Cross-posted by Rebecca from Miss604.com

WordCamp Fraser Valley returns for its 3rd year of talks and workshops in Surrey on November 20th, 2010. WordPress is the top blogging platform in the world however it is also used to power millions of websites that you visit each and every day. Its endless theme and plugin capabilities make it one of the reasons why I have been building a business around the platform since 2008.

My company develops WordPress websites, specializing in social media newsrooms that tie blog and multimedia functions into a much more robust website platform. Along with Brave New Code, we hosted WordCamp Vancouver this year and received a fantastic response. I’m hoping that those interested in WordPress, from design and code to using it as a writing tool, will check out WordCamp Fraser Valley this weekend as well.

Speakers include my husband (and business partner) John Bollwitt who is an engineer at CHUM Radio Vancouver. He’ll be talking about how companies can built intranet sites using WordPress to keep their teams informed and in the loop. John has been using WordPress since 2005 and got me hooked on the platform in 2006.

He’ll be joined on the roster by Tris Hussey (author of Using WordPress), Dave Zille, Lynn Robson, and Kulpreet Singh. Raul Pacheco, Danny Bradbury, and Leah Cross will also address how to write and publish your various forms of content using WordPress.

Tickets are still available for $45 so if you’ve ever been curious about WordPress as a user, writer, or developer, these sessions and networking opportunities can’t be beat.

Going through some photos today, I rediscovered one that was worth noting in the realm of social media marketing.

In case you’re not familiar with Steamrollers, here is how they describe themselves on their website:

Steamrollers is a unique Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) concept. We serve a menu of west-coast style burritos called “Steamrollers”. Steamrollers are unique, in that ALL of the ingredients are cooked exclusively with steam. In fact, we are the only QSR concept that cooks ONLY with steam! Cooking with steam prevents shrinkage, locks in moisture and nutrients and tastes great!

Their sign at the counter is a great way to promote their presence in the social media space (Twitter in this case) and what extra benefits you get as one of their followers. It’s a clever way, albeit analog, to pick up followers who are mobile based while they pay at the register and wait for their food to be prepared.

As people often ask us how one gets more followers on Twitter or Facebook, this is a simple technique if you’re a business looking to expand your presence.

Example of a tweet by Steamrollers on Twitter.com

However, don’t forget to keep up with what you promise as well as engage the audience you already have with worthwhile conversations. Thousands of followers are great and make you look popular, but when you have all of that attention, it never hurts to have something worthwhile to say to the community you have created on a two way street of communication.

We’ll try to do posts like this more in the future as we spot social media marketing like this in the real world.

I’ve been interviewed at least a dozen times about how social media people are covering the Olympics in Vancouver. However, I think an equally interesting story is how traditional media outlets are using social media to add to their coverage.

CTV Olympics Video
The official broadcaster of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games has been posting footage to YouTube. The type of event action videos that would get pulled down with a cease & desist letter from the IOC are up and running in full glory on the CTV Olympics channel. Although you cannot embed the videos, you can watch clips of medal moments and even streaming replays of televised events on their main website.

Government of BC
The Province of British Columbia has been capturing Olympic moments and posting them to their official YouTube channel as well. They have athlete interviews, montages, and even an interview with yours truly.

They don’t have Games footage but they have been everywhere around town, profiling businesses and the fan experience.

Global has added a video section to their website and although they’re not posting the videos as shareable items on YouTube, they are blogging and tweeting to enhance their coverage. Same goes for the CBC who has a Road to the Games section of their site, acting as a 2010 newsroom complete with sidebar event listings. You can read more about their coverage game plan in my post from last week.

With such restrictions for non-official broadcasters these Olympics haven’t necessarily made journalists out of citizens, they’ve made the mainstream realize that social media can help them with their coverage — and it can make it that much more interesting.

This weekend I presented a quick “Who, What, When, Where, Why” of blogging and online branding for the Travel Media Association of Canada. The conference took place at the brand new Pinnacle Pier in North Vancouver and had a spectacular view of Vancouver from across the inlet. Unfortunately I couldn’t setup my shiny new Epson projector (due to the shining sun through the un-treated floor to ceiling windows) so I did the talk unassisted. I did however promise participants that I would post my slides on Slideshare regardless.

| Get your Presentation Pack

This is my presentation pack from Slideshare in case you would like to view any of my recent slide decks from speaking engagements. The one for TMAC does not have accompanying sound but I’ll try to make it a slidecast in the near future. Enjoy!

With all the social networks that are out there these days, it’s so common to get into conversations and have someone ask you, “Hey, are you on (insert the name of specific network here)?”

More often than none, you want to say that you are, following that up with an easy way for that person you just met at some great networking event to remember how to find you on that specific website. Be it Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn, there are multiple sites that all have different ways for you to be found on their service. It could be a search based on a name or email address, but how could you simplify this process that makes it easy for this person to find you?

These following is going to get quite technical, so if you’re uncomfortable with the following directions or just don’t like dealing with the settings on your web server or getting into code in general, don’t let this overwhelm you. Look over the idea and consider using this with your web presence. After that, consider finding someone with the skills to get this implemented.

Just as an example, I’m going to use Twitter. To find anyone on their service, you can usually find someone by typing in the following URL into any web browser:
twitter.com/mybrand

It’s fairly easy to tell someone that URL, but there is actually a way to make your website’s domain name, what you should also consider as your brand, do a lot of the work for you. Using what is known as URL redirection, you can use a simple, one line of code to use your brand to promote your presence on a particular social network. This is where we get a little more technical.

In my example here, I’m using some simple code in the htaccess on my website’s server. It should be said that you need to be very careful when editing this particular file on any website because altering it incorrectly can cause problems with the overall function of your domain. Of course, not all web servers are the same, so consult your host if you are not sure where or how you can implement this yourself.

Redirect /twitter http://twitter.com/mybrand

Once you have added that to the bottom of your htaccess, test it out by going to:
mybrand.com/twitter

Once you have this working, you should be able to go to that URL and have it automatically send anyone who visits that address to your account on Twitter so they can find you easily, efficiently, and, ultimately, follow your Twitter stream.

This also cuts down on any confusion because what if your brand’s name is hard to spell or there is another account on Twitter that has an account such as “twitter.com/my_brand” or “twitter.com/mybrands”? Having this redirect in place will save someone time and any confusion over who is who on any social network.

A live example of this would be the Flickr group that we just started. Since Rebecca and I both have our own accounts on there, we decided to create a pool of photos of all things related to sixty4media.

Here’s the actual address to the sixty4media Flickr Group:
http://flickr.com/groups/sixty4media/

To simplify things, I’ve used this trick to create:
sixty4media.com/flickr

When anyone clicks on that URL or types it into any web browser, they will be directed to the appropriate page on Flickr to see our photo group there. I’ve even gone a step further and added another line to compensate for any misspellings in the event that someone tries to type in “sixty4media.com/flicker“. It’s really up to you as to how specific you want to get.

This concept was something I caught wind about via a Twitter post by John Chow, and it made a lot of sense to me as soon as I saw it.

My instant thought was how much it would make sense to be able to hand someone your business card at an event. Since your website is usually on the card with all the rest of your contact information, telling that person how to find you on Facebook or LinkedIn is easier because all you have to do is point out your website on the card and tell them it’s “slash, (enter name of social network here).”

I heard this story on the radio this morning, and it got me thinking. Why are there not more city services, such as those run by a city hall in any township, using more elements of social media?

One local politician wants the Vancouver Park Board to get in on the act.

A motion going before the Board Monday night will ask members to look at not only posting audio of their meetings on-line but also to explore providing citizens with regular updates via social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. [...]

“I think that with all this social media that we have there is just so much that we can do. The more we can bring people in, the more we’ll know about what people want and the better job we can do.”

Blyth says the web is a good way to keep people informed about issues covered in upcoming meetings, as well as little known Park Board events. [news1130]

Now before you start rolling your eyes at the notion of another pusher of the Facebook and Twitter bandwagon, you need to start considering the ramifications of what these free and easy tools of direct contact really are.

Let me say those keywords again. Free and easy. Direct contact.

These terms should be enough for those organizations and committees to perk up a little bit if you have ever heard or said the notion of things getting done in local government but the public doesn’t get involved. Perhaps they judge interest on who shows up at those meetings in which anyone can attend.

Even better, how many times have you heard of something being decided by a city council to only have it be exactly the opposite of what the majority of the public wanted to have happen? Usually that happens because the public was unaware of it even being a matter of discussion because, and let’s be completely honest, reading those city council minutes are not the top priority of every single person that they affect.

So, to give you some basic idea of what your local government could be doing, here are some tips that I brainstormed this morning. Consider them starting points because you can really push things much further depending on how far you want to take these concepts.

Facebook: I’ll start here because there are some brilliant ways to use this service. Most importantly, starting Groups and then using it to announce and invite members to Events are great. It gets added to their profile and they can see when, where, and who is going to be there. And since you don’t need one person to moderate the group, you can utilize your whole organization to interact with the community online and in person. In fact, you never know if your members will start having meetups, outside of official meetings.

Twitter: Say what you will, but Twitter has a reach that is tough to beat. Announce scheduled meetings, send out updates, remind followers of scheduled events, take feedback from your followers, make live updates of what is going on at meetings or events, send out links to your agendas and minutes as soon as they are published to your website, etc. The possibilities are really endless.

UStream: In the past month, I’ve seen more and more high schools using UStream’s free, live video streaming service to show basketball games as they happen. So why can’t more local governments being using the same technology to “webcast” city council meetings or school board meetings? You don’t need a local cable access channel to do it. All it takes is an Internet connection, a laptop with decent audio input, and a webcam. It might not be the ideal setup, but you can embed that video into your organization’s website where anyone can watch and listen from home. You’ll also want to send out an update on Twitter to let everyone know that the video stream is live and that the meeting is about to start.

YouTube: President Barack Obama is using YouTube to do his weekly address to the nation, so why can’t your local mayor do the same thing? Get a video camera, edit, upload, and release it. Embed that to your city’s website and keep the people informed on a regular basis all the while giving your mayor a face and a voice rather than just a name. Twitter that as well when the new video is posted.

Podcasting: More often than none, official, city meetings usually have a PA system in the rooms they are held in. Get something you can record audio with and find out how you can get a feed off of the system in the room so you can record it, and then you can post every recording as an episode of the official podcast of your local city council. Even if you have some device you can stick in the middle of the room that can capture all of the conversations in an audible enough manner, that’s perfect, too. It might take some work to edit and publish every episode, but the more you do this, the more archives you’ll create over time. Oh, and be sure to post an update on Twitter that the latest podcast episode is up as well as a link directly to it.

Blogs: Text is always going to be the saving grace of any official organization, and creating content that is search-able is key. If you have a new resident to a community, what better way is there to get to know a community than to have an official blog from the office of the mayor with his weekly/bi-weekly/monthly video addresses, thoughts on events going on in or around the area, progress reports on his or her city plan, or announcements of great community events that you should go check out because the mayor will be there as well? I think the new person in town might have to subscribe to the RSS feed of the mayor’s blog because it seems like a good way to stay informed about this new city they are now living in.

On top of that, the more text based content you have, the better your search engine optimization (SEO) goes up when some one tries to search for something on Google about your community. Wouldn’t it be best if some of the first search results that come up are those coming directly from the folks running the city? That would seem very important to people involved in local tourism and chamber of commerces. Of course, Twitter any and all updates to the blog or website so your followers are reminded to check it out.

By no means are all of these thoughts complete or are they everything that one could do when taking social media into consideration for a governmental organization that run cities large or small. The fact is, the tools are there and within easy grasp of using, and it’s not out of the question to get going on some of these concepts within a matter of days, on little to no budget. The results might surprise you as suddenly a public service actually opens itself up to the public it is meant to serve.

If you have additional ideas or even examples of cities doing concepts like this, feel free to share them in the comments below.

Sean Moffitt writes the Buzz Canuck blog, which admittedly makes me do a double take when I see it in my feeds – thinking it should be under the sports tab, but I digress.

He is “Canada’s Word of Mouth Firestarter” as the President of Agent Wildfire and recently added to this post, “The 6 Dangerous Fallacies of Social Media” by Jason Baer by writing his own, “12 Massive Oversights of Social Media“.

I’ll list the “myths” and topics here in point form, in the hopes that some discussion may follow, as Sean notes, “It would appear both the aloof corporate types and the social media zealots in their distracted apathy and/or super-enthusiasm have attributed social media with traits it simply does not have.”

1. Social media is the end game…
2. Social Media is Facebook…
3. Social media is a fad…
4. Social Media should be well planned…
5. Social Media Drives Exposure and Awareness…
6. Social Media is Frugal…
7. Social Media is Quick Relief…
8. Social Media is Avoidable…
9. Social Media is a Panacea…
10. Social Media is Predictable…
11. Social Media is a Media…
12. Social Media is Technology…

You can read all of the details, comments, and explanations over on Sean’s post.

As we have been slowly molding sixty4media into shape, we have recently made our very own Twitter account open and available to the public.

Twitter is a popular social media site that combines micro-blogging and instant messaging to an international phenomenon of letting people know what you’re doing. Sounds insignificant to some, but there are more ways to use it other than telling people that you’re hungry or doing the laundry.

For instance, we use a great plugin for WordPress called WordTwit. This was made by our good friend Duane at BraveNewCode, and the whole purpose of it is to make an update to your Twitter account when you publish a new post on your WordPress site. Combined with any other updates we do on the account, you can get the latest news from our site as we publish it.

In the age of iPhones and Blackberries, what better way to connect to your audience directly?

Continuing in their series of explaining all things new media and Web 2.0, the great folks at CommonCraft have released “Social Media in Plain English“. You can view the video below and help yourself understand what social media is all about. Better yet, use this to help yourself explain what social media is to those who might not be in tune with what social media means.

If you would like to see some of the other creations from CommonCraft, please visit their website.

One thing that came up in reference to the last post we made about the MOMAR blog was the added advantage of having a RSS feed on the site, something that was not possible with the previous design and easily implemented by our ability to install WordPress into the site.

We understand that a lot of people don’t know what a RSS feed is, yet alone how it can benefit to have one implemented for the content on your website. Thanks to our friends at CommonCraft, they made a great video helping to explain RSS in plain english.

RSS has the ability to take your message to the world in a more effective manner than just simple page views or Google searches. There are people around the world who might be interested in what kind of content you are producing, and this technology is a great way for your target audience to subscribe and stay up to date with your message.

Bryan Tasaka from Mind Over Mountain Adventure Racing (MOMAR) contacted us a while ago about what it would take to get a WordPress blog integrated into an increasingly successful site for their outdoor racing events.

At the time, there was a blog page on the site however being hard-coded in HTML it lacked core blogging elements. Bryan realized a long time ago the effect a change of this calibre could have, but struggled to find something that would coordinate with his main site in terms of function and design. The goal was to integrate a fully functioning WordPress blog that would seamlessly provide more function and interactivity for readers.

When Bryan contacted us, he knew that he wanted to go with a WordPress install on the back end of his site. We did our best to not only give him the tools to easily update his site, but the custom theme we built for the WordPress blog slipped in smoothly among the main site infrastructure. The custom theme was enhanced with social media tools yet we preserved the existing Flash header as requested as it was a crucial part of creating fluidity with the rest of the MOMAR site.

Working with Bryan was a pleasure and he is very excited to begin using his new WordPress blog. We are proud that we could bring in additional functions for his site that are going to help him promote his organization, increase community, and be search engine optimized for potential, new, and existing audiences.

With the integrated blog, Bryan’s publishing productivity has been increased dramatically compared to the time it used to take to custom code each entry on the previous design. Our custom WordPress theme and install allows him to produce and publish content on the fly, from any location, and communicate with his audience while expanding his reach into and beyond the adventure racing community.

It was a lot of fun to design this site, and I know as John is a bit of a trail runner he was amazed at the level of commitment these MOMAR folks have when it comes to adventure racing. We think the work we did for them will only help make that community stronger. After all, you never know who might stumble onto his blog from a Google search and make the trek for one of the events from another continent.

Feel free to visit the MOMAR blog and see our work in action.

Rebecca was invited to the Massive Tech Show this week to be on a panel regarding social media and what it can do for businesses. The annual event takes place in downtown Vancouver, and it’s pretty tough to say no to something we have such an interest in while not having to go too far to talk about it.

The Massive Technology Show is a three-part, interactive event that showcases technology for business. In one action packed day, Massive connects business professionals with high tech companies, giving them a chance to learn about technology in a user friendly environment. [massivetechshow.com]

She made a couple of posts on her personal blog here and here. You’re invited to read more of her take there.