CIMA IT Solutions

Triggering the Expected Results from your Online Efforts.

You are here: Home / Archives for Raul Colon

Keeping Followers Interested With #FollowFriday

by

FollowFriday.com6 recommendations to Unleash the Power Of FollowFriday

If you are just starting on twitter who should you start following? I think everyone new on twitter runs into the same situation. How about if you are a business how do you gain followers?

In my opinion I see the benefit of growing your followers organically. I have seen many companies with new presence on twitter spamming and following as many people on twitter as they can get a hand on. Personally I think they should really focus on earning followers (without spamming), establishing relationships, and keeping those followers.

On twitter I have been a huge advocate for #FollowFriday and the Spanish version of #VivaViernes. The #FollowFriday hashtag was initially created and suggested by @micah on twitter. As you can see the first #FollowFriday Tweet below.

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/micah/status/1124262248″]

For individuals it is a great way to share top people to follow on Twitter. It also gives you the chance to find recommendations from friends who they think deserve your attention. If you actually take those benefits and transfer them to a business account I see many advantages.

Getting back to actually maintaining your users by using #FollowFriday we recommend:

  1. Give a short description of your opinion on a user or what they tweet about. If you also see they are aligned towards efforts that your followers or yourself are an advocate for make sure to mention them.
  2. Opt Out if you are not going to give it your genuine touch. I see many people just creating lists of people but if you really want your followers to feel that you are mentioning them because they mean something to you then you should at least accompany the #FollowFriday with a short description of why you think they should be followed.
  3. Categorize your #FollowFriday. If you want to recommend a list of users who have something in common. Example if you follow a group of Web Designers then you can mention the category small phrase and the users recommended.
  4. Recommend People with High Impact Tweets. If you consider that a certain user is impacting you and might have a high impact with other users this is a user you might want to recommend.
  5. Take care of users who share Helpful Tweets. If you find that you ask a question and one of your users is actually replying with help or assisting other users in your list what better way to be grateful than with a recognition accompanied by a #FollowFriday.
  6. Most Interactive users with your account should be mentioned. I personally created a list of the Top 40 people who I interact with and usually I use that list as a guideline to send out my #FollowFridays

Overall search for the best option of the #FollowFriday to fit your business needs. I constantly switch them up and would recommend you to try or even mix my recommendations.

I also recommend you to visit Followfriday.com (@followfridaycom) which is a great new tool to measure how many #FollowFridays a user has received.

It also gives you a few tools to help you be grateful for the people who mentioned you with the #FollowFriday hashtag.

Are you using #FollowFriday for any business purpose?

How do you use your #FollowFriday?

Any other suggestions on how to keep your users interested?

Other External Related Posts

Conversational Marketing Summit 2010 – New York City

by

CIMA IT Solutions was present at CM (Conversational Marketing) Summit | Marketing in Real Time during June 7-8, 2010 a New York City.

Our co-founder Raul Colon was able to interact with leaders in the Digital Marketing space. For more info on the CM Summit feel free to click the following image or http://cmsummit.com .

Our Pictures from the @CMSummit

How can ISO/IEC 27001 help solve IT Governance issues?

by

Benefits of ISO 27001

The other day I was talking about my plans to give the ISO 27001 Lead Auditor training and someone asked me about the benefits of ISO 27001.

I did give her an overview on my opinion but while browsing on LinkedIn in one of the groups I have joined (CGEIT Network (Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT) I found the following question regarding ISO 27001 by Mark.E.S.Bernard (who I have to Thank for allowing me to use his opinion on ISO 27001).

services_home_diagram

How can ISO/IEC 27001 help solve IT Governance issues?

Has anyone utilized ISO/IEC 27001 to help solve IT Governance issues like Data Governance etc…?

He answered with the following points:

  • Managements commitment to a management system providing governance over information company wide, data governance
  • Clarification of accountability for controls over assets leading to formalization of roles and responsibilities, who needs to be consulted during decisions and actions, who needs to be informed of the results, who needs to conduct the actions
  • Asset inventory allowing the formal identification of information repositories in addition to software, hardware, people, telecommunications and physical property
  • Information classification identifying the categories of information and what controls need to be applied during the course of regular business activities
  • Risk management allowing management to make decisions based on risk to the business and make changes to align risk to business information with that of the Enterprise risk appetite. This includes reporting through the risk treatment plan which feeds directly into the Enterprise Risk Management process
  • Monitoring through regular management meetings and audits staying on top of action plans and addressing any issues for resourcing or capital. This also includes addressing any issues that block progress
  • Continuous improvement allowing management to address quality, which translates into cost savings by supporting and following up on defects in service delivery impacting availability, software, information repositories impacting data integrity and confidentiality enforcing security standards and processes, etc.

On my part agreeing with Mark I have been able to use ISO 27001 to get Management’s commitment. Once you align Governances efforts on internationally accepted standards, frameworks, or guidelines it helps with management’s buy in. Most auditors also feel more comfortable once they see your controls aligned to a Standard like ISO 27001. On the other side it can also create great Road Maps towards improvement. I have been involved in various assessments where a Gap Analysis is made of how an organization aligns to ISO 27001.

Once we get the current statement and understand the process we move into mapping what would be the ideal Future State. Then the key part is establishing goals and milestones in an organized Road Map to get from Current State to Future State.

ISO 27001 works ideally for this kind of situation.

Do you have other ways where you have utilized ISO 27001 in an effective way to start, improve or simply execute on an IT Governance related project?

Hassle Free Embedding of Tweets in Your Blog or Website

by

Twitter MediaPrototype with Many Advantages for your Blog or Website

Every time I create a blog post for the Blogs I participate in (Twitpuerto.com & Noveltica.com) it involves a tedious process of creating an image of the tweet, uploading the image, and then creating a link towards that tweet so others can reference it.

Yesterday while browsing on the web I found this new twitter tool called Blackbird Pie. This tool allows bloggers or website administrators to embed a tweet into their blog posts or articles.

The advantage is that the tweet keeps most of its functionality since the reader will be able to view the user’s profile, picture, click on links within the tweet, and even view hashtags.

Blackbird Pie was developed by Twitter employee Robin Sloan @robinsloan and is available on the company’s media site.

In order to embed tweets into their sites or blogs:

1. Users need to input a tweet’s link into Blackbird Pie.

2. The service creates a line of code that can be embedded into a site.

Twitter was very clear that Blackbird Pie is not a new feature and it’s still a prototype with some usability issues.

I had one usability issue when bringing the code to my twitpuerto.com site since it displayed some unwanted text.

Removing the part of the code that was not working was a lot easier than doing the full manual process.

Although Blackbird Pie is being modified improved I think it is a huge improvement from going through the previous manual process I explained.

UPDATE: There is also a Blackbird WordPress Plugin for those of you who run your blogs in WordPress.

Example of how a Tweet Will Look:

 

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/twittermedia/status/13376445689″]

Other External Posts and Articles:

Can you name any other advantages or improvements to this tool?