script>

Why not use the built in Ruby on Rails :cache option with

javascript_include_tag

?

It doesn’t work very well. It’s flawed in that it waits until the first request to pull all the resources together into a single cached file. This sounds great until you start dealing with multiple processes across multiple servers. Not to mention that first user will have a noticeable delay while the server compiles the javascript and stylesheets – since <script tags block the browser from rendering this will increase the perceived response time quiet a bit. Yeah, so it’s 2011 so this should be old news by now right?

How does assemblage solve this problem different from how we’ve been solving for the past 7 years? Well it does four things I like better than most solutions.

1. It depends on the directory structure in your Rails.root + ‘public/stylesheets’ and Rails.root + ‘public/javascripts’. This is nice as it allows you to logically group bundled assets just like you would organize Rails.root + ‘app/views/layouts/’

2. It packages up the bundled assets on your local machine instead of on the remote server.

3. It can be configured to use a specific order for files in Rails.root + ‘public/javascripts’ – making it super easy to migrate an existing application to assemblage.

4. It uses Google’s Closure Compiler to compress Javascript files and Yahoo’s YUI Compressor to shrink down CSS files.

All that plus it plays really nice with Rails 3 and includes a nice little internal test suite giving me great confidence in it’s operation.

Here’s a quick low down on how to setup your Rails application using assemblage.

Let’s say we have 2 layouts. application.html.erb and login.html.erb (yep, I still use erb!) In this case, I would create 4 sub folders 2 in stylesheets and 2 in javascripts

cd public/stylesheets/ && mkdir application/ login/ && cd -
cd public/javascripts/ && mkdir application/ login/ && cd -

Now open up your application.html.erb

Let’s say it has the following:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <%= stylesheet_link_tag 'reset',  'typography', 'navigation', 'borders','tables', 'forms','sprites','graphs','buttons' %>
    <%= javascript_include_tag 'jquery-1.4.2.min.js', 'jquery.colorbox-min',  'raphael-1.5.2.min.js', 'application' %>
     ...

To convert to assemblage start out by copying/moving each asset into their layout specific folder within public/stylesheets and public/javascripts

e.g.

cd public/stylesheets && mv *.css application/ && cd -
cd public/javascripts && mv *.js application/ && cd -

Next change your include tags to use assemblage view helpers:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <%= stylesheet_bundle 'application' %>
    <%= javascript_bundle 'application' %>
     ...

Now that’s actually all you need to do however, if you want to be explicit about the order each Javascript and Stylesheet is ordered when bundled you’ll want to create one more configuration file config/assemblage.rb. This allows you to have 1 bundle per layout and provide a specific ordering for the included files. The default will order the bundled files in alphabetical order.

bundle :application, :js, 'jquery-1.4.2.min.js',  'jquery.colorbox-min',  'raphael-1.5.2.min.js', 'application'
bundle :application, :css, 'reset',  'typography', 'navigation', 'borders','tables', 'forms','sprites','graphs','buttons'

Now when it’s time to deploy you can add the following your Capfile with rails3/bundler

require "bundler"
Bundler.setup

and in your config/deploy.rb

require 'assemblage_recipes'
...
after "deploy:update_code", "assemblage:assemble"

The first line includes the recipe to generate the bundles and the second one tells Capistrano to execute it after updating code.

Also make sure to include assemblage in your Gemfile e.g.

gem 'assemblage', :git => 'git://github.com/taf2/assemblage.git'

See the following example:

scope :constraints => { :protocol => 'https' } do
    resources :invoices do
      resources :line_items
    end
end

Viewing the corresponding routes this generates the following:

invoice_line_items GET /invoices/:invoice_id/line_items(.:format)  {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"index", :controller=>"line_items"}
                   POST /invoices/:invoice_id/line_items(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"create", :controller=>"line_items"}
new_invoice_line_item GET /invoices/:invoice_id/line_items/new(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"new", :controller=>"line_items"}
edit_invoice_line_item GET /invoices/:invoice_id/line_items/:id/edit(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"edit", :controller=>"line_items"}
invoice_line_item GET /invoices/:invoice_id/line_items/:id(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"show", :controller=>"line_items"}
                  PUT    /invoices/:invoice_id/line_items/:id(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"update", :controller=>"line_items"}
                  DELETE /invoices/:invoice_id/line_items/:id(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"destroy", :controller=>"line_items"}
invoices GET /invoices(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"index", :controller=>"invoices"}
         POST /invoices(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"create", :controller=>"invoices"}
new_invoice GET /invoices/new(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"new", :controller=>"invoices"}
edit_invoice GET /invoices/:id/edit(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"edit", :controller=>"invoices"}
invoice GET /invoices/:id(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"show", :controller=>"invoices"}
        PUT /invoices/:id(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"update", :controller=>"invoices"}
        DELETE /invoices/:id(.:format) {:protocol=>"https", :action=>"destroy", :controller=>"invoices"}

The important part here is:

 :protocol => "https"

This tells rails to only honor the route when the protocol matches HTTPS, but not when it is HTTP.  Perfect, exactly what we need – no plugins required!

Well, almost perfect. The first problem encountered, is likely RAILS_ENV=development no longer works as those routes are only accesible through HTTPS. A simple solution – turn the :protocol value into a variable and change it to HTTP for development, otherwise HTTPS. Add the variable in config/environments/development.rb like so:

SSL_PROTO__ = 'http'

and add the following at the top of config/routes.rb

SSL_PROTO__ = 'https' unless defined?(SSL_PROTO__)

Great, now we can still test SSL in development by simply changing the constant in config/environments/development.rb and our tests can verify SSL is enabled for specific sections of the application.

This is almost everything necessary – the next gotcha will be making sure our application routes HTTP requests to the new HTTPS routes. To do this we can use a special catch all route:

match "invoices(/*path)",
      :to => redirect { |params, request|
                        "https://" + request.host_with_port +
                                     request.fullpath
                      }

Adding this after the invoices resource allows us to catch requests sent to HTTP and redirect them to HTTPS.

The catch all route is nice, but really our application should always link to these resources using SSL. Add the following to your links:

<%= link_to t('menus.new_invoice'),
new_invoice_url(:protocol => 'https') %>

Adding SSL constraints is pretty easy and effective.   What I like about this solution is that it doesn’t require any extra plugins and it is fairly simple to understand.