Kat French

Fan Communities, Online Content and the Definition of Plagiarism

by Kat French · April 15, 2009

Kat French

I may or may not have mentioned this here previously, but I am a ridiculously crazy fan of ABCâ€™s Lost.Â Last week, there was a bit of a blowup among the online fan community.Â Iâ€™m mentioning it here because it highlights some important issues that bloggers and other new media producers need to consider.Â

plagiarize:Â

1. to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as oneâ€™s own : useÂ (anotherâ€™s production) without crediting the source

40 comments

5 Social Media Topics I Could Do Without

by Kat French · April 8, 2009

Kat French

* For the record, I didn’t see Jason’s funny video yesterday covering some of the same ground. I agree with it, but I didn’t see it before penning this post.

My goal lately has been to bring the value in a serious way, but today, I just need a little rant.

(Sorry, Jason! I’ll get back to posting massively helpful stuff next week. Promise!)

I subscribe to a lot of social media bloggers and I follow a lot of social media pros on Twitter. Mostly it’s been greatâ€”I can keep tabs on what’s being discussed among my peers and mentors in the social media sphere.

139 comments

The Advanced Quick â€˜n Dirty Guide to Social Media Monitoring

by Kat French · April 1, 2009

Kat French

Welcome to the jungle, baby.

If you thought this was going to be lot like the last post in the series, but with more expensive tools, sorry to disappoint you. We’ll still be doing a detailed post comparing all the social media monitoring tools available now. But the comments in particular on the last post made me realize that moving from the beginning of a social media monitoring effort to the advanced level is so not really about the tools.

Let me say that again:

19 comments

Quick ‘n Dirty Social Media Monitoring Guide: Intermediate Edition

by Kat French · March 25, 2009

Kat French

Since I started contributing to this blog back in June of last year, I’ve had a few postsÂ that seemed to really provide value.Â Of those, the Quick n’ Dirty Guide to Social Media Monitoring was the one that got the most traffic, comments, links, and tweets.Â Â

In that post, we discussed how to set up a very basic social media monitoring system that you could implement inÂ about a half hour or less per day,Â using only free tools like Google Alerts, Delicious, Flickr and YouTube.Â We also discussed the importance of simply claiming your brand name and space on sites like Twitter and Facebook’s Pages.Â

136 comments

Skittles New “Website” Leaves a Bad Taste for Some

by Kat French · March 4, 2009

Kat French

Monday the social media fishbowl was bubbling over the new “website” for Skittles, the fruity candy.

Instead of an actual website, Skittles has what appears to be a persistent widget that connects you to Skittles digital presence on several difference social media sites. Â

I Â say “appears to be a persistent widget” because it’s not technically a widget. Â Widgets are portable–this isn’t. Â The “navigation” for the new Skittles site has a widget-y look about it, though. Â

42 comments

A Quick ‘n Dirty Guide to Setting up Social Media Monitoring

by Kat French · February 18, 2009

Kat French

This may be a 101 level post for some, but I think it still bears putting out there.Â One of the things that I hear most often from people who are contemplating getting into social media is that it seems really overwhelming.Â

With so many different services, blogs, and sites out there,Â small business owners and other marketers who are usually already stretched thin often figure that monitoring and participating in social media will require a time commitment and technical savvy that they just don’t have.

Not true.Â It’s better to participate at a level you can manage than to ignore social media altogether.Â

429 comments

Seven Signs You Need a Social Media Sabbatical

by Kat French · February 16, 2009

Kat French

There are a lot of challenges in working with social media: helping clients understand the space, finding smart and meaningfulÂ ways to employ socialÂ technologies, and measuring the effectiveness of your efforts, for example.Â One big and often-discussedÂ issue is how the “always on” aspect of social media can lead to burnout.Â

Do you need a social media sabbatical?Â Here are a few telltale signs that could mean you need to take a break and get some perspective:

1. You preface everyone’s name with “@” in real life in the same way some Jeopardy freaks answer everything in the form of a question.

90 comments

What’s Your “Web Service Tanked” Contingency Plan?

by Kat French · February 11, 2009

Kat French

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like a lot of free web services are either moving to a fully-paid Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, or they’re shutting down entirely.Â

Jott, one of my favorite free productivity tools, announced last month that they were shutting down the free version of their service.Â Values of n, which created “sticky notes that think” service Stikkit and its slightly kitschier evolution, Sandy, folded up shop altogether in December.Â Ditto Pownce.

Of course, this isn’t terribly surprising–in fact, it was pretty much inevitable.Â So why am I talking about it now?Â

6 comments

5 Ways to Make Your Website Mobile (And 1 Reason You Might Not Want To.)

by Kat French · January 20, 2009

Kat French

As of August 2008, mobile handset penetration in Italy was at 140%.

You read that right: there are now more mobile devices than people in Italy.Â Â

According to Engadget, some studies are predicting 100% mobile phone penetration in the United States within 4 years; at present, it’s estimated at around 84%.Â Some research indicates that as of 2008, as much as 3-10% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices.Â

So clearly, if your site is not accessible or easy to read via mobile devices, you’re missing a pretty large potential audience.Â

181 comments

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