Say it Again: You are what you publish.
Published August 10, 2010 | 
I am going to reiterate this idea from a post last month because of something my wife just showed me.
In the modern age of social media, we are what we publish. If you apply for a job, its common practice to research you on the ‘net. So, I give you the case of a girl, Jenny, who quit her job yesterday morning by emailing a series of photos to everyone in her company.
http://thechive.com/2010/08/10/girl-quits-her-job-on-dry-erase-board-emails-entire-office-33-photos/
Over 30k people know how Jenny quit her job, more to come, and when bloggers find out her last name, these series of photos could easily come up connected with her on a Google search. So, when Jenny applies to her next job, this is what could easily come up when the HR manager checks her out on Google before bringing her in for an interview.
Not that Jenny is in the wrong. Sexual harassment is a serious HR issue, and if she had a boss who yelled at her and made inappropriate remarks, she needed to deal with that, or quit. The problem here isn’t that Jenny was wrong to quit; the issue is how she quit. Granted its funny, but lets look at the impact on her career opportunities.
If you owned a firm and had somebody like this fellow Spencer managing it for you, would you want to know from an employee about their concerns directly? Or would you rather read it on Facebook? As an HR manager, would you rather present a candidate who has a quiet, professional history to a hiring manager, or a HoPA who reacted bitterly and quit without notice in public forum? Would you rather have a quiet level-headed broker working for you, or someone who reacts unprofessionally to unprofessional situations?
Here’s another note to think about; when you post something that someone else did online, you wield a great and terrible power over their life. Jenny sent this to her office, which wasn’t well thought through, however, somebody in her office posted it online for her, which was simply cruel and may have affected Jenny’s career for years and years to come.
Remember that Star Wars Kid video? Funny, yes. In interviews that kid said the video haunted him for years and ruined his adolescent life…and somebody else posted that for him.
Again; with great power, comes great responsibility. Having the power to post to the Internet and get the immediate attention of millions is great power. If you use it irresponsibly, then, eventually, that is how you may be known…if you use it responsibly, it can have great impact on your life.
Next up, we will do a summary review of analytics, Facebook pages and marketing strategy, going over the posts for the past few months to put them in context before moving on to building traffic.
You ARE what you PUBLISH
Published June 15, 2010 | You ARE what you PUBLISH. Think about that.
In this Internet world, so many of us are interconnected through social media and I want to encourage my clients and friends to think about what they publish online. Publish what you want to publish, I am not suggesting that you censor yourself. I am making the radical assertion that you want to be responsible and conscientious about what you publish.
With the flattening of communication so we all have the power to reach hundreds, if not thousands, most of us are suddenly and irrefutably accountable for what we publish on-line.
For example, I was reading on Facebook a note from one of my former youth (I was a youth adviser for a while) that was a rant, full of 4-letter words about something they thought was out of line. Even if their Facebook settings publish that only to their friends, maybe one of those friends has a feed out to other sources. Its hard to control where information on the Internet winds up.
Think about it. Its not uncommon for employers and HR folks to go to Google or Yahoo and type in the name of a candidate, their city, and a few keywords. Right or wrong, its common practice, and since the information is in the public domain, its fair game. Try this interesting exercise. Go to Google, type in your name, city and something about yourself that you might put on a job application and dig around a bit…
Even if your various profiles are not public, when you write status, share thoughts, comment on-line and publish videos, you are publishing to the largest interconnected, grass-roots network the world has ever known. One of the most beautiful things about the ‘net is that information is free – so no, you don’t get to control where the things you publish wind up.
The power at your fingertips is immense, humbling and staggering. “With great power, comes great responsibility.”
Yes, I will continue to write technical posts for every-day people on this blog. Next we’ll get into the basics of reading analytic data. I am also going to provide some coaching and reflection about wielding this great power that we all suddenly find in our fingertips through Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Wordpress, Blogger, Google Connect, Yahoo Groups and more!
So, when you next click “Publish” – remember, the great power the Internet offers is a mighty double-edged sword.
“With great power, comes great responsibility.”
Next up, free options for web analytics.
Posted in Social Networking, Strategy | 
Facebook, Myspace, Social Media, Strategy, Twitter, Website Planning, WordPress | 
Leave a commentLinking WordPress, Facebook Pages and Twitter
Published February 24, 2010 | This is an incredibly long blog post that shows how to link a Facebook Page to Twitter, and a WordPress Blog to a Facebook Page so that when you update your blog, it automatically updates your Facebook Page and your Twitter account.
I had to do something similar for a client and decided it was cool enough to want to do a blog post about how to do this.
This took a lot of experimenting to because there are so many different WordPress plugins and options to connect WordPress to Facebook or Twitter. Honestly, I think this is probably the easiest way. Here are the requirements that I followed:
- Easy to learn and use, neither I nor my clients have lots of time to invest.
- Automatically update a Facebook Page and Twitter from WordPress
- Not update my personal Facebook profile, just my Facebook Page.
Seems simple enough, right? It wasn’t. I think because of the number of plugins and options available.
So, here’s what I did, with what I hope are fairly simple screenshots and steps to help those of you along inclined to do this. Of course, if you want some professional help, feel free to contact or call me (801-274-8490 is the office line 
.
These instructions are for linking a Facebook Page to Twitter, and then a blog to your Facebook Page. They are more oriented for a small business owner than for a personal blog. If you don’t have a Facebook Page, and you want one, check out the post on creating a Facebook Page.
First, get your Facebook Page talking to Twitter
This was pretty easy. There’s a Twitter application that Facebook put together to link a Facebook Page to Twitter. It does not work to link a personal profile (you have to add it to a Facebook Page).
So first, log into Facebook and open your Facebook Page (note that if you want your personal profile to talk to Twitter, you can add this application to your personal profile. These steps add it to your page.)
Log in to Facebook.
Make sure you have, or create a Facebook Page
In the search bar up top, enter “Twitter”
The first link that comes up should be an application, click on it
- Select the Twitter App
Selecting the Twitter Facebook App will open the Twitter application page and you’ll have to select on the left side to add the app to your page.
- Click “Add to my page”
A web pop-up will open showing a list of pages in your Facebook account. Click “Add to Page” for each page you want to send its wall updates to Twitter.
Now you will need to navigate back to your Facebook Page and click on “Edit Page” in the upper left.
Under the “Applications” area if you scroll down, you should see the Twitter Application, click “Edit” under the application and if you get the page asking to Allow the application, click the Allow button.
This will open up a Twitter login screen within Facebook (if everything has gone well so far):
- Log in to Twitter within Facebook
At this point you will have to allow the Connection in Twitter. You still need to allow your page into Twitter.
- Click on the Facebook App in Twitter Connections
Once you are logged in to Twitter, click on “Settings” and then “Connections.”
On the connections page, click on the Facebook app.
The next page will show a Facebook logo with an arrow pointing to Twitter and a large green button that says “Link a Page to Twitter”
Click on the large green button.
Again, a list of your Facebook Pages appears, with the pages on the left and a button “Link to Twitter” on the right.
Click the “Link to Twitter” button for your page, which will open the options panel for the Twitter Facebook Application
Ok — Finally, you should be all set. Again, if this was confusing, and you want some help, don’t hesitate to contact me.
If you want to double-check, you can go into Twitter, click on “Settings” and then click on “Connections.” If you see a Facebook connection notice there, with a “remove access” option, you’ve done it.
Connect WordPress to your Facebook Page with Networked Blogs
Now that we’ve finally got your Facebook Page updating Twitter, now we can connect your WordPress Blog to your FaceBook Page, for this we are going to use the Networked Blogs Facebook App.
Again, go to your Facebook account and log in (or stay logged in) and in the search bar type “Networked Blogs” – the first one in the list, where it says “Applications” is what you want.
- Click on the Networked Blogs application
That should open the application page, and on the left, you should see a link that says “Add to my Page” click on that link to open a web pop-up with a list of your pages. Click “Add to Page” for the page you want to link to WordPress.
Now, go back to your page (click on the word “Facebook” in the upper left to go back to your home page and click “Ads and Pages” again), and click “Edit Page” on the left.
Scroll down and look at the list of Applications. Networked Blogs should be on the list.
In this case, you have to allow your blog permission to post to the wall, so click on “Application Settings” and open the “Additional Settings” tab and check the box that says “Publish recent activity to my wall.” and click “Ok”.
Now we’re going to add your blog to Networked Blogs. Click “Edit” under the NetworkedBlogs Application. If you are following along with these instructions, this is probably the first time that you are running this, so you’ll have to Allow it access; if you get a page that starts with “Allow Access” click the button that says “Allow.”
This should open the networked blogs setup page.
You will get a form to fill in with information about your WordPress Blog. Fill out the information and click “Next” – if you get an offer to check out a promotional widget, you can (and should) uncheck that box and click the next button.
NetworkedBlogs will ask if you are the author of the blog. Click “Yes” (assuming you are), now you have to go through a verification step.
Choose to verify using the widget, open another browser window, log in to your WordPress blog and open “Appearance” and “Widgets”. Put a text widget on one of your side panels.
Switch back to the networked blogs interface and from the “Copy the following HTML code” box, select everything, copy it, switch back to your blog and paste all that code into your text widget. Save the widget.
Switch on back to the Networked Blogs interface and click “Verify Widget” – if you copied the code correctly, you should see a green box indicating you are verified. Click that “Next” button to show the NetworkedBlogs configuration page.
We are ALMOST done here. ALMOST. This has been an incredibly long blog post, hasn’t it? In the future I think we’ll choose smaller topics
So here is the NetworkedBlogs page once you have it installed into your Facebook Account, and you’ve got a blog set up properly:
Ok, now you want to click on the right side where it says “Feed Settings” – this is the final step to syncing your blog with Facebook, and thus, with Twitter.
Once you click on “Feed Settings” you will see an interface listing all your Facebook Pages – pick everywhere you want your blog to publish its updates.
After you pick the options you want, Networked Blogs can publish a test post for you. Go for it, you’ve worked hard, publish that test post.
If it doesn’t show up, step back through and check all the settings. Feel free to post a comment here with questions or to contact me for some professional help.
Posted in Social Networking | Facebook, Facebook Page, Facebook Pages, Joomla, Social Media, Website Design, Website Strategy, WordPress | 6 Comments