Thing 23: Making it all work together

TweetDeck to rule the social media world.

Thanks to Rudaí23, it has been a great experience learning about some new social media tools and getting to know how to use more familiar ones more effectively.   These tools can be very powerful ways of engaging with our users and marketing our services if used frequently and judiciously.  With that in mind, the easier it is to do so, the more likely it is that we will keep tweeting and posting and updating.

Flipboard is one of the tools that I got to learn about through the course that I really like and is one that I definitely would like to spend more time exploring as is seems to have lots of different, useful aspects to it.  Because, the social media management aspect of it is mobile rather than desktop based, I chose to use another application to keep up to date with my social media accounts.

Hootsuite is the tool that was looked at in the Thing 23 blog but I had already started using TweetDeck to try and manage my social media accounts and I think I will continue to do so.  It seems to have most of the same functionality as Hootsuite. You can schedule Tweets and it is possible to manage multiple Twitter accounts from its interface as well as linking it with Facebook and LinkedIn.

It also easily allows you to set up columns so that you can search by hashtag, list etc.  This was really useful during the Rudaí chat earlier on in the summer when you could follow the discussion quite easily by setting up a column to follow the chat live.

I also really like the layout, I think it is simple and uncluttered while at the same time allowing you a good overview of what is going on with your social media accounts as regards mentions, retweets, follows etc.

 

Because TweetDeck makes it so straightforward, there really is no excuse for not keeping up to date with social media output!!

Finally, thanks to all the Rudaí23 team who designed, delivered and posted content for the course and were there to support and encourage us during the tough times.  It was not only educational but also interesting and fun and a great way to learn.

Thing 22: Mobile Things

Gum was another mobile app that I had never heard off so was interested to see what it could do.  I tried it on a few books that I have myself and I don’t know what kind of reflection it is on my reading habits but nobody had left any “gums” on my books.  Ok, so not too successful from that point of view.  However, the next day, I was notified of a Gum that someone had added to my book.  So was that a coincidence or was I doing something wrong in not finding original gums.  And the poster disagreed with my review of the book as well!

I can the potential there for public libraries or bookclubs.  If you have a book that people are actively engaging with at one time, then it would be fun and interesting to see what others are saying and build a conversation around a book. 

I think children could really get great fun out of using this app.  They are so used to using their mobile phone to use apps like Snapchat that using Gum could be appealing to them.   The interface is very simple and colourful and leaving a comment is so easy.  And Gum comments can be applied to lots of products so it definitely could be useful as a teaching tool.

Of course, because comments are not moderated, there could be some negatives from this if children are involved.

There are loads of great apps now available to use on your mobile and the lines between what you use for work and what you use in a personal capacity are blurring.  People tweet, instagram, and use facebook personally and professionally.  The main thing is to have fun finding new apps and discovering their potential. 

Thing 20: Presentations

Thing 20: Presenting...

I decided when trying to put together a presentation to use Google Slides as I had never used it before nor to be truthful even heard of it.  

Google really have an amazing suite of products that they have developed for the user.  I found Slides easy to use and it great that you don’t even have to go saving your presentation in a file.  It is all there as you left it the next time you log in.

Presentations are quite difficult to get right.  We all know when we have seen a good one but it is very hard to pull off ourselves.  It is the alchemy of content, speaker, occasion and timing.

With the best will in the world, some people just are not good, engaging speakers while other presenters might have poor content but due to force of personality or charisma can get away with it.

There were some great tips in the blog about doing presentations. 

It is important to know your audience and not get too hung up on the actual slides when giving the presentation.  We have all been at presentations where the speaker has been completely thrown by technical hitches.  Another thing I hate at presentations is when people just read from their slides.  We can all read so reading along with a presentation is just a waste of time.   

Having said all that, standing in a room full of your peers or your managers is a daunting thing and it takes time to feel comfortable giving presentations. It is not something that everybody has a natural talent for but knowing your topic takes some of the stress out of it.  Technical things can always go wrong but if you at least know what you want to say, you should be okay.

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Thing 21: Creating Infographics

I have used infographs a little bit in work and do find them useful to use when trying to represent a lot of data in a more visually interesting and easy to digest way. 

Infographics are being increasingly used by companies and newspapers to get information out to the public.  I suppose what they have over Excel or Powerpoint is that they can look a little bit more fun and colourful but also very professional without you having to do a lot of work to make it so.

Piktochart is the infographic web tool that I have used, albeit not the pro version.  While the free version only has a limited number of templates, I find that there  is still enough of a variety of templates to use to adapt to most of the data presentation needs I have.  

And if you are very adventurous or very creative, you can do a complete  infograph from scratch.  Lots of the pictures and symbols are a bit Americanised but at least there are lots of choices.  It also allows great freedom when it comes to colours, fonts and the movement of the boxes in the templates so you can really create what you want to with a little bit of imagination. 

Infographs can also be inserted into Facebook or Twitter feeds as well so that can be a good way of getting information across to your intended audience.

Below is an infograph inspired by the Rugby World Cup.