Are You A Social Meteorologist? A Conversation with Derek Van Nostran

by on December 1, 2011

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I am the co-host of a weekly podcast called The Bella Buzz with  Desiree Scales, the CEO of Bella Web Design. We have great conversations about topics related to online marketing. I am posting the programs here for the Overflow audience. This is episode 90.

Some listeners of The Bella Buzz podcast might be old enough to remember how interesting it was that a 24/7 all-weather television network appeared on their cable television (1982 btw).  Many questioned whether it would be possible to sustain viewers and maintain an actual business with this format.  The answer became a resounding yes.

Today, the information The Weather Channel distributes has landed on numerous forms of media beyond the coaxial cable systems.  We are delighted to have Vice President of Brand Strategy, Derek Van Nostran, join us to discuss their efforts in using social media to drive their content.

Our timing for having Derek as a guest was quite appropriate as we just had a very early Nor’easter snow storm in New England termed #Snowtober all over Twitter.

The Weather Channel has been receiving some recognition, including a Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) Excalibur Award for their Weather Social project.  Weather Social incorporates the volume of activity and conversation taking place on Twitter, and appears on a segment of the broadcast.  It is literally possible to “view” the progress of a storm front by monitoring the activity of people on the social network.

It takes a lot of technology to parse the volume of data that appears, even when looking at just one single social network like Twitter.  The Weather Channel relied on Wiredset and Trendrr to help them excavate the relevant information among the noise.

Some companies have come to realize that they actually do have a valid social media strategy, many still have not, but for The Weather Channel the strategy clicked when they realized that by incorporating the local nature of weather with the local nature of social media, they could improve their ability to cover a story.  Thus, the birth of millions of “Social Meteorologists!”

The new iPad app is a tremendous upgrade from previous versions, as they came to understand that users wanted to be able to access the basic weather information first, and then drill down into the details in more time.  The full earth view is tremendous!

Thanks for your time Derek!  Looking forward to the continuing evolution of The Weather Channel, integrated in exciting ways into our every day lives.

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Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from iTunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The iTunes Store.

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Partnering Your Business with Twitter; A Conversation with Brent Herd

by on October 13, 2011

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I am the co-host of a weekly podcast called The Bella Buzz with  Desiree Scales, the CEO of Bella Web Design. We have great conversations about topics related to online marketing. I am posting the programs here for the Overflow audience. This is episode 86.

Long time Twitter users Desiree Scales and Joe Magennis speak with Brent Herd, the Director of Southeast Partnerships for Twitter, on this episode of The Bella Buzz podcast.

In the face of feature enhancements by other major social networks, Twitter continues to provide a simple to use platform for communications.  With 140 character limitations and minimal user disruption, the service continues to be a stronghold for messaging and breaking news coverage in particular.

It is possible that many listeners were not aware that Twitter had opened some satellite offices with the intention of helping brands take advantage of the sponsorship opportunities.  Brent opened the Atlanta office in January of 2011 and has dealt directly with some of the major residents of the city such as Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola.

He has gone beyond just a simple sales role and has witnessed first hand how some of these companies are integrating Twitter into their total customer service package.  Delta has their own Social Lab set up with flat screen panels to monitor Twitter activity.  They use the real time information that they are collecting to respond to customers, to be proactive, and even manage connecting traffic. They have  a specific Twitter account @DeltaAssist for these efforts.

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Automattic for the People

by on August 26, 2011

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I am the co-host of a weekly podcast called The Bella Buzz with Desiree Scales, the CEO of Bella Web Design. We have great conversations about topics related to online marketing. I am posting the programs here for the Overflow audience. This is episode 83.

Automattic really is for the people, and we are fortunate to have code wrangler Beau Lebens as a guest on the episode of The Bella Buzz podcast.  Automattic is the company (and I hesitate to call it a company because that seems to diminish their ethos) behind the content management system called WordPress, as well as many other open source projects.

Desiree met Beau during her recent visit to the Microsoft campus.

Beau fills us in on the recent WordCamp gatherings including the event in San Francisco where over 1000 participants gathered to hear about the latest updates, share insights with the community, and work with the newest WordPress users to help them understand how to develop a robust online presence.

Watch the WordPress.tv presentation called the State of the Word from founder Matt Mullenweg. It is his annual summary of the development of the platform.

WordPress is a free, open source, platform that has truly become the standard by which all content management systems are judged (The Bella Buzz & Baseballisms both run WordPress). It has grown into such a powerful presence by allowing its users to submit requests and even code to the project. Operating under a GNU General Public License allows users to modify the platform, which in turn provides others with tested enhancements that can be incorporated into the code base for wider distribution.  This has spawned an entire ecosystem of templates and plugins that work on the platform.

There are two communities of  Wordpress users, and Beau is focused on providing some crossover services. WordPress.com is where users can set up a site that is hosted and managed behind the scenes by the team at Automattic. This means that servers are set up, updates are installed, and it is much easier to use. But it comes with limitations.  The WordPress.org camp is for users looking for more customization and are not worried about servers and backup and domain management.

Beau and his team are introducing Jetpack. This plugin allows the self hosted WordPress.org users to benefit from some of the tremendous features that the WordPress.com community has.  Jetpack brings great stats, hovercards, shortlinks, even the great editor called After the Deadline.

If you have any questions about Jetpack or WordPress in general, take advantage of the growing community of users who are willing to share their knowledge.  Reach out to Desiree if you want to talk about developing your web presence with a WordPress foundation.

You can find Beau at his blog Dented Reality or on Twitter, feel free to mention you heard him on The Bella Buzz.  Thanks Beau for your time!

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Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from iTunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The iTunes Store.

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An Interview With Aimee Larsen Kirkpatrick of The National Cyber Security Alliance

by on June 21, 2011

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I am privileged to produce a couple of podcasts on behalf of the “Facebook for Kids“, WhatsWhat.me.  They are building a kids-only social network, targeting 7 – 13 year olds who are too young for Facebook, but can benefit from participating on social networks.  The protect and educate objectives of What’s What is a truly noble mission.

This is a conversation that I had with the Communications Director for the National Cyber Security Alliance, a strategic partner dedicated to Internet safety through education.

Enjoy the conversation, and please let me know your thoughts.

Stay Safe Online Logo | Befluid.com

In this episode of the What’s News podcast, we are joined by the Communication and Outreach Director for the National Cyber Security Alliance, Aimee Larsen Kirkpatrick. We are very appreciative of Aimee taking the time from her busy schedule to speak about the extraordinary efforts of the NCSA, and about the results of their latest survey.

The NCSA’s mission is “to educate and therefore empower a digital society to use the Internet safely and securely at home, work, and school, protecting the technology individuals’ use, the networks they connect to, and our shared digital assets.”

The organization sees the need for education on the security and protection of our digital assets, but also the need to provide a solid foundation for our children. Kids need to understand how to use this great technology at their disposal, with the end result of producing exemplary digital citizens and workforce contributors. There is a great cultural change required to find the resources, train the teachers and develop the curriculum that is going to help our kids succeed in this new global community.

Teaching safe online behavior cannot be completed delegated to the school systems however, parents are responsible for holding up some part of the bargain.  We discuss this very issue on many episodes of the This is What’s What podcast series, however there are many households in the country that do not have parents who are capable of helping their children navigate these challenging shifts.  The NCSA is helping to provide the tools, lesson plans and teaching materials to integrate into the classroom.

The C-SAVE Program extends beyond providing materials to teachers in the classroom, and reaches out to IT professionals who are acutely aware of the need for preparing our entire population for engaging in online activity. The Cyber Security Awareness Volunteer Education Program establishes that volunteer as a great resource for the community and helps promote corporate responsibility at the grassroots level. [click to continue…]

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The Future of Web Content – Curation Platforms; An Interview with Shareist Founder Scott Jangro

by on June 14, 2011

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I am the co-host of a weekly podcast called The Bella Buzz with Desiree Scales, the CEO of Bella Web Design. We have great conversations about topics related to online marketing. I am posting the programs here for the Overflow audience. This is episode 78.

I strongly believe that the future of content discovery and presentation on the web will be as a result of curation.  A powerful role in our digital futures will be that of the Curators, who will develop strong communities around their topic of expertise.  Digital Content Curation will become a science taught in academic institutions.

Please share your comments!

The Shareist.com Logo | Befluid.comThis week on The Bella Buzz podcast, we talk with the CEO of Mech Media and Founder of Shareist.com, Scott Jangro. Scott has an outstanding reputation in the Affiliate Marketing industry. In 2010 he was honored with the Affiliate Summit Affiliate Marketing Legend Pinnacle Award.

His current efforts are focused on developing a robust curation platform that provides stellar aggregation functionality, with visually appealing content presentation, combined with social features, that advances the evolution of information discovery on the web.

The act of digital content curation is born out of the typical meaning of the word applied to art galleries and museums. A curator will examine and evaluate numerous items for inclusion into a very specific exhibit presentation. Those that are deemed worthy are included, and those that are not are discarded. As applied to the current state of the web, a curator can provide a valuable service in the face of the growing challenge web users face, the exponential growth of the amount of content published on a daily basis. A curator will aggregate and maintain a collection of links to relevant, original content on a specific topic.

As the amount of published web content becomes a staggering sum, web users are finding it more and more difficult to locate the content they are seeking through algorithmic search. It also becomes difficult to distinguish the original source content from the scraped, auto-generated, repackaged article designed to simply generate pageviews. It is an important aspect of the curator’s responsibility to start at the seek and discovery phase, but continue to drill down to the original source of the material.

A well curated presentation of a topic will contain links to original sources of content that have been exposed via a thoughtful and continuous search for relevant information. It will also contain bits of editorial content that the curator has included in order to put the links into context with the rest of the presentation. Why was this included? What is the most relevant portion of the content? .. These types of insights from the curator will help the visitor determine the best content for further exploration. In this digital information era, the topic curator will be as valuable as a skilled reference librarian while providing a preservation service to future explorers by compiling a comprehensive resource on a topic.

A less obvious component of curation comes from the additional social elements that are incorporated into the platform. By allowing user comments and sentiment ratings, the curator can re-examine the inclusion of the content in the topic and use the perpetual feedback loop to improve the quality of the presentation. A curator can select to include or ignore suggestions from the users, but the overall refinement of the topic improves its relevancy over time. This is an advantage to digital curation that is not quite available in offline scenarios. A participatory community develops.
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