Archive for the ‘Guides’ Category

Dan Schawbel, author of Me 2.0, writes for Mashable about How To: Build Your Personal Brand on YouTube. This helpful post details steps you can take in order to leverage the full power of YouTube in order to build your brand. This quick guide provides recommendations in the following areas:

1. Brand your profile
2. Create remarkable videos
3. Promote your videos

The folks at Educause take a look at 7 Things You Should Know About Google Wave, the next-gen email application forthcoming from Google. This helpful guide answers the following questions about the program:

1. What is it?
2. Who’s doing it?
3. How does it work?
4. Why is it significant?
5. What are the downsides?
6. Where is it going?
7. What are the implications for teaching and learning?

via ResourceShelf

Christina Warren at Mashable has put together a guide to How to Measure Social Media ROI. If you’re curious about how to measure the impact your social media initiatives are having, you’ll want to check out this helpful guide along with the not-to-be-missed Social Media ROI introductory presentation by Olivier Blanchard.

• ROI Reality Check
• Defining Clear Goals
• Metrics Tools
• Sentiment Analysis
• Social Media Product Suites
• Making the Data Usable

The folks at MakeUseOf have published a 53-page Complete Guide to Twitter. If you want to get up to speed on how to effectively tweet, you’ll want to check out this guide which includes sections about:

• Hashtags
• ReTweeting
• Searching for Twitter Trends
• Managing Your Reputation on Twitter
• Twitter Apps and Bots You Should Know About
• Scheduling Your Tweets for Later

Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book, tells Mashable readers about 5 Ways to Write Retweetable Tweets. If you want to learn how to create tweets that get passed along to others, check out these five tips:

1. Always Include a Link
2. Don’t Use Up All 140 Characters
3. When Retweeting, Add Something Original
4. Build Credibility With Your Bio and URL
5. Combine the Personal With the Professional

Josh Catone from Mashable has created a quick guide to How To: Organize an Event on Facebook. This useful post walks readers through the following steps to successfully create, manage, and promote an event through Facebook:

• Creating an Event Listing
• Managing and Promoting Your Event
• Selling Tickets

Jeffry Thurana at MakeUseOf walks readers through the step-by-step process of how to Build A Cool Photo Gallery Website from Wordpress. This helpful guide provides annotated screenshots which illustrate how to turn your blog into an image gallery.

• The Cool DIY Way Of Sharing Images
• Finding & Installing The Themes (& The Plugins)
• Building The Blog

The Online Classes website has put together a mega-list of 100 Free Tools to Tutor Yourself in Anything. Find a wide range of free classes and tutorials in the following categories in this helpful post:

• General
• Language
• Music
• Life Skills
• Around the House
• Technology
• General Academic
• Business
• Health and Fitness
• Math and Science
• Liberal Arts
• Fine Arts

Barb Dybwad at Mashable has created a guide to organizing your contacts in Facebook with How To: Create Friend Lists on Facebook. Learn how to create these lists which will allow you to filter updates in your News Feed through this step-by-step guide. One thing I will add is that Friends Lists are a powerful way to customize your Privacy Settings in Facebook as well - once you’ve created individual lists you can determine exactly who sees what on your profile - including photos, Wall Posts, and more.

• About Friend Lists
• How to Create a Facebook Friend List
• How to Use Friend Lists
• How to Delete a Facebook Friend List

Gina Trapani from Lifehacker provides an excellent tutorial to the next-gen email app in Google Wave 101. Complete with keyboard shortcuts and instructional screenshots, this guide will get you up and running with Google Wave as soon as you get your invite.

Ann Smarty at ProductiveWise sizes up the most popular real-time search engines in her post How to Search the Web Real-Time which compares each by indexing time, data sources, and advanced search & filtering options.

via Steve Rubel

Christina Warren at Mashable creates a quick guide to How to Integrate Facebook With Your Blog. These helpful suggestions will set you on your way to let your readers sign in with their Facebook login to leave comments, display recent visitors, commenters, and friends on your website, feed your blog content into FB, and more.

Bill Drew, Librarian at Tompkins Cortland Community College Library, has created a Google Site for his recent presentation titled Why Twitter?: What can Twitter do for my library & my community? This website resource provides a Twitter tutorial aimed at public libraries, along with articles, videos, Twitter tools, abbreviations, and other helpful materials.

Librarian by Day Bobbi L. Newman has a step-by-step guide to How to attribute a Creative Commons photo from Flickr. If you’ve been wondering how to correctly credit a CC photo, you’ll want to check out this post which provides detailed examples and tips.

Webdesigner Depot has published a mega-guide to making the most of the WordPress blogging platform. Whether you’re just starting out or a regular user you won’t want to miss this huge list of 300+ Resources to Help You Become a WordPress Expert in the following categories:

• Theme Roundups, Theme Templates, and Theme Frameworks
• Tutorials and Tips
• Plugins
• Tricks, Customizations, and Hacks
• Galleries and Inspiration
• Blogs, Articles and Other Resources