On Monday March 5, the Webgrrls community gathered to talk about the different social media tools that people use and why. During the Twitter Chat, we explored and shared answers to the following questions:

• What are some of your favorite social media tools to help manage Twitter & Facebook?
• What are some great tools for social media analytics and reporting? 
• What are some tools you use to find new followers?
• Niche site = more targeted audience. Dog clothes designer will get better ROI at @Dogster. What niche sites do you use? 
• What tools do you use to find and aggregate resources and content?

Below are some highlights from the event with answers to the above questions

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During the Twitter Chat, we explored and shared answers to the following questions:

• What does networking mean to you?
• What is your primary goal when you network?
• What are some things that you do to maximize your networking time at events
• What are the three stages of the networking process?
• What are some tools that you use to streamline your networking and follow-up process?

Below are some highlights from the event with answers to the above questions

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2 Ways to Win

1. Attend the NYC Webgrrls The Art of Less Doing & Networking event on November 7.  We will randomly choose a winner at the event. Note: you must be present to win.
    
2. Enter to win online.  You must be a member to participate…so, if you are not a Webgrrls member or your membership is not current, please Join or Renew your membership now.  We will randomly determine who receives the ticket for the event and will email you if you are the winner. 

All Webgrrls receive 30% Discount to Attend!

All Webgrrls are eligible to receive a 30% discount to attend the event. Be sure to enter discount code: WEBGRRLS-30 when registering.

See you there!

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The Current Trends in Mobile

The Business Insider’s team kicked off the conference with the discussion on the current trends in mobile…the growth of smartphones and tablets, the platform wars, and how consumers are using mobile devices. 

Last year the number of smartphones sold exceeded the number of PCs sold and the potential for growth in mobile is still enormous and in fact, we’re still early (835million SmartPhone users vs. 5.6billion DumbPhone users).

 View the Full Slide Deck.

The Future of Mobile Apps

Simon Khalaf, President and CEO of Flurry showcased the current trends in mobile apps and talked about how mobile app businesses are disrupting industries, mobile app usage, and how app developers are monetizing mobile apps.

Mobile Apps are eating software and the world? View the Full Slide Deck.

The Golden Nuggets

Throughout the day, we heard from many companies and VCs in the mobile space. Here are some pearls of wisdom that I heard from some of the presenters.

• “We’re not in another bubble…In 1999, there were 38 million broadband Internet users worldwide. Today, there are 1.2 billion people getting broadband Internet access on their phones” ~ Simon Khalaf, President and CEO of Flurry
• “Smartphones are enabling new markets. Postmates, which enables geo-located services like the ability to press a button and get a bike messenger or a truck, and Gigwalk, which is disrupting the temporary jobs market. You can get a job in a few minutes.” ~ Jeff Clavier, founder and managing partner at SoftTech VC
• “The leading edge stuff is usability … it’s not leading edge … it’s just sh*t we aren’t very good at.” ~ Dave McClure, founding partner at 500 Startups
• “It’s about going through false starts... Brbn was a false start. The best companies in the world have all had predecessors. YouTube was a dating site. You always have to evolve into something else” ~ Kevin Systrom, CEO of Instagram   

  (Instagram originally started out as a check-in app called Brbn)

• “Hiring is a long-term process. Hiring starts a year before you build your company. It’s the network you build. The first five people we hired at Instagram were good friends. Trust is by far the most important thing. You’ll never find your co-founder on Craigslist” Kevin Systrom, CEO of Instagram 
• “Great CEOs are made, not born. One reason Facebook has been so successful, is that Mark Zuckerberg has learned how to be a great CEO, which he wasn’t at the beginning”. Andreessen Horowitz, founder and partner Ben Horowitz
• “Zynga is a game company. We stopped looking at ourselves as a game company.It’s not just the launch of a game, it’s the launch of a franchise. It’s bigger than most movie launches in Hollywood. Rovio is one of the first brands to launch from the digital to the physical world” ~ Peter Vesterbacka, CMO  Rovio  
• “In technology, you are in the innovation business. In order to hit the next product cycle, you’re going to have to reinvent the company. If you look at long lasting technology companies – IBM, HP, Intel, Facebook, and Amazon – all of them are run by founders who play a prominent role in them. The innovation comes from the founder”. ~ Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz
• “Zynga has been good at buying companies early. We bring in teams that are a good DNA fit for our business. Also, games that bring good games into our ecosystem” ~ Travis Boatman, Mobile Chief of Zynga

Follow the #ignitionwest hashtag to see what other people tweeted at the event.

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Facebook announced, last week, that starting March 30, they are forcing all Facebook Business Page owners to convert to the new timeline format, which will completely eliminate the custom landing page option. In fact, a call to action on a Facebook business page will now be against Facebook’s terms and conditions! (see more details below)  (Note: you can still use your custom tabs in your Facebook Page).

New Facebook Page Layout:

(click to enlarge)

Cover Image

The cover image is the new representation of your brand on the Facebook page. The image dimensions are 850px x 315px. Unlike in the previous versions of Facebook page designs, this time around, Facebook has very strict guidelines against adding any marketing tactics and language on the cover image. Facebook’s policies state that cover photos cannot include:

• Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website.”
• Contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your Page’s “About” section.
• References to Facebook features or actions, such as “Like” or “Share” or an arrow pointing from the cover photo to any of these features.
• Calls-to-action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends.”
• Covers must not be false, deceptive or misleading, and must not infringe on third parties’ intellectual property. 

Since this is the only visual representation of your brand on the business page, the design of this image is pretty important.  To get your creativity juices flowing, check out these Facebook Timeline designs examples from SocialFresh & InspirationFeed.  You can also check out the Webgrrls Facebook page
 

Profile Picture

This is the image that gets shown next to each of your updates. You can use a logo or any image that is representative of your brand.  We, at Webgrrls decided to highlight our business members in that area.

Choose an image that fits 180 x 180 pixels and also looks good when scaled down to a thumbnail size of 32 x 32 pixels. 

Larger Page Tab Icons

The Page Tabs are now located toward the top of the page instead of the sidebar.  This, along with the increase of the tab icon size (111px x 74 px), allows you to highlight & showcase your tabs where users can’t miss them. Use this space to showcase your calls to actions and create a clear graphic that shows what’s behind the tab. For the Webgrrls page, we have created 3 graphics with text describing the tabs and these tabs now serve as our ‘navigation’.

Follow these steps to assign an image icon to a tab,

You can also set the order of your tabs by dragging them into the location that you want. (Note: the Photos tab location can’t be changed).

Larger, wider page tabs.  

Previously, page tabs were 520px wide, but with the new layout you have 810px of content area to use.  You should now go back to all of the previously created page tabs and ensure that they work with the wider width.

Stories – Star, Hide, or Pin 

Stories also got revamped. By hovering over individual stories, you can make them wider, hide them from your timeline (pencil icon), highlight them as important (star icon), or delete them. A great new feature is the ability to pin/anchor a specific story to the top of your timeline for up to 7 days. This means you can highlight specific posts with remarkable content, calls-to-action for your marketing offers, or events you want to feature. Pinning it to the top of your page will prevent the content from getting buried by more recent updates.

Messages 

This is a brand new feature which allows you to send and receive private message to your page visitors allowing you to can handle your customer service issues directly on Facebook.  

By default, the messages will be turned on.  To turn off messaging capability, go to Admin Panel, and choose ’Manage’ -> ‘Edit Page’ -> ‘Manage Permissions’ and uncheck the ‘Messages’ box.

Milestones

This is another new feature that allows page owners to tell a story….your business’ biggest accomplishments, awards, product releases, etc.  You can create a milestone through your status update box.  In addition to title, location, date, and story, you can upload a 843 x 403 pixels image 

Admin Panel

This is a new interface that offers page admins an overview of what’s going on with a page. Charts, new notifications and “likes”, check-ins, and more. Everything involved with managing your page and creating ads can be done straight from the panel.

 ________________________________________________________________

Please take advantage of the 25 days that you have to carefully plan and design your new Facebook Page so that when March 30th comes around, you are all ready to go.

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The 2011 Holiday Season is fast approaching and to kick it off we are organizing a dual-city Webgrrls International Holiday Celebration December 6th with the San Francisco Webgrrls and December 7th with the New York City Webgrrls, and when the Webgrrls Community gets together, it becomes an industry event, not only about revelry but also about the celebration of the achievements of women in technology and business.

December 6 – San Francisco

The San Francisco Webgrrls Holiday Celebration will be Tuesday, December 6th at the Techsoup space. 

We will toast to success and ring in the Holidays with a wine and cheese affair with some great wine, great raffle prizes, and a great San Francisco crowd. Get more information and RSVP!

December 7 – New York City

The NYC Webgrrls Holiday celebration will be Wednesday, December 7th at Wix Lounge, a co-working and event space for creative professionals (located steps from Union Square).

We will have a great menu and can share a toast with some great wine & beer,  and some amazing people. Get more information and RSVP!

Webgrrls International has a lot celebrate this year! A new site, new technology, our workshop line-up has grown offering new information and new skills to our members and community, our regular and small business membership continues to grow. San Francisco Webgrrls has a new chapter leader, Anne Ward, and is growing exponentially and the NYC Webgrrls is having its best year. The Webgrrls Blog, Webgrrls Wisdom, continues to influence as our subscriber base continues to grow. We have created some great momentum for 2012. It has been a very rewarding year for many of us.

Come and celebrate with us!

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Social Media is Nothing New

Before we dive into the tips, it’s good to realize that Social Media is nothing new and we all have been doing it from the beginning of time…Social Media is about connecting with people.  What has changed are the tools.  The tools now allow us to make that human connection on a whole different level…having access to people from all over the world where information travels at the speed of light!

Tips for Building a Brand on Social Media

1. Define your brand…your story
   In Social Media, your brand story appears in your bio or tag line.  Make sure to write a great bio/tag line that tells your story. 

   Things you should include in your Brand Story

   • Identify What You Value
   • Identify What Makes You Unique
   • Identify How You Want To Be Perceived
   • Identify Your Specialty
   • Identify Your Target Market 

   Here are 3 examples on Twitter community that tell a great story:
   

   

   One important note is to tailor your bio for each community if necessary.  The target audiences that you want to reach in different communities might vary, so, you have to know the community in order to speak to it’s members in a language that they understand and expect.

   Also, remember to use keywords that you want to be found under in your bio as this is how users of that community will find you.

2. Use a Great Photo
   I can’t stress this enough.  Your photo is the human connection.  Make sure that it is clear and portrays your personality.  Can you guess which photos I think you should use?
   
3. Engage with your community to build relationships
   Because there is so much going on in everyone’s lives today, engaging with the community members is the only way to stay on top of their minds.

   How do you engage?

   • Ask Questions
   • Answer other people’s questions
   • Comment on people’s posts
   • Respond to people when they try to reach out to you

   To help you manage your Social Media communications, you have to monitor what people say about your brand and respond in a timely manner. To monitor what people say about your brand, you can use Google Alerts, Addictomatic, and Twitter Search.

4. Be Remarkable!
   In order to succeed in Social Media, you have to be remarkable!  The power of Social Media tools are SHARING features, where people can easily pass something they like on to their networks.

   People share remarkable things

   People want to connect with remarkable people

5. Be Ubiquitous
   You have to create multiple streams of YOU on all the different social networks but you have to create a “HUB” (usually your blog/website) where people can find all of the info about you in one place. 

   

What do you think?  Do you have any other tips for building a brand on Social Media, please share in the comments!

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Gamification is the process of using game thinking and mechanics to engage audiences and solve problems.

Game dynamics are now entering every aspect of daily life. Good games take players (aka customers) on a journey. Early Gamification techniques only involved adding simple game mechanics like points, badges and leader boards to websites and apps. But, what I discovered at the Gamification Summit in NYC, an incredible 2 day event, is that it is not enough. The gamification journey should give the user something to learn and master, encourages people to stay engaged with your brand and have FUN in the process.

Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivations: (what motivates people)

How do you figure out what “journey” to take your user on?  By understanding what motivates people.  There are two types of motivators:

• Extrinsic – monetary exchange for a product or service. 
  In game mechanics, these motivators would translate into rewards such as money, points, or schedules
• Intrinsic – exchange of an intangible for a product or service. In a game, these motivators would translate into things like friendship, commitments, & loyalty.

Extrinsic Motivators are very good for encouraging people to complete simple tasks. To achieve longer term engagement and have people exceed their own performance, you have to use intrinsic motivators ~ Amy Jo Kim

What Motivates People? (competition or satisfaction)

When designing game mechanics for a particular group of people, to effectively generate the appropriate user engagement, it is important to understand the underlying motivations and personality types that make up your community.  What some people find fun or motivating, others might not…competition and winning are important for some, for others, a simple feeling of recognition or making a difference may be more satisfying.

Michael Wu, one of the presenters at the Gamification Summit, wrote a great post on Psychology of Motivation where he breaks down the science behind motivation.

What Personality Type is your Customer?

Gabe Zichermann, the chair of the Gamification Summit and author of  “Gamification by Design”, says that we need to really understand each of our customer type motivations so you can unpack what your consumer will think is fun.

He classifies all users into 4 Bartles player types, each motivated by different things:

• Achievers are driven by in-game goals, usually some form of points gathering – whether experience points, levels, or money.
• Explorers are driven to find out as much as they can about the virtual construct – including mapping its geography and understanding the game mechanics.
• Socializers use the virtual construct to converse and role-play with their fellow gamers.
• Killers use the virtual construct to cause distress on other players, and gain satisfaction from inflicting anxiety and pain on others.

Can Gaming make a better world?

I was really inspired to hear the many case studies, examples, and conversations, of how gaming will transform the world and would really recommend that you watch Jane McGonigal TED talk on how gaming can make a better world.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Learn More:

If you were unable to attend the Gamification Summit, be sure to check out the live blog for a recap off all of the events and visit the conference SlideShare page for all of the presentations

NYC Webgrrls Gamification Seminar:

Are you going to be in NYC on November 9th? Then you have to attend the NYC Webgrrls Gamification Seminar.  We are extremely excited to have one of the top thought leaders in Gamification, Gabe Zichermann, lead the seminar! http://www.webgrrls.com/events/:396

See you there!

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Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking that you have something to lose ~ Steve Jobs

In tribute of Steve Jobs, I wanted to highlight one of my all time favorite videos of Steve Jobs, where he urges graduates to pursue their dreams and see the opportunities in life’s setbacks — including death itself.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Transcript of Steve Jobs’ inspirational commencement address:
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

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Business Insider put together a great list of privacy settings that you should pay attention to on these new features:

1. Know that anything you post or comment on a friend’s wall is public. Your posts will show up in others’ News Tickers
2. Remember to check sharing settings before you post an update.
3. Be very careful adding people to your Smart Lists associated with work or study. They’ll get notified.
4. Go to your profile and click “View As…” Then click “public” to see how your profile looks to the world.
5. Subscribing does not equal stalking someone you’re not friends with. “Subscribing” to somebody’s public updates is a public act, just like following on Twitter.
6. Click the drop down arrow in the top right of your screen, then “Privacy Settings,” then “How Tags Work.” Make sure you’re cool with each setting.
7. Want to only make parts of your profile public and parts private? Click “Edit Profile” on your profile and change these settings.
8. So who can see that picture, anyway? Find out by clicking the gear next to a picture.

Read the full article on Business Insider to see screenshots and examples of where to find all of these settings:

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