Social Hotspot

Traveling will leave you to the fun times of not having to hunt for reliable internet service. I look forward to the days when this new social network of creating 4G hotspots is available internationally. The company will have to create some partnerships in order to extend it’s national reach. Meanwhile, you can enjoy the usage and the cool way of connecting with other Starbucks’ and Panera Bread internet users. (You know plenty of us sit there for hours nursing that pastry or beverage.)

Introducing the Karma 4G, WiFi Hotspot. This pocket sized connector has eight hours of battery from a single charge and works just as fast. Once the device is received, create a Karma account (sign in via Facebook) and immediately you will be given 100MB of free bandwidth. If you go over that limit, pay $14 for each additional GB of data I use.

No, it’s not unlimited, but it’s competitive with other mobile plans. If you don’t use that much, you pay less, and if you happen to go over that 5GB, you don’t have to deal with overage charges, which is grand.

Head to your local Panera Bread or Starbucks or other cool hip place that you sit and surf and Karma’s open WiFi network is bound to find some poachers. If those thieves sign up for Karma via Facebook, they too get 100MB free (as do you too) attached to their Facebook ID. Even if they don’t have their own Hotspot, they still get free access to WiFi, and since, as the admin, you can see the incoming WiFi connections and their Facebook profile. Very cool to connect with that person sitting across from you who might be a good business connection or even another person to click Like on your page.

Pocket sized and connecting with others around you – I like this! What do you think about Karma? Do you really want to connect like this with the people around you?

Earth Day Special: Sustainability

When I see the word sustainability I think about being self sufficient complete with growing my own food, being off the grid, and at one with Mother Nature. There is that part of me that would feel at home with the simple life. Imagine my inner green nerd excitement when I came across Wiser Earth, or W.E.

Wiser Earth is a community of 68,368 people around the world who are connecting, collaborating, and sharing knowledge. The mission states that it is a “community devoted to the people and organizations around the world working toward environmental sustainability, indigenous rights, and social justice.”

The website is action packed with a job board to include a list of employment and volunteer opportunities that are related to being green. Also, event listings for plant swaps (love those!), workshops, and other activities. There are also groups that you can create and join for your cause.

Here’s a video on more about the website:

Wiser Earth

Make good use of your Earth Day and get outside! (Then post to your favorite social network.)

In the words of Cookie Monster: Nom, nom, nom, nom

Today we had take out food. I had chicken lo mein (a shift from my usual sweet and sour chicken) and a spring roll. I ordered it via home delivery and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I don’t enjoy cooking, nor collecting recipes, but I do enjoy eating and looking at pictures of food. It would have been nice to be able to look up the restaurant to see what other dish I’d like to have. Here is where the social network dedicated to food comes in. Introducing Foodie.

Foodie, brought to us by Glam Media, is still in beta mode, but this is a great opportunity for up and coming chefs, food/foodie bloggers, and authors. There is room for recipes and plenty of engagement, just make sure the content has crisp photos that make us all want to reach out and eat directly from our screens.

Just as in many other social networks you join at no cost and post your profile picture with your information linked to your website or blog. You can simply Follow people that you find interesting and want to keep up to date. What your followers post and comment on shows up in the feed of your Home selection.

Do you or someone you know make a hot sauce, decorate and bake cakes and sweets, or has some other food item? Betty Crocker has already jumped in with recipes which is a great clue to what other businesses can take advantage of by posting recipes which include your very own product(s).

Still, for the person looking for food inspiration this is a great place to get it and to reach out to those whom have written the recipe. Wouldn’t it be great to know of some alternative ingredients and ask the recipe author himself? Again, this is a great place to engage for both the authors/chef/restaurant and for the regular cook in all of us.

Still to come:

Dining Guide – highlighting where to eat. This will be great if it can be area specific. I am not going to be too thrilled to only see Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant and I don’t live anywhere near him. On the other hand, this would be great for the Celebrity Chef tv show to highlight the chefs that try out and where we could all visit them in their restaurants. This could further our experience with the chefs and building the audience’s connection with them as an invitation to their environment.

Chef – The title states it will be the “most distinguished chefs” and “exclusive recipes”. Again, I hope that this will be area specific as chefs could spin from here to have intimate dinners locally and made by them; a great marketing tool for chefs to use to draw a nice tantalizing food event.

Menus – Check out the best menus to sample. (I see graphic designers being able to really shine here for the restaurants who have put a lot of thought in to how their menus are presented.) But what a way to make sure you want to stop by that new place for lunch or on the weekend.

There are other areas such as Healthy, Quick & Easy, Kids Menu, etc. as well as a Forum. In my opinion, I would cut the Forum portion and focus more on registrants to the site engaging via the updates instead of dividing the attention to somewhere else to post.

Don’t Leave Yet

Have you tried Foodie? What are your thoughts? What do you think about this post? Do you know of another social network worth reviewing? Have I convinced you yet that there’s more to life than Twitter marketing? Leave a comment.

Strike A Pose

I found this social medium over a year ago and way before the Pinterest craze. DailyBooth captures your life in the spot, or on the go, if you’re mobile a.k.a. photoblogging. The slogan for DailyBooth is “Your life in pictures.”

The objective is to capture you or what you’re doing in that moment and to have a day to day or minute to minute update. The newsfeed is constantly updating in pictures of weird face, hair, tattoos, and other poses of us as we seem stuck in front of the computer or other digital device.

The user base is geared towards teens, but I’ve seen some adults (hello, me) on there.

How the hell can I use something like this?

• Snapping pictures of ourselves is a fun thing
• Keep up with what outfits you had on and what state of mind you were in when you took the picture or great for if you’re losing weight to serve as a constant reminder of where you do not want to return

For business…

• If your market is teens then this is another place you want to be
• Gear daily photos with your model or yourself in your product(s) or interacting with your product(s)
• Don’t forget that the U.S. is not the only place this photoblogging site is popular. Other countries love it too and might just like your product
• A business with the lazer targeted market of teens and the exact message could win the hearts of the youngsters updating their facial expresssions every few minutes

F.Y.I. Since its inception funneled by angel investors in 2009 there has been a decline in usage. Of course, at first many were flocking to the site, but now its slowed down due to the likes of Pinterest. But its still around with a few million using it daily.

If You’re Not LinkedIn, then Houston, We Have A Problem…

LinkedIn has grown to over 100 million users in over 50 countries. The marketing efforts of LinkedIn have doubled and are in place to stave off the competition and continue to grow as they have enhanced the ads and job searches; not to mention that the stock is growing too. More professionals are signing up for its subscription services and bringing advertisers who want to reach these professionals.

I know the world is stuck on Facebook, but spend a few days with LinkedIn in another open tab on your browser and connect with professionals in your field. Once you’ve made sure to fill out your entire profile do a search for others in your field and connect. You can also connect via the many groups that are established on the site.

What can this Linking do for an individual?

You can…

• Connect to others in your field and grow more via the groups developed or by creating your own group
• Find a job (if you’re unemployed), or a better one if you’re tired of the company you’re with
• Gain more business by cross checking those whom may need your services. Advice: approach all of these reasons to get LinkedIn as you are the one who is helping and not just taking. You’ll get a long way by being of help instead of just pushing the Me button

What can LinkedIn do for a business?

• Create business page to connect and attract current and future employees
• Create ads for employment and the search is on. Many people have other networks connected to their files so you can see them via their social networks that are linked to their profile
• Discover new partnerships

Organization Starts Here

I like social media toys that allow me to stay organized. I’ve tried quite a number of them and could create more blog posts just on the tools. But the latest, Sprout Social, is aesthetically pleasing, and is very easy to use.

Sprout Social enables ecommerce merchants to oversee multiple social profiles, which it refers to as “identities.” An identity consists of at least one Twitter account and can also include Facebook Profiles, Facebook Pages, LinkedIn Profiles and others.

I’m especially impressed with the Dashboard, as it includes:

• Measurement of engagement and influence, represented by a bar graph and numerical value.
• Demographic data on Facebook fans and Twitter followers.
• Social “scoreboard” listing numbers of new followers, mentions, message volume and engagement.
• List of recent followers.
• Recent messages.
• Number of clicks on links.
• Graph containing Twitter statistics

So, guess what? You get to try it too and for free for 30 days. Let me know your thoughts after you’ve been trying it a few days: