Orangejack LLC

Text messaging has grown from 17 million to almost 2 trillion this decade.

I’m not shocked by this. In Asia, Europe, and Africa, texting is perhaps the most common use for a cell phone.

Do you use your mobile phone for texting?  If so, why?

Chart from Anne Jackson

Are you new to social media but don’t know where to start?  We can help.

We have just published a free eBook: Getting Started with Social Media. This eBook is written as a guide or checklist to get yourself or your small business started with social media.  This is your starting point.  Also included is a handy chart you can print and use to fill in your various social media profile information to have on file.

Please head over to our eBook page (we hope to have more there in the future!) to download, read, and distribute the eBook Getting Started with Social Media.

I have been invited to give a short presentation this Thursday, Aug 28, at Coffee Club Orlando.  I’ve attended this local networking event a couple times each month most of the year.  It has become my favorite local networking event because it’s a great place to meet and talk with other small business owners in Orlando.

This week I’ll be talking about “Social Media and You”.  If you are in the area, why don’t you stop by?  There are usually anywhere from 60-100 folks there every week.

And besides, if you don’t like listening to me, at least you get some free coffee and interact with other people!

Coffee Club meets every Thursday from 8:30-9:30am at the Airport Marriott. Parking at the Marriott is $5.00 for all cars.

UPDATE: I had a great time at Coffee Club.  Notes and a video have been posted on the IMG website.

Tropical Storm Fay is on her way to Orlando (ahem! home of Orangejack LLC) so we’re paying attention.

It’s been a hobby of mine tracking and keeping up with tropical storms and hurricanes.  I’ve been writing about it on my personal blog in the Hurricane category of rob’s place.

But that’s not the only place social media around this storm is happening.  Twitter has been buzzing about Fay.  I set up a Hurricane room on FriendFeed that allows us to automatically import updates and allows members to comment, discuss, and share links.  There are plenty of storm blogs available also.

One of the more interesting blogs that has popped up is one called Hurricane Fay Online Newsroom by the Red Cross that has a lot of breaking news updates and resources.  Not only can you get updates from them by email or RSS, but also Twitter and they even have used Utterz.

Although most people still get their news from TV, this is the movement we’re seeing in online communication.

Within the last 6 months, Delta Airlines released a new in-flight safety video. Although it’s better than the previous one, it’s still the video they show to several millions of people and is ignored by most of those millions on the plane.

However, Delta did something interesting when their new video was ready: they put it on YouTube. Within half a year it’s been viewed over 1 Million times and has over 1200 comments.

They announced it on the Delta Blog then gave us a little behind the scenes for how they produced the film.

If you haven’t flown Delta lately you probably haven’t seen it so I placed it at the top of this post. Posting a video they already created on YouTube got 1 million extra views — and it took all of a couple of minutes to plant the viral seeds. Here’s the question for you: what can you do take something seemingly mundane, spice it up, and see if you can create some buzz? .

I’ve been on Facebook for a couple years now and have gone back and forth with my opinion of it.  One of the things I liked about it at first was the ability to connect with friends quickly and easily.  I also liked that it had a clean look to the layout.

Later Facebook allowed 3rd-party applications to be added and we saw a crazy explosion of individuality expressed on profile pages.  They were becoming cluttered, long, and a bit unwieldy. I began to drift away from using it as much in part for this reason (the other being it is a walled garden and I’m not a fan of that but that’s a discussion for another time).

Very recently Facebook has been rolling out a new design to their layout.  At first I wasn’t sure where some of my stuff was moved to and there are still some things I don’t like.  However, the more I look at the main profile page, I realize there is a huge potential for Facebook to become an awesome tool for connecting and communicating.  It’s this issue I want to focus on; publishing and interacting inside Facebook has never been easier or more complete than this.

Update Status

Facebook has always provided a few ways to publish content to your own profile.  The most common way is to update your status - a short line that is usually a statement of “I am …”  It’s not always used that way, but that status is published out to all of your friends so they know what you are up to.  With the new design, updating your status is at the top of your page and the dominant feature highlighted and now asks “What are you doing right now?”

Wall

The new head or top of a profile page has moved into tabs.  You can see I’ve added a couple tabs from a couple of applications I like (a Clemson Fan and a USA Olympics Fan).  The part I see as huge is that the first tab, the wall, is now the focus.  Earlier the wall (basically a public discussion board) could be buried in a long page.  The wall is used as one of the main ways to communicate with others by leaving short messages for the person.  Now it is easy to find the wall and leave a message since it’s always at the top.

All Posts

Facebook is now aggregating all of the activity that one publishes along with comments from others into one chronological flow.  If you share a link, write a post, import something from outside of Facebook, or publish photos it will all be reflected in the All Posts section.  It is now easier to find all published content in the order it was published.

Commenting

Facebook has allowed comments on just about every sort of content you publish except for your status.  People would get around it by commenting on that person’s wall but when the status changed, often that wall comment didn’t make sense.  Now since your status is integrated into your main content, each item can have a discussion in context.

My Summary

What I’m seeing with this new Facebook design is that communication is much faster and easier than before.  Interaction is encouraged and is more sensible.  Some veterans of Facebook aren’t happy with the new design but I suspect it’s because they aren’t seeing it in this light.  It seems Facebook is now catching up to some of the other hot web 2.0 content publishing applications and improving on what they do well:

• Microblogging: Facebook Status Update like Twitter
• Blogging: Facebook Notes
• Bookmarking: Facebook Links like Delicious or Digg
• Photos: Facebook Photos like Flickr
• Discussion Board: Facebook Wall
• Lifestream: Facebook All Posts like FriendFeed

For another perspective on this check out MakeUseOf.com’s article Finding Your Way Around The New Facebook.

By the way, you can friend me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, or follow my lifestream on FriendFeed if you like.

My online presence has shifted and changed over time.  It seems to always be changing — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing either.  Let me walk you through how I’ve been online (my personal brand) and the changes that have taken place.  I’ve observed some fundamental shifts and I think it’s worth sharing.

August 2001 - Created a Website

It was time to venture onto the web full-time.  I had been online in chat rooms and discussion boards, but not my own brand anywhere.  So in August I registered this domain name - orangejack.com.  The short version of why that name was that my name was already taken so I needed to get creative.  I picked my favorite color (orange) then the first inanimate object I could think of.  I thought of a jack.  A new brand was born.

At this time I wanted a website that I could play with, learn more about design and technology, and see if I could use it to connect with others by publishing articles and asking for an email reply.  Connection and communication was my goal from the begging.

July 2004 - Began to Blog

I began to learn about a new technology and way of communicating.  It was called a blog and so I created an account with blogger.com (later to be purchased by Google and co-named Blogspot).  I kept the branding the same by getting orangejack.blogspot.com and made a commitment to write something every day for a month.  I found the concept of blogging a very interesting way to connect.  A blog made it faster to publish articles and allowed engagement right on the site! Doing it every day got me into the habit of publishing.  I also did a lot of reading of other people’s blogs to learn more.  I asked other bloggers questions and just kept on going.

It all started with this little post on July 6, 2004 called “Red Trucks”:

This weekend I went to the local Lowe’s hardware store. My wife and I have a running joke that “the truck goes to Home Depot”. This weekend, it was Lowe’s instead. Oh, my truck? It’s a ‘96 Nissan Pickup…and it’s red!

So anyway, I went to Lowe’s this weekend. I pulled up into the parking lot and parked. And what to my wandering eyes should appear? 5 other red pickup trucks! And they were all parked together. I found it quite humorous. I parked beside a red Ford. Across from me was a red Dodge. On the other side of me was a red Toyota. There were two other red pickups that I couldn’t tell what they were.

So I guess others feel the same way…the truck goes to the hardware store!

August 2004 - Live Blogging/Crisis Blogging

Things changed fast only one month later when the summer of hurricanes began in Florida.  I decided on a whim to blog straight through Hurricane Charley as it came right over our house.  It was crazy!  We were on wifi but it kept going in and out when we’d have a power blip.  So I composed emails offline in Outlook and mailed them on dialup to ensure it being posted.  You can actually go through the hurricane archives on the old blog.  They are still there.  Maybe my all-time favorite comment came from an anonymous man:

Hi there… My family and I live in Texas and are in no danger of Frances, but we have been glued to your Blog - that we came across by going to random blogs - since this frances started rearing her ugly head… Just thought we’d throw out a random thanks for a more human side of the picture… even as we sat on the edge of our seats and even argued as to what the thump was outside the boarded up window…. anytway, thanks for the coverage.

September 2004 - Sequential Series/2nd Blog

I was really getting the hang of blogging so I created Orangejack Blogging University, a series of posts interlinked to help someone begin blogging.  It became quite popular and I’ve thought about doing it again someday.

Also in September I began a new blog that changed the way I thought about creating posts.  At the time I would occasionally write about online marketing and how it effects ministry (I was a missionary at the time).  When I posted something on my blog I would put it into a category.  However, I began to realize that if I spun the “marketing” category out into a new blog, I would serve two audiences better.  My friends visiting my personal blog didn’t necessarily care about marketing.  My marketing friends didn’t necessarily care about my personal ramblings.  The way I thought about it was if I were to write something and put it in the “marketing” category, I would instead go to that blog and post it there instead.

March 2005 - Building a Conference Blog

One of the projects I was working on at the time was an International conference to be held in Budapest.  I thought it would be interesting to try and create a conference website all on blogspot.com.  It went a bit against what a blog is usually about, but realizing that each post has it’s own unique web address, I realized with a little manipulation and hard coding I could turn it into a regular conference website!  It was a fun tool to use to build and get some excitement from others who were going to attend.  People “met” each other before they got there!

June 2005 - No More DreamWeaver

I finally changed all of my sites into blogs powered by the free software from Wordpress.org.  It was a great move as I gained much more flexibility in what the sites could look like, but also easier to communicate.  I was now running three blogs off of Wordpress: my personal blog (rob.orangejack.com), my family blog (orangejack.com), and my work blog.

January 2006 - Joined Flickr

Flickr.com was the first social network I joined not counting blogging.  In fact, Flickr is really a photo blog and that’s how I use Flickr - that and to archive or show photos from a trip.  What was interesting here is that I was not just having a way to deposit content online, but I was connecting with people and associating myself with others as connections.

May 2006 - Created Flickr Groups

In Flickr one can join different groups.  I found one called “Orlando, FL” which was for photos of Orlando.  I thought, “what about the people in Orlando?”  So I created a group called “Central Florida Flickrs“.  About 2 years later we have 600+ members, 12,000+ photos shared, and almost 200 discussion posts.  What was so interesting about this was how we as members started to play games in the group by posting photos that related to another photo.  Then people started organizing meetups to go shooting together.  I really began to see something that was just a “group” turn into a “community”.

June 2006 - Joined Facebook

Facebook was the first community website I joined that worked.  I got on MySpace long before but didn’t find it to be a great place for me to connect.  Facebook was different.  It was clean and provided all the tools I needed to connect and communicate with others.  However, the thing I didn’t and still don’t like is that in order to participate you have to join.  I like the openness of having blogs so anyone can stop by and interact, not just members.  However Facebook has recently updated their design bringing huge improvements to communication there.  I’ll post about this later.

July 2006 - Joined Twitter

I didn’t know what to make of Twitter at first.  Microblogging was a strange concept - to communicate in less than 140 characters?  When I could write a blog post and host the conversation?  After using Twitter a while I realized that the conversation still took place and it was so much faster than creating a blog.  I could get short thoughts published in an instant.  What I’ve taken away from the microblog concept is that conversations can be faster and happen in bursts, not initiated by an “article”.

February 2008 - Share Blog

One of the things I love to do on my personal blog is share things I find online interesting.  In fact, this is one of the concepts I have for starting a blog.  Instead of forwarding silly emails to a bunch of people, I’d publish them on a blog and let the visitors find it if they wanted to.  I began to play with Tumblr and its ability to automatically import items and post items there fast.  But a few months later Google Reader, a tool I use to keep up with websites, made sharing my favorite items more robust.  The only trouble with a share blog is that it doesn’t really host a conversation.  It’s more of a “FYI” or “Hey, check this out” kind of site.

March 2008 - FriendFeed

Now a new site is available that has the potential to turn everything back around.  Friendfeed will take all of my online presence sites and aggregate it into one place.  That is very convenient.  In addition, each item brought into my Friendfeed allows comments and conversation.  And even more, I can just post something directly to Friendfeed.  In this sense, it’s like a message board where I post new items to it (directly or imported from other sites) and others can comment.

August 2008 - Analyzing the Trends

I actually started writing this long post a month ago then sat on it.  I knew it wasn’t done.  Yesterday I finally wrote about some of the evolution of online communication on my personal blog.   This is an on-going stroy but I find it facinating.

We’re proud to announce that we’ve put most of the finishing touches on a new partnership with Orangejack LLC.  Williams Technology Solutions (WTS) is based near Greenville, SC and has served clients all across North America.

Williams Technology Solutions (WTS) is a professional management consulting partner that provides your business with the computer tools necessary to increase your productivity.  We help you determine your business management needs, offer solutions, installation, training, and personalized service.

The Customer Relationship Management software of expertise for WTS is Tigerpaw CRM+ with custom integration with accounting packages such as QuickBooks, Peachtree, and Avalara.

We did a full redesign of their website not just for aesthetic reasons (see comparison), but the ultimate goal of better search engine results.  With the old design, the site didn’t have any significant search results.  Within a couple of weeks from our soft launch, the site was preforming very well for some of their important keywords.  The one I’m most proud of is WTS is currently holding the #1 spot in Google for “Tigerpaw Consulting” (and also “tiger paw consulting” as Google wondered).

We used Wordpress.org to build the site though the client, at this point, doesn’t want to ‘blog’.  Instead, we re-purposed the blog section to release articles previously written.  Doing it this way creates a process that WTS can use in the future to easily post new articles or begin to write updates.

If you’re in need of getting a better handle of your business contacts, contact WTS Consulting and tell them Orangejack sent you!

Full disclosure: WTS Consulting is owned and operated by my dad, Bob Williams.

One of our favorite TV shows is The Deadliest Catch on Discovery Channel. It’s a show about several crab boat captains in Alaska’s Bearing Sea as they go out fishing for crab (or is that just crabbing?).

It’s a fascinating show to watch mostly because I never expected to see real compelling stories of crabbers. Boy was I wrong!

All that to say that tonight I watched a video of Captian Sig talking about how all the boats are competing but they are a tight community. He also talks about the viral effect of how popular the show has become.

Folks, I submit to you that if you take what Capt Sig says and apply it to the web, you have a fine example of what social media is all about.

Oh, did I mention I got to meet Capt Sig at EPCOT earlier this week? Cool.

When coming up with an ad campaign for FedEx Kinko’s, the innovative minds at advertising agency BBDO were inspired by the streets of New York. The agency installed oversized bottles of correction fluid, highlighters, and, in one case, an office lamp, on the city’s busy thoroughfares for a couple of days earlier this year.

Plenty more from Toxel.com’s 24 Unforgettable Advertisements.