General – David Logan – IT Consultant – Social Media and Content Marketing Consultant

Should I Get Certified in Social Media?

Getting certified in social media has many advantages and disadvantages. Check your objective prior to embarking on the track to certification.

Social media certification is one way to show the world you have undertaken time and money to study social media.

Certification can be good and bad. Ask yourself what do I gain with certification? Win new contracts, abiity to apply for a social media management job, increase in salary … and so on .. on and on ..

Do you have a certificate from your school? Has this helped you in your career?

Social media is online via computer, tablet or your mobile phone devices. It can be learnt in school – physical. Unlike your traditional school subjects, social media is changing fast.

I use Hootsuite where they offer courses and promote their product throughout training. Is hootsuite the best for your task(s)?

Why pay to learn a task when it is free on the internet – there is many blog articles explaining and demonstrating the process of Social Media.

Like all new skills – you can pay £££ to learn in front of a teacher, or you can self-learn. I read a story where a person had spent $1/4 million on training and seminars, resulting in total confusion and a collection of certificates. Do you want to go this route, do you have the money?

So back to my original question – should I get certified in Social Media?

I first need to clean the slate and ask myself why am I asking this? I have my own business and objective is to help other people / businesses to grow their business online, no requirement to show social media certificates currently. Do I need training – yes only if it’s free!!.

What is your view on the topic?
Have you undertaken a course resulting in a certificate?

Let me hear your views on the subject.

Review Alternatives to TwitterFeed

Twitterfeed is a web-based tool which I used to post RSS feeds from different sources to twitter channels. This is now retired and blog created to explore options of replacing service.

From October 31st 2016 twitterfeed ceased.

You are asking what is RSS Feed? I will create post later defining and describing what a RSS Feed is.

Received email from twitterfeed 18th October informing me the end of the service!! Why?!?!

Email detailing end of service fortwitterfeed. Proposed replacement buffer dlvr.it — Email detailing end of service for twitterfeed.

The email showed 2 proposal tools – buffer and dlvr.

Now before I explore and / or investigate these I already have subscription with hootsuite and socialoomph tools.

I ask myself do I need to look elsewhere? Not if I can help it, unless there is a free option.

All 4 tools have free limited functionality.

OK to start with let’s look at buffer: no paid subscription (as of writing). Free plan limits you to 10 posts per channel. I need more – so I need to pay for it. Not now but thanks.

Next is existing paid subscription to Hootsuite. Brilliant this works for twitter. I can post 2 RSS feeds to same account and a different RSS feed to different channel.

Hootsuite Setting up RSS feed how-to twitter — Hootsuite Setting up RSS feed

Socialoomph is my second paid-for plan. Yes this works the same way as hootsuite.

Setup page socialoomph for RSS feed to twitter channel

dlvr is getting shelved for now. No need to go there .. more expense and more time required to learn it.

Other alternatives to explore and investigate is as follows:
– SocialPilot;
– Twibble;
– IFTTT;
– Engator;
– WordPress Plugins;
– manual posting.

To summarise I (as of writing) have paid subscriptions to Hootsuite and Socialoomph, twitterfeed suggested buffer or dlvr. I opted for my current 2 paid subs as they met my objective to tweet.

Has anybody used “NetworkedBlogs”? If yes, have you had success?

Help I Can’t See Your Twitter Feed

Your twitter feed (time-line) can get busy once you start following 1,000’s of users in twitter.

A question I often get asked is “I can’t catch / read your tweets David”.

To get around this, create a list which contains my profile – @DavidLogan2020.

So how do we create a list on twitter … ?

Create List

All the pictures are shown on desktop version of twitter.

Select your profile picture, and then Lists

presented next is an empty screen with button to create a new list.

Select the “Create new list” button

and you are presented with the new list creation window

List name. Keep the name simple but unique to subject.

Description. This is for you. Type in this box to remind yourself what the list is about, it’s purpose.

Privacy. If you want the world and it’s mother to see your list – select “Public”, otherwise select “Private”.

For this exercise I have kept the list “Public”.

Press “Save List”.

Great. You have just created a twitter list. Now to start adding twitter profiles to this list.

Add Twitter Profile to Newly Created List.

Type in @username or twitter handler name, for this example I have used my own name – David Logan

To add profile to your list select the gear symbol next to profile to produce a sub-menu

select “Add or remove from lists …”

select your list – in this scenario we only have the one – “MyFirstList“, then press the cross in top right corner to close the window.

Congratulations you have just created your first list and added a user to the list.

So why do we need lists for … ?

Stay connected for the next post – “Review Cloud Storage”

How to Gain Followers? | Twitter

How to Gain Followers?

Do you want this?

There is 5 steps to this process and 1 step to avoid.

Not all steps to be taken – one-at-a-time.

1 step to avoid

Never never purchase for followers. you need followers who are interested in your posts not forced.

The five steps

Publish content – 1 every hour (average) during day-time hours.
People love quotes
Ask people to re-tweet
Find an influencer in your area of interest with high number of followers – and follow.
Re-tweet any message containing the hashtag #MGWV

1. Publish content – 1 every hour (average) during day-time hours.

From experience you need to psot at least 1 post every hour you are awake on average. The more you post the more you are seen. Include video or pictures where possible.

2. People love quotes

As the title says – people on twitter love quotes – why?? Find a selection of one-line quotes to use. Tweet motivational or positive quotes.

3. Ask people to re-tweet

This is where the magic starts to happen. Get friends, family / co-workers to re-tweet your tweets. If your really stuck I can offer a limited service. When your tweets are re-tweeted, your reach increases as in the number of people reading your post, and secondly if people like what they see they will follow you.

4. Find an influencer in your area of interest with high number of followers – and follow.

This is how I started to grow my followers. Find an account in the field where you wish to tweet to. This account has to have influence and large number of followers. Step-by-step start to follow their followers.

5. rewteet any message containing the hashtag #MGWV

There is many hashtags to follow and twitter accounts will follow back. The magic hashtag which i have found is “#MGWV”. When searching for posting ensure to include the hashtag at the start.

If you have any questions and / or suggestions please feel free to add you comment at the end of this post.

How to Create a Twitter Account

So you want to create a new twitter account?

Congratulations on taking this step.

OK so to start I need you to open a web browser and navigate to url: www.twitter.com

and select the “Sign Up” button

Type in your Name, Email address and password.

Press “Sign Up”.

Choose a username which hasn’t been used.

For this exercise I tried the username “DavidBLogan” ..

and failed ..

Tried username “DavidBLogan2016” …

.. and success.

Press “Next”

Press “Let’s go”

Pick topics of interest and sub-topics. Press “Continue”

Import accounts via your contacts list in google or outlook cloud accounts?

In this case, I selected “No Thanks”.

Displayed is list of twitter accounts associated with each of your interests.

Deselect all or some of the accounts.

and press “Follow 83 and continue”.

Note the number “83” may differ depending on selection of interests and number of accounts you wish to follow.

Congratulations you have created your first twitter profile.

So what next?

Introduction – David Logan

Hi my name is David Logan. Born in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire then moved to home in Scotland shortly afterwards.

Its good to be half Scottish half English. The Scottish referendum … ? Forget it. Not interested.

I am currently ramping up my presence on social media twitter, facebook and instagram via @DavidLogan2020. Bare with me until I get up to speed with word-press – we all have to start somewhere!!

So how did I arrive at Social Media Consultancy when I was born and raised in a farming family?

Throughout my school years I can always remember helping out on the dairy farm, feeding calves,

calf, milk, farm, dairy, agriculture — Feeding young calf with milk.

rolling the grass field,

tractor, roller, silage, farming — Rolling grass field

cutting the garden grass . .and so on ..

When I left school at the age of 16, I was given a chance to try my hands at another industry other than farming. I decided to enter engineering as I loved creating technical drawings.

Started training in a Youth Training Scheme (YTS) to learn basics in computers – so even at the ripe age of 16 I was interested in computers. Opportunities appeared as in YTS trainee or apprentice-ship with local businesses. YTS schemes were short-term, with no guarantee of job security. The apprenticeship was over 4 years including training on the job. Throughout the 4 years I gained HNC in Mechanical Engineering at Carlisle, then progressed to achieve Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering at Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Towards the end of this spell I progressed from design draughtsman to part-time CAD administrator on UNIX which gave me the sparkle to enter into support and training.

Next stop was to work for a small national company offering the training and support of the CAD system named as CATIA. 3D modelling on Microsoft Windows and UNIX.

After a short spell at this business I gained experience in public speaking and training. Gained confidence in this field. Prior to joining it was clear I had to enjoy driving – which I do and still do.

On the driving note, the drink-drive limit is getting tighter nowadays and the introduction of the smart-phone has introduced ban on using phones whilst driving. So if you ever see me using phone whilst driving please stop me.

Through the 2 jobs I have gained experience on various levels.

After a 3-4 year stunt in the CAD consultancy business including failure at introducing a new system into the UK market-place I decided to kick-start my own business. Coming from a farming background I am not sared to doing the hours.

Here was born LOGAN-it, my IT consultancy business.

Next objective is to monetize social media and apply to customers to increase turn-over and continue using my services.

Stay connected for the next post – How to Create a Twitter Account.