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I love these videos! Can’t get enough of them!

A great video that consolidates and summarizes today’s technology statistics and gives insightful predictions about the future of information technology due to the advancements of social media.

Fantastic video that summarizes interesting social media statistics and trends. The video also creatively illustrates how the various social media platforms are being used throughout the world.

Sprouter is yet another addition to the world of social media and online communities, except this time it’s targeted to one primary domain: entrepreneurs. The website is geared towards global networking and collaboration between entrepreneurs. Better yet, founder and CEO, Sarah Prevette, is a fellow Canadian! 

Sprouter is definitely a great initiative that enables valuable connections and information for anyone interested in entrepreneurship. But before you get too excited, unfortunately it’s still in private-testing and is issuing members by invite only. But there may be a silver lining for the eager entrepreneurs of Ottawa.Erin Bury, of RedWire, has taken liberties to create a ‘Sprout Up Ottawa‘ Meetup group for all of us Sprouter enthusiasts to get connected. Their first meetup is coming up fast: September 16 at The Velvet Room (see details below). So don’t wait, get involved and let your entrepreneurial ambitions sprout!

Sprout Up Ottawa Meetup Details

When: September 16 (6-9 pm)

Where: The Velvet Room

62 York Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A1
(613)241-6810 

Details: Sprout Up Ottawa Meetup Group

After a recent meetup with fellow Ottawa web enthusiasts it seemed apparent that the newcomers of social media were finding it a little overwhelming to actively participate in multiple forms of social media both on the giving and receiving ends. So here are a few tips on how to manage your time and get the most out of your social media channels.

Social Media Time Slot(s)

We are all busy and pressed for time, but sometimes an initial 2 minute twitter break can turn into an hour-long distraction. Similar to most time management strategies, you should allocate a time for your social media engagements like blogging and checking rss feeds and make sure you stick to it. This way you’ll be more efficient with your time.

Don’t Suffer from FOMO (fear of missing out)

With so much information being broadcast worldwide every second, it can be a bit daunting to grasp all of the information, this is why skimming information will be your best time management tactic. Browse over titles and select the ones that really interest you, even when reading the article browsing over it so that you get the ‘jist’ of it is enough. Especially when you have 5 other articles you want to read and you only have half an hour left in your ‘social media time slot’, skimming will reap the most benefits.

Use Applications and Tools

There are so many applications and tools that tech savvy social media users have developed to battle the same issues you’re dealing with, so use them! Below are just a few of the helpful resources available for the social media enthusiast:

TweetDeck – a great tool for getting fast results for twitter searches, and monitoring multiple twitter accounts

Google Reader – awesome tool for RSS feeds, complete with tagging, notes, friends to share feeds with and more

Twuffer – a helpful tool for the time-pressed tweeter. This tool helps you to schedule your tweets, so you can queue them up and have them broadcast at a specified date and time

More social media tools to make your life easier – check out this great link: http://freelancefolder.com/35-social-media-tools-make-life-easier/

With all this buzz about Twitter and Facebook more and more savvy entrepreneurs and business affiliates are seeing the wide range of opportunities that social media presents for marketing and advertising. 

Just so that we’re all on the same page, social media is media designed to disperse as a result of social interactions. Social media supports the marriage between technology and the human need to interact on a social level, some popular examples include: Technorati, Flickr, LinkedIn, Youtube, Wikipedia and more.  Social media supports: making a democracy of information and knowledge, of transforming one-to-many media dialogues into many-to-many social media dialogues, and converting people from content consumers to producers. So what does all of this have to do with marketing?

At the heart of marketing and advertising is to engage people such that they go from being interested in what is being offered to being a loyal consumer.  The problems with traditional advertising, ie: print posters, radio and television commercials, etc is that they rarely engage viewers and have become less personal, therefore leaving a detachment between a potential customer and the advertised company. Many viewers are left with the notion of ‘what will it do for me?’ This is where social media breaks barriers. Once you have joined and actively participated in online communities with valuable information, mere network connections start to build trust and recognize your output as valuable. This is exactly what brands and companies want to establish with their current and potential customers: trust. With the help of the Internet and social media these same companies can connect with people from all types of demographics, a task not easily carried out with traditional advertising and marketing campaigns. The reality of these online social communities is that they contain millions of people worldwide who have the potential, from a business perspective, to be converted into your next customers.

Yes, social media is the current trend and none of us can accurately predict how long it will last or where it will go. But one of the key factors to good marketing is staying with the trends, also known as ‘keeping up with the Jones’’; it’s where the leaders are and where most people want to be. Look at how marketing on the Internet has flourished. In the early 90s when the Internet first started, the average person didn’t really understand what it was or what purpose it could serve to them. The smart business and marketing people saw an opportunity, jumped on the bandwagon and are now veterans of advertising on the most used information platform in the world. For all we know, social media could be the tiny wave that is supposed to forewarn us of the Tsunami waiting to happen, so don’t let the wave pass you by.

Originally posted on: Social Media Ottawa

If you’re in the market for setting up a new website, and you’re in a pickle about whether to go with a Wordpress installation or not here are some tips to keep in mind as to why hosting your site independent of wordpress.com will help you in the long-run.

1 – Credibility for Your Brand

By purchasing and using a domain name specific to your brand customers and viewers of the site recognize credibility to the brand; as there is a financial input to its maintenance. Using a personal website domain instead of ‘www.wordpress.com/companynamehere’ also maintains consistency for your brand, thereby minimizing the effort needed to to recognize and remember you.

2 – Full Integration

With the standard, free Wordpress installation integration with custom themes and plugins are limited. These are the very features that set your site apart from the rest, so why would you not want it?

3 – Additional Flexibility

There is also potential to create a ‘second layer’ of functionality with unique domain and web hosting purchases. For example your own company emails ie: dave@oakcomputing.com rather than dave_oakcomputing@gmail.com. This is another simple way to establish and create brand credibility.

Also, let’s pose the idea that your wordpress website ‘takes off’ and becomes one of the internet’s hottest websites. If your site is hosted with Wordpress and you want to later transition to a custom domain name and hosting, wordpress will charge you per megabyte of information transferred over 2MBs. The charges associated with this transition will cost well over the mere $70/year it would have cost you to use a custom domain name with independent web hosting.

4 – Revenue Possibilities

Even with all of these incentives to independently host your new Wordpress site, there is more motivation: a chance to create monetary revenue. The world of internet marketing and banner ads is a simple and easy way to have a steady cash flow with minimal work. Plentyoffish.com itself makes over $100 000 a month by giving space on its site to web banner advertising companies. Well-known companies like Pepperjam and Chitika are established in the ‘web banner business’ and partnering with them is a good way to make easy money.

5 – Minimal Cost for Bountiful Benefits

Yes hosting and domain name purchase cost money, compared to the $0 you need for a basic Wordpress install. But with as little as $70 a year, you can establish credibility, brand consistency, while having all the latest website ‘bells and whistles’, with full site flexibility and even create additional revenue. So is $70 really a large enough barrier to set you back from all of this potential?