Come Blog with me, Blah, Blah, Blog

Where have I been for the last few years? What have I been doing? It took me all this time and 2 years in college to figure out how to blog! I heard about it, read some, but never went any farther than that. Three months into our Social Media class and here I am! Just to find out how out of it I was I found some of the cold, hard facts from blogworldexpo: "Over 12 million American adults currently maintain a blog. * More than 147 million Americans use the Internet. * Over 57 million Americns read blogs. * 1.7 million American adults list making money as one of the reasons they blog. * 89% of companies surveyed say they think blogs will be more important in the next five years. * 9% of internet users say they have created blogs . * 6% of the entire US adult population has created a blog . * Technorati is currently tracking over 70 million blogs . * over 120 thousand blogs are created every day . * There are over 1.4 million new blog posts every day . * 22 of the 100 most popular websites in the world are blogs . * 120,000 new blogs are created every day . * 37% of blog readers began reading blogs in 2005 or 2006 . * 51% of blog readers shop online . * Blog readers average 23 hours online each week."

OK, I admit it! I love blogging! What I need is more time. How do all of these 12 million American adults do it? I must be doing something wrong. How can we possibly keep up with all of this information? From blog-services I found the top ten most important things to remember about Blogs:

1. Post on a regular basis

2. Be Original

3. Let your personality shine through!

4. Humor! Make 'em laugh.

5. Diversity - Reach out to many people.

6. Social Networking - Use them all: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook

7. Collaboration - Connect with your online friends.

8. Promotion - Use all forums and comment on other blogs.

9. Other media outlets - podcasting.

10. Have fun- if you're not having fun, forget it!

What's your secret for a successful blogging experience?????????????????????? References: http://www.bloggingtips.com/2008/04/30/ten-simple-tips-for-successful-blogging/ http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=254758469036219510#editor/target=post;postID=3614283196889877857 Photos: http://www.onlinecomputerhelpdesk.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Twitterlogo.png http://beth.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/podcasting5cmap.jpg https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-4yb2sHTtHJjftiIwWaTuGPkDgqTlONItyVHt_Mpcv7SWppF0tg7Rd-EX3iauV2UsKe1wKhwpkJlEvfVN0LmzI_THwSxgTv4xi3vWXHSzOUqy59eWYWt0XB5Q2ZP8kNiW-5cRr57CLd8o/s1600/th_BLOGGING.jpg http://office.microsoft.com/00387778.jpg http://office.microsoft.com/00433868.png http://office.microsoft.com/00071065.wmf http://office.microsoft.com/0044607.jpg http://office.micorsoft.com/00178595.jpg http://office.microsoft.com/00438475.jpg http://office.microsoft.com/00437020.wmf http://office.microsoft.com/00430642.jpg http://media.photobucket.com/image/blogging/yiang121988/BLOGGING.jpg?o=8 http://media.photobucket.com/image/blogging/pamperry/blogging.jpg?o=15

Email 101

Email is without a doubt one of the easiest ways to send a message in today's world. Whether it's someone in your office or your friend in India, you can send your thoughts in a nano second. When I was putting together this blog and going from Jing to Outlook to Screencast to Gmail, I was thinking about my passwords and how I have so many to keep track of. To get into your email account you must set up a password to protect yourself. I found that you probably don't want to use these, from the interestingfacts website: "Here are the 10 most common passwords: 1. password 2. 1233 or 123456 3. Qwerty 4. abc123 5. Iloveyou 6. Letmein 7. Monkey 8. trustno1 9. Your first name 10. Your username". From the factsarena blogspot, I also found these User Facts: * "The average business user receives 25 email messages per day; increasing 10% per year * The average business user spends 2.6 hours per day reading and responding to email * 38% of employees have sent an e-mail without the required attachment * 34.1% of users open an e-mail by 5 pm * It takes 77 minutes a week for an employee to manage their mailbox, such as cleaning out old messages and filing old messages or attachments * It takes 27 minutes for a user to delete or archive enough messages in order to be able to use the e-mail system again after hitting a “quota limit” * It takes 8.2 minutes for a user to find an email that is older than two weeks". I put together a short tutorial on my business email account from Microsoft Outlook. We found this to be the most user friendly and best for our employees. You can discover many interesting short-cuts and tips the more you use your account. What about you? How much time do you spend??? References: Downloaded from the Internet, April 7, 2012: http://www.interestingemails.com/category/interesting-facts/ Downloaded from the Internet April 7, 2012: http://factsarena.blogspot.com/2010/01/interesting-email-facts.html

Be nice!

There is nothing worse than opening your email in the morning and you start your day with a rude, nasty message. Sometimes the sender doesn't even realize the tone of what he's written. Very quickly firing off email upon email, without truly thinking and proofreading, can be a deadly mistake in the professional world. Please take the time and read, re-read, stop and think and then send. Catch my video and you'll see what I mean: I also liked this article from Oprah.com, O, The Oprah Magazine | From the February 2009 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.

"Call it premature-send syndrome: There you are in full, productive e-mail flow—clicking, replying, sending—wait, back up, sending? And there's your (unbelievably catty, excruciatingly self-incriminating) message dinging in the in-box of exactly the wrong person. Even when the message is harmless, e-mail tends to wick away the warmth and nuance you'd have delivering it face-to-face—often leaving your intended meaning to get lost in translation. Mirabai Bush, a senior fellow at the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society in Northampton, Massachusetts, teaches a mindful e-mail exercise to employees of corporations like Google; the goal is to make their exchanges more thoughtful and less likely to misfire. Bush suggests trying these simple steps five to 10 times over the following week: •Compose your e-mail. •Stop. Take one long, deep breath, counting to five on the inhale and again on the exhale. •Think of who you're sending your message to, and of how you want him or her to receive it. Could this person misunderstand and become angry or offended? Or think that you are being more positive than you intend? •Look at the e-mail again. •Change it if appropriate. •Send. "When I stepped back and thought about my e-mail before I sent it," one of Bush's students reported, "twice I picked up the phone instead. In each case, a relationship issue was involved and it was better to talk through it."

Great reminders! Let's be careful out there! References: Downloaded from the Internet, 4/5/12: http://www.oprah.com/money/Avoiding-E-Mail-Disasters-E-mail-Etiquette-at-Work Downloaded from the Internet, 4/5/12: http://careerplanning.about.com/od/communication/a/email_tips.htm

Google Spreadsheets. Quick and Easy!!

Spreadsheets will be easier than ever to share and update with others. Check out this video and see the action! As you could see in the video, I had no trouble making changes on the one spreadsheet and having them carry over immediately to the other copy. It was simultaneous. Imagine the possibilities!!

Read me quick!

Google Reader is a phenominal way to organize and read all of the blogs that you are following! I wondered how I was going to be able to keep up with all the latest and greatest postings and this is my answer.How easy it is so get a quick glance at any number of topics. Catch a quick glance of how to start right here: I found a nice short video about sharing any webpage through Reader.This is an amazing way to share information. References: Downloaded from the Internet April 1, 2012: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CcOust-I14&context=C4e8a029ADvjVQa1PpcFOLu2_OSVyF8JCOnLgayKUxCzCkDdXi8gE=

And the survey says:

Here is my survey from Google Docs. I'd love to send it to you. A couple of you have already! Please send me your gmail address (or email address) and I can send you the form. This little survey feature will be especially terrific in setting up business meetings between many companies. Right now we have to email each other as to what is the best date, time, etc. for our meetings. Our many vendors have sent requests directly to my Outlook schedule, but then I can't add a meeting room location, or add the video equipment that I may need for the meeting. This is especially true for my overseas vendors. I always have to have my Assistant set up the rest of the room with the proper equipment and room because you can't add anything unless you are the meeting organizer. This is a problem that can be adverted with the use of the survey feature! To be able to organize the meeting at the proper time and place and have the ability to pull in whatever media devices (like our portable video conference system)is going to be so much easier. The GoogleDocs programmers have been listening to the people that use it. They are constantly making upgrades and adding features. Most recently enhancements have been made to the Presentations GoogleDocs. From the website Google Docs - What's new:

Just launched! •Introducing a new Google presentations! Whether you’re trying to wow your boss with an end-of-quarter presentation or impress your classmates with an animated book report, the new version of presentations can help. Here’s a quick look at the latest features available in presentations: Character-by-character collaboration lets you see others’ updates as you edit presentations together. •Chat with collaborators directly within the presentation. •Draw organizational charts, flowcharts, design diagrams and much more right within Google presentations. •Transition between slides to add more effects to your presentation. •New and improved animations make your presentations more dynamic. •Shape linking lets you turn shapes within your presentation into hyperlinks that link to other slides, presentations, or webpages. •Revision history stores edits so you can revert back to previous versions. •New themes make it easy to create show-stopping presentations." The other nice addition is that you can download or drag and drop spreadsheets and pictures from other places directly into the Presentation with little effort. It is more user friendly and adaptable from other software and internet locations. What's your survey say? References: Downloaded from the intranet, April 1 2012: http://www.google.com/google-d-s/whatsnew.html

#1 Fan --- Google Docs

Checking out Google Docs for the first time, I thought to myself, here we go again - another word processing system that will try and outdo Microsoft. After watching all the videos on Google Docs - I've become the #1 Fan. It makes sense that we really don't need all of that extra fancy stuff when we're creating a document. Give me the information, make it fast, make the changes and get it out there! I love the way you can share all of the docs, comment, add additional details without saving, attaching and sending out again after each change. I can already think of all of the time saving activities that we could use in our own office. It took about 30 emails, 10 revisions, different comments from others, some forgetting to attach the attachment, etc. to get a simple form done for a registration for an upcoming event. This could have been a quick fix with less stress and everyone's comments would be next to the form as we went along. I have got to get our company using G-Docs. I plan on instructing my staff to start using this and also those on my Wellness Committee. This is where we have numerous members who are involved in event planning and occasions that come together to make things happen. I foresee taking my original idea, sending it out to our team, have everyone comment and add their suggestions and additions, and coming up with a finished document in no time. I can't think of quicker way to get things done. This makes sense for us. How could you use this in your company?

Check out this awesome website, GoogleDocs Community, where you can find hundreds of interesting quick videos on making the whole Google Docs experience better than ever for you: http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleDocsCommunity/featured