Tamara Sakagawa claims I made the follow points during a workshop on social media. I’ll take her word for it as I don’t remember the workshop at all. I think I was channeling someone else. Anyway, the workshop was for Dixieland Community Redevelopment Area and USFPoly was nice enough to loan a lab. Not that I was there, mind you.

1. You are your brand and you can (and should) control your image on the Web.
2. Keep your website current, the more often you update your site, the better your Google rank.
3. Blogs are currently good ways to get higher up in Google searches- Use www.wordpress.com- you can “play” with a dummy site.
4. However, blogs, comments and forums are old skool- Social Media is new skool – FOR NOW.
5. “Social media is about starting conversations.”
6. Use Social Media (Internet-based tech based on user participation and user-generated content) to see WHAT and WHO people are talking about.
7. Sites like twitter.com and yelp.com are “searchable” for information about people, businesses and topics of interest.
8. As a Social Media user, know your audience- write to your audience. Talk about things you want them to know.
9. Twitter is broadcasting AND narrow-casting. Anyone can see your tweets (public timeline) a select group can see what you tweet immediately (followers).
10. AS A RESULT, keep your business tweets and your personal tweets separate – don’t tweet about things that you wouldn’t pay for in an ad.**
11. Find the hashtag # (keywords) for your industry or location (hashtags.org) and use it in your tweets in order to make sure you can be found in searches.
12. Example: #lkld is used for Lakeland and #corn is used for, well, corn.
13. Use Twitter-management systems like www.Hootsuite.com or www.tweetdeck.com to make this less complicated.
14. Hootsuite saves keyword searches and allows for “timed” tweets (load ‘em all up on the first of the month and then let ‘er rip).
15. Tweetdeck allows followers to be separated by groups, clusters real-time searches and shows direct messages- all on the same screen.
16. Facebook pages and groups are great for sharing information- not for local marketing.
17. Use FB for communicating with friends; FB pages for your business should be for fun.
18. Don’t be afraid to show your personality in your tweets.
19. When you start: follow the people you trust and follow who they follow.
20. Try to use your real name: http://ow.ly/4wCX

** — Unless you are your business, but I still prefer separate accounts for personal and business use.

PS: If you like any of these, note that Tamara improved what I said. If you disagree with any, she quoted those accurately.

Photo by Tom Hagerty