As you prepare to launch your own social experience for a project or organization, there are fantastic and FREE tools to help make your job faster, simpler and smarter. Let them do the heavy lifting for you so you can concentrate on the concept and flow of what you are doing, not the technical execution of it!

Browser. Firefox. You’ve heard about it but may not yet have made the switch. Just so you know, Internet Explorer is not the only or even necessarily the best way to browse the Internet. It’s just the default setting due to vendor agreements with Microsoft. Check out Firefox for a zippy way to browse that’s incredibly customizable (which you want down the road as you get more comfortable online). Plus, hackers aren’t always trying to attack it, so you won’t spend a lot of time processing updates.

Mobile Browser. Opera Mini (of Safari for an iPhone). Again, there isn’t only one way to access the Internet from your cell phone with a data plan! The default browser is set, but you can always download another! Opera Mini can handle scripts that many browsers can’t, letting you log into and launch pages that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to access. Also a nice, zippy browsing experience.

Website Builder. You simply cannot beat WordPress for an easy way to build a professional Website and easily customize it with plug-n-play functionality, from instant PayPal shopping carts to linking to your Twitter, Facebook and even Constant Contact accounts. If you want a free site where all of the files live on WordPress’s servers, go to WordPress.com. You’ll have dozens of templates to choose from, and for small fees, you can point the site to your own custom URL or get under the hood and futz with the styles. If you are more advanced and want an incredibly powerful constant management system hosted on your own servers, then grab the free full install at WordPress.org. Thousands of templates and plug-ins to create exactly what you want with just a few clicks.

Graphics and Image Editor. I’m a Photoshopper, for certain, but there’s an extraordinary freeware called Paint.Net that also is layer-based. It’s wildly customizable, too; like many open source applications, programmers around the world love to dig into the code and come up with nifty plug-ins to add functionality.

Sticky Notes. As you hunt for information for your site, like facts, quotes and site links to add to your blogroll, the easiest place to paste and save on the fly is a great sticky note program. I like MoRUN.net’s Sticker Lite because the notes always stay visible, even as I switch pages and programs. It’s a truly “sticky” notes program – and you can change note colors, which may matter only to me…

Interactive Tools. Your Web presence will be more social as soon as your audience can actively interact with you. That means polls, surveys, games and more. You don’t have to build those; just grab a widget someone else has made and go! PollDaddy is integrated into loads of social platforms, and it lets you make interactive polls in seconds (though editing them afterward can be a pain – just make a new one and embed it again). Nothing so far beats Google Forms for surveys that actually capture the results in a spreadsheet (Google Docs) for you – and let you see gorgeous graph results with one-click (no skip logic yet, fyi). If you really want to go on a journey, visit WidgetBox and see all of the incredible, portable mini-apps waiting for you to explore and add to your social presence.

Online Back-Up. I believe in triple back-ups, desktop/local external drive/remote server. I like Mozy for the remote “cloud” offering; once you set up and run the first back-up, you can schedule a nightly update that runs automatically! They have a free level, but the annual fee for a lot of space is abot $60. Being able to access files remotely will save you every time you travel.

Music. It takes a lot of time to brainstorm and get creative and build sites and plan Facebook events and launch YouTube channels! You’re going to want to listen to good music from your favorite artists – and other artists that share the same musical genomes (haha). I recommend immediately creating a Coldplay and a Marvin Gaye station on Pandora and hearing everyone else who enters the mix.

If you have tools you love – or already love these tools – leave your thoughts below!

As the world moves from Web 1.0 to 2.0 to, yes, Web 3.0, it’s important to dial in to the ever-evolving etiquette – or “netiquette” – of being a good digital citizen. Here’s a list of the basic levels of engagement, and respect, that will guide you through…until next week.

Check your spam/junk folder. Why is this at the top of the list? Because email is still the leading digital communication tool. And you cannot allow AOL or Yahoo or Gmail to decide for you who should and should not be contacting you. Do everyone a favor – before you send out a perturbed email, demanding to know why you haven’t heard back from someone, haven’t received your online order, etc. – CHECK YOUR JUNK FOLDER FIRST. Check it every day and twice on Sundays.

Turn off any and all email screening tools. Let legitimate people email you without having to fill out additional forms and verifications. No one who is trying to offer you a job is going to pursue you that hard! Make it easy for people to contact you, hire you, send you money, etc. Yes, it will take more of your time to sift through junk mail – but otherwise, you are sending future employers and contacts the message that your time…is worth more than theirs.

Investigate alarming emails before you respond or forward them around the world! Just so you know, Justin Lim is not trying to reserve your Web address across Asia; “Sunny” and “Margaret” are trying to scam your credit card information. Also, “Pay-Pal” isn’t shutting your account down due to non-activity; the improper hyphen in the company name should help expose that’s a fake – and so should the fact that the reply email address does not go to an address at paypal.com! And, no, President Obama did not say [insert outrageous, wholly invented, unreferenced quote that you cannot seem to find on the Internet when everything he eats, whistles or wears is documented in astonishing detail] about your personal demographic. There are plenty of sites that dissect and debunk the urban myths, spoofs and phishing emails you receive. Check before you reply or forward!

Keep your voicemail inbox clear. Let someone contact you and offer you that job, or invite you to that networking event, or tell you that the meeting has been canceled! If your cell phone inbox is always filling up, and there’s no time to listen to an hour’s worth of messages, go wild and sign up for voicemail-to-text-or-email. Read your messages, reply and clear as you go.

Be present on at least one social network. They are not just for teens to chat or people to gossip about their day – do you really still believe that after the ’08 political campaigns? Professionals can join networking groups, post and answer questions and get personal introductions to people you need to know on LinkedIn. If your project or organization has any events to schedule, Facebook takes it to a new level. And don’t buy into the easy dismissals of Twitter – the outreach possibilities are limitless (I was hooked on JPL’s micro-blogging when Mars Phoenix set off – and I cheered the minute they found water on Mars).

Create separate standard user IDs for your personal vs. your professional presence in social media. If you’re just getting started, create a professional online presence first. Let people find you, network with you and evangelize for you!

Reserve your standard user ID across the latest social platforms. Even if you are terrified of “tweeting,” lock down your name(s) for now because you will give in to Twitter and Qik and the social tools that follow ultimately. Remember when you said you would never join LinkedIn or Facebook? See how much progress you could have been making professionally if you had joined a couple of years ago?

List your contact information across multiple platforms (e.g., email, mobile #, chat ID, social network link). If you still do the business card thing, update them, or at least write the additional info down or sticker it on the back of the card. And your email sig lines should list them all. Don’t pass up an opportunity to promote your message and allow people to network!

For an example, network with me at:
The Official Planet DMA Web Site
Twitter: @planetdma
Skype: planetdma

CREATE A WEBSITE. It’s free, fast and easy. Being a professional without a Web site right now does not reflect well on your drive or your ability/willingness to learn new things. It is akin to not having a telephone. You don’t even have to register a domain name or pay for a hosting company or learn HTML or upload a single file. That’s so Web 1.0! Instead, just register with a third-party blogging site, like WordPress.com. Choose a template, post your info and let people find you online!

Google first; ask second. Before you call a tech savvy friend, hire a freelancer or give up on a task or information that you need, try typing exactly what you’re looking for into www.google.com. Chances are ridiculously high that thousands to millions of other people also want to know “how to color code my email inbox.” And someone probably has taken the time to put together a little slide show with screen images that you can click through for free. As I wrote earlier, if you ask others to take the time to walk you through it before trying to learn how yourself, it’s telling people that your time is worth more than theirs.

Try one new thing each month in the techy world. Not for mindless fun but to improve the way you work. If there is an old-fashioned, time-consuming way you’re used to doing things, learn a new solution. To get started, just Google your frustrating old process and see how many new options appear! Prepare a shared document with your team on a free wiki, like Wetpaint. Prep your production budget and schedule online with a free trial of Show Starter Scheduling & Budgeting Plus. Use Word’s Mail Merge feature to send personalized emails to your list instead of blasting everyone – and forcing all of your contacts to field the dozens of group replies throughout their day. (That’s actually been around for twenty years, but I still introduce people to it a few times a year.)

At the heart of this post is the hope that each time you say, “I don’t need to learn how to do that,” you will begin to hear “I’m afraid I can’t learn how to do that” – and scoff. I know you think the Internet is a complex place, and that 8-year-olds are only mastering it because they are born with some crazy, mutant technical gene. But in fact, kids do well online because they think it will be easy, and they discover they are right. Give it a try – you will be surprised how simple these tools are. And I hope you’ll be even more surprised by the extraordinary professional possibilities awaiting you as you update your habits for what is now a predominantly digital world.

I had an incredible (as in “not to be believed”) experience a short time ago doing outreach for The CLIC. A frustrated school rep sent an email insisting that the site did not work: the video did not play, the links were all dead, what gives? Knowing that the site works perfectly, I asked what browser she was viewing the site with, and it turned out she was using Internet Explorer 6. Which was released in 2001. And wholly retired more than two years ago by Internet Explorer 7. Naturally, that little wrinkle in time has led me to this impassioned post.

Update. Your.  Browser.

To make things simpler and faster for you, as of the date of this post, the current browser versions are:

Firefox 3.05
Internet Explorer 7 (IE8 is in beta – seriously, ditch IE5 and IE6!)
Safari 1.2
Opera 9.63

Why you should keep your browser current. I’m going to start here to get you on the “latest version train,” then I will walk you through how to make it happen.

Computer Safety/Security. This is a huge issue for users of Internet Explorer (IE), which, by virtue of being a Microsoft product, is constantly attacked by the nefarious nerds of the world.  The vulnerabilities these coders expose put all of the contents of your computer at risk, jeopardize every person’s computer in your address book and, most visibly, cause your computer to bug out when browsing, booting up, sipping non-fat lattes or whatever other mayhem they can wreak.  Meanwhile, all of us Firefox-heads and you Mac users need to let go of our false sense of security – every browser has the potential to be hit!  So update automatically or when prompted because it is so much easier than BUYING A NEW COMPUTER.  Or paying a less nefarious but costly nerd to rid your drive of spyware, viruses, trojans, etc.

Using the Internet. This may surprise you (that is a serious statement, not a snark): Web sites are built and maintained based on the latest version of browsers, and as browsers evolve, their functionality changes.  If you find yourself clicking dead links, hearing video but not seeing it, and in general feeling rage at your machine…consider the possibility that your browser may be 2-3 years out of date and the web site may have been built last month.  (Not to mention if you have disabled javascript and pop-ups – you’re seeing a whole lotta nothing in 2009.)

It is really generous of some organizations to spend extra time and money to make their sites “backwards compatible” for old browsers.  We are not one of those organizations.  Using out-of-date software is, in truth, the opposite of working “faster, simpler, smarter.”  We did, however, join Pushup so you’ll get a nifty little message when you visit Planet DMA if your browser needs updating.  The fact that you may not be able to use our site at all is less nifty, but is a message, as well.

Maximizing the Internet. Some of you knew this was coming.  If you are using an old version of any browser, or a browser other than Firefox, you might be living in a digital cave, waiting for Gnthwx, your fellow dweller, to bring home some fresh brontosaurus meat.  (Yes, I know they did not co-exist; work with me.)  Firefox is the leading browser for the digitocracy because:

• Code friendliness. It doesn’t add a bunch of stuff to clean site code as you build and test a web site.  What you code is what you see, for the most part, unlike other browsers, which pad and margin and disable you to death.
• Preferred browser for developers. The code friendliness is why many sites say “this site optimized for Firefox.”  As in, to borrow from Pres. Obama, if you are not using Firefox, “You’re on your own.”  Or, “It is not our fault that your browser doesn’t understand basic CSS which has been around since your last dinner with Gnthwx.”  On the other hand, some things built with Windows-developed tools are locked to only being viewed with IE. Grrrr.
• Customized browsing experience. Firefox has thousands of awesome free “plugins,” so you can add neat functionalities while you’re surfing the web (and given how much time we all spend online now, who wouldn’t want that?).  Wanna encrypt your keystrokes?  Grab an add-on!  Want your toolbars to look like polished wood or replace those dull icons with cute kittens?  Add on!  Just search Tools/Add-ons for anything that pops into your head; you’ll be amazed.

Update your browser. I hope now you’re sold on getting updated!  So here’s the simple part: 1) Check what version of your browser you are using, and 2) If it is not current, update it.  Here’s how.

Check your browser version. On PCs, the version number of pretty much any software is under the “Help” link of your main toolbar. It will say “About [application name].” Click on that to see a pop-up with your latest version. (If you cannot find your Help link anymore in IE, you probably already are on IE7; they have hidden “Help” in the collapsed list to the right of your links for “Page” and “Tools.”  See the images below for both.  On Macs, your main toolbar usually has a menu option named for the application you are using. Click that to see the link for “About Application.”

Firefox

IE7 (IE6 looks more like FF)

Download and install the latest version of your browser. PC users, I recommend doing a system restore before making changes to your computer, so you can reset it if anything goes wrong.

IE

Firefox

Safari

Opera

Google Chrome

One last tip – I strongly recommend you have at least two browsers on your computer so you can use pretty much any site. One of those may need to be IE since some sites are IE-compliant only. You may want the other to be Firefox so you can customize, and it works equally well on Mac and PCs. And while I think Google Chrome is really delicious design, the main reason I use it is when I need to log into the same web site with different user ids at once – each new tab in Google is an independent browser experience! But that’s a different post.

It’s one thing to know there are different levels of Web functionality (1.0, 2.0 and 3.0). It’s a better thing to dig deeper to understand the differences between the three. Here are some excellent sites for you to explore – take notes and brainstorm how these might help you build a better Internet experience for your brand.

Web 1.0 – To see this in action, take a good look at your own Web site and see if it only offers static, one-way information from you to your visitors. It would not be nice to single out any existing sites as Web 1.0, but you’ll know them when you…read them.

Web 2.0 – The big brands are all easy experiences of interactivity. And chances are, you have never really explored them!

• So now is the time to visit YouTube to witness video uploaded by users all over the world (search for an old commercial or video you remember; it’s great fun).
• Then it’s off to MySpace to see the largest collection of personalized Web pages in the world (look up a brand you love, like Victoria’s Secret or Pepsi to see how many “friends” they have). If you think you’re ready for your own social network, the third-party leader is Ning or you can install your own application on your servers thanks to KickApps.
• Next stop is Wikipedia. Go ahead and create a quick account and click the “edit” option to see how easy it is to update information on a Wiki. Then give it a whirl yourself at Wetpaint or PBwiki – it’s free.
• Last stop is Google’s Blogspot, one of the largest collections of blogs in the world, or the even more powerful WordPress. Search for a sports team you like and see how many hundreds of blogs pop up. Read at least one post. Comment. Repeat.

Web 3.0 – this is the AMAZING stuff. First stop is a “content aggregation” site. Jump right in with NetVibes or iGoogle. See those home pages with all the widgets? You can scroll or search through thousands of options to choose custom content you want to appear on your home page. Your custom home page might have widgets for: your first-choice newspaper, today’s weather, the blog from your preferred presidential candidate, daily fitness videos and your favorite online poker game.

Now take another look at all of those Web 2.0 pages from above. See those search bars? See those “keywords” at the bottom? See the RSS or Atom feed options? See the options to “Digg” or mark it as “del.i.cious“? Those are the funnels, the targeting tools, that are helping users pinpoint, categorize, rank and channel related content for themselves and for the next users who search for similar content. That is what is transitioning us into Web 3.0.

And please take note – everything above is available to you for free. Is this starting to feel like too much information? Imagine how the World Wide Web feels! Don’t worry about grasping it all right now. Just know this – if you want to stay current, connected and relevant to your brand base, interactive Web 2.0 functionality is a minimum requirement for your Web site. Upcoming posts will walk you through some of those options.

If you want to go a little 3.0 before you go, click the “Digg” button next to one of these posts (or another article you read online). Create an account, and submit something to the community.

Now, go surf the Web – and, please, come back and post your reactions after the first time you use some of these wildly inspired sites.

We’ve all heard the terms Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0. So what do they mean – and more importantly, what do they mean to you as a business person?

Web 1.0 was about accessing content. This was the dawning of the Internet Age, and the revolution was digitized. Thanks to Netscape, your AOL account, Juno.com, etc., you could connect to the Internet and read information immediately. That information, however, could be published only by those who understood how to code and upload. Web 1.0 was a revolutionary but one-way street.

Web 2.0 was about interacting with content. Once new tools made it possible for users to start publishing their own content to the Internet, Web 2.0 was born. Videos were uploaded. Blogs were posted. Wikis were…pediaed. And Time declared “You” the person of the year for embracing the newly accessible World Wide Web and exploding it into billions of pages of content. Web 2.0 was a two-way street…with people driving all over the road.

Web 3.0 is about aggregating content. Have you counted your bookmarks lately? Done a Google search and gotten fewer than 20 pages of results? The free-for-all of the interactive online community generated a lot of content, but how do you wade through it all to find the specific content you want? Thanks to keywords, tags, feeds and widgets, Internet content now is entirely portable. You don’t have to go to it; you can tell it to come to you – wherever you are! Web 3.0 portability lets users park themselves on a single Web page (like iGoogle or NetVibes) or their cell phone, find the content they want and draw it directly to them. It’s like the parking lot of the world’s biggest burger joint with car service. On skates. You stay nice and comfy in your car, and we bring your order to you.

Business You.0 is my term for integrating social media strategies into your brand outreach to maximize and modernize impact.  To be effective, it must blend:

• A clear and focused Business strategy
• You as a brand leader and visionary; and
• Whatever version of the Web serves your strategies the best: 2.0, 3.0. 100.0, etc.

Rely on this blog for regular tips, insights, interviews and excerpts to help you navigate new media and expand your brand.

Not sure if new media is necessary for your projects? You might also be waiting for the whole “cell phone craze” to pass. Or you’re holding off on building a Web site until you “absolutely have to.” To quote the venerable Shinseki:

“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”

New media is a must for any business effort today. Of course diving into Web 2.0 and 3.0 is uncharted territory for you! And all you’re reading now is how everyone else is using it and you’re light years behind. Not to worry. With this blog, you will learn what Web 2.0 (and beyond) is, how you can use it, when you should use it and why.

Subscribe to the blog on the right, or revisit regularly for the latest trends and specific tips on how they apply to your company’s mission. And most importantly, find simple instructions on how to do it yourself – and when not to.

Your questions, comments and contributions are welcome below.

The Issue: People have asked me why I am starting my own blog, and I’ve certainly asked myself. There are at least 3 good reasons to start one of your own. Keep reading, and you’ll find out what inspired me…and perhaps what will motivate you to “self-publish” on the worldwide Web.

The Hard Truth: Admittedly, a “blog,” short for a “Web log,” is the ultimate tribute to this celebreality era of self-obsession and self-promotion! Wasn’t it just a few years ago you were yelling at your mother for reading your diary? Now you’re publishing it online for the world. Does the world care? Well…yeah.

The Solution(s): YES. You should start your own blog if:

You’re about to travel extensively. Postcards are incredibly thoughtful, romantic and personal treasures for your closest friends and family. But be honest, you’ve had to mail a bunch of them after you got home because you couldn’t find or afford stamps abroad. But if you can get to an Internet cafe or have access to a computer, a blog lets you post instant, in-the-moment stories, photos, even audio, for everyone you can e-mail, with way more information than can fit on the back of a card.
TIP: Keep some things personal, still. Write special notes on the blog for people…or hold some info back for private postcard text only!

You’re about to dive into something new. Double the intensity of a new experience by sharing your thoughts/fears/joys on a blog…and opening the door for 24-hour feedback, cheerleading and advice! Best of all, you have a permanent record of your journey from day one (you won’t believe it years later). Fitness and new job blogs are already hot topics, but why not a “learning to cook” or “moving to a new city” theme? Or maybe a “start of a new romance” blog where you only invite one other person to join?
TIP: Commit to sharing one pro and one con of the new experience in each of your posts and invite friends to give you tricks for getting past the con.

You have something unique to share. You know you have a special niche in your family and group of friends. Are you the go-to guy for hooking up home electronics? Maybe everyone who breaks up with a boyfriend heads straight to your door? That smells like a big, steaming pile of blog! Why not go online and share what you do best with the world? It’s a great way to explore what you know, help other people and do what you love to do. It will help solidify your “personal brand” to an even larger and more diverse audience.
TIP: Not sure what your personal brand even is? The world is trying to tell you, believe me, and I can help, too. Check out the link for “My True North” on this blog’s home page!

So why did I start my own blog? Well, I just got back from a month of travel. But I’ve never really sent postcards, and I confess, I didn’t blog either. (I did read a friend’s exciting round-the-world blog and laughed at all of the drunken photos. She might need the blog to remember what she did all of those months!) I’m also diving into something new, putting my ten-year producing career on ice to pursue speaking, my greatest passion, full-time. But I have a fantastic marketing coach to join me on that journey. So it turns out I’m travelling, doing something new and beginning this blog all for the same reason: Door #3.

I’ve been a confidante and advisor to so many “stuck” people over the past fifteen years, and I keep on hearing the same phrase when we talk: “I’ve never thought of it that way before.” I love that moment of POSSIBILITY in their eyes, faces, voices. I’ve done so many things, I just assume everything is possible. And no matter what limitation people think they’re facing, I always find a way IN to get them to try a new step in a new direction. If you’ve been on the fence about starting your own blog, I hope this will tip you over to give it a try for one day and with one intention: not to put information online…but to put inspiration online. In the one, personal, singular way that only you can.

The Caveat: So is the answer ever “No, don’t start a blog, or we will track you down and spill a latte on your keyboard”? Well…yeah.

If you are: frequently intoxicated, deeply angry at a certain someone, bitter about bad times in life or trolling for unhealthy stimulation, don’t hook your “Web” up with a “log”! All that time you spend ranting, raving and venting online…is time you could be spending at AA, a therapy session or out on a first date moving FORWARD with your life. Blogs are so brilliant at capturing the present. Don’t abuse them-or anthing else!-to stay locked in the past.

To begin your own branded blog, go to www.blogger.com and follow the very simple steps to create a page and begin posting!

See you next week with the next question and, even better, the next solution. All the best. dma