FastcoCreate::  Fast Company, the magazine, source for all things creativity, culture, and commerce. You’ll find features on truly creative business ventures, interviews, or maybe even what’s “next” in tech innovation.

HTML and CSS Handbook :: A brilliant, beautiful, and simple way to learn code. I have been looking for something this aesthetically pleasing to help with my journey into coding. All other sites or resources just look like gibberish to me. But this handbook looks like something my visual learning brain can comprehend.

New York Times Style Magazine :: The digital Style magazine of the New York Times. Simple. Elegant. Expansive. Your guide to all things new and beautiful.

Art of Manliness:: A men’s interest and lifestyle blog dedicated to reviving the truly lost art of manliness. Come on guys, time to make being a gentleman sexy again.

The Fancy :: Another pinterest of sorts. “For those that take shopping serious.” The fancy  lets people from all over the world create lists and showcase all their favorite products.

Gentlemint :: The pinterest for men. A place to discover and share interesting links, images, and “boards” for men.

2nd Story Wood :: These guys are here in Charlotte, and really creating a beautiful product. They take aged and imperfect pieces of wood and give them a “2nd story.” Rather than discard when the first story has come to an end, they reclaim their history and prepare it for a 2nd story to be determined.  Everything is custom and no two pieces are exactly the same. A unique and storied quality.

Alright, those are mine. Now, show me yours!

I’ve been scouring the web all week, so you don’t have to. Here’s a little list of the top 7 sites I found useful and engaging…for your Saturday viewing pleasure.

Yasiv.com :: Yasiv is a visual recommendation service that helps people choose the right product from Amazon’s catalog. Whether it’s a book, a sport, or a computer – Yasiv will discover anything related to that topic that is for sale on Amazon. Try it with a book first. Type in Trust Agents and discover all the books that are related/similar to that one.

Foundation :: This is a project started by Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com, Investor in anything cool you’re using on the internet these days. These are a series of videos with entrepreneurs of some of todays popular start ups. Interviews with the Founder of Instagram, Twitter,  Ustream, Foursquare, Fab, and about.me to name a few. If you’re like me and intrigued by other entrepreneurs and how they got their start, then you’ll love this site.

Geochirp :: Alright social media friends. If you haven’t found this site, get ready to have some fun. GeoChirp helps you search for people Twittering for specific things in a specific area. Want to see who all is talking about Coffee within a 20 miles of radius of you, or from where ever you choose? This will show you, in a clean user friendly site. Quite lovely.

Storify :: Most of you have probably heard of Storify already, but since I have been absent from the 7site Saturday’s as of lately, I thought I would include it this week. It’s too damn cool not to include. Storify help’s users tell stories by curating social media content. You can track stories through hashtags, keywords, links, pictures, videos, blogs, you name it, you can track it and create a “story board” of sorts. Tracking all the quotes, interactions, reviews about your conference, business, or services? Create a storify board and share it with the world.

Bryan Scott Photography :: I may be a bit biased, as Bryan is one of my best friends and I’m featured on his site…BUT, I honestly believe he is one of the best, relatively, undiscovered talents in the photography industry these days. It’s just a matter of time before you see his work on album and book covers, galleries, magazines, and elsewhere. Follow along as he continues to build this site out.

Fab.com :: Features daily design and inspirations and sales at up to 70% off its original prices. The goods that are being sold on Fab are always incredible and always worth looking at. I could easily go broke from this site. I love their emails, as well. The emails resemble the site so much, that i’m now clicking on the sale that I am interested in seeing, which a success for them, in my opinion.

Nerd Valentine :: In the spirit, and the week of Valentines, I give you the best site to discover incredible gift ideas for the Valentines Nerd in your life! Enjoy.

Alright, those are mine. Now, show me yours!

This is Part II of the 10 Social Media Lessons I’ve learned over the past 2 and a half years while working in the “industry” of social media. I recently gave a talk on this topic at an event called Dream Year, as a result, I’ve decided to share these 10 items here. It is my hope that you find them of value to your social media efforts.

Part I of this post can be found here.

6. BLOG – IF YOU DON’T KNOW A TOPIC, START BLOGGING ABOUT IT
Once I started blogging, I started to learn more about the strategy of social media. It forced me to learn more on the topics I wanted to help businesses with. I didn’t know a tremendous amount about social media campaigns, metrics, driving traffic, or any of the other “requirements” of the job. So I began to learn, first by occupying social media spaces, then by blogging about what I was learning.

Oh, and I’ve found it helpful to use a good wordpress theme. You know, one of those you actually have to pay for. It’s helped my Google rankings, as well as, my traffic, quite significantly. I am currently using Standard Theme.

7. FOLLOW A VARIETY OF PEOPLE TO LEARN FROM
Don’t just follow your industries experts. Follow other industry experts, follow different types of authors, organizations, or entertainers to learn what they do successfully. Whether they are generating awareness, engagement, or actually selling product well, follow them. Learn from them.

8. SPEND TIME ON DIFFERENT SITES
When I really got curious about social media/digital strategy I began to read heaps and heaps of blogs. Blogs on social media, blogs on marketing, content development, case studies, anything that I thought I could learn from. Today, I still read as many blogs as possible. I enjoy learning from others. Matter of fact I was inspired by something two different fashion leaders recently did, that I look forward to trying out with one of my clients. Take notice of social media wins outside of what your doing. How can you create something similar to reach your people?

9. MAKE USE OF THE TOOLS
Sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube all have lots of resources built right in them. Are you making the best use of those? Facebook has some incredible apps that you could start using today. Foursquare offers some great features to start leaving your footprint all over your city and anywhere you occupy. Are you using them?

10. BUILD SOCIAL INTO EVERYTHING YOU ARE DOING
You should be searching and including hashtags, people’s @name whenever possible, and especially on anything you create, whether it be digital or printed material. Don’t be afraid to ask for the follow in your online and offline presence. Sometimes, if people feel the want to be engaged, they’ll make the commitment.

Social Media allows anyone the chance to become a thought leader. Take the opportunity to deliver quality content, consistently.

What lessons have you learned throughout your use of social media? Any that I have left out?

Over the past two and a half years, I have, in some form or fashion, worked as a social media manager/digital strategist. Over that time I feel as if I have learned a few lessons that others might find of value. Recently, at a conference called Dream Year, I was asked to share 10 lessons. They’re not the end all be all, but they’ve certainly helped me along the way, as I have developed campaigns, implemented strategy, or starting a community from scratch.

1) PATIENCE – EXPECT IT TO TAKE TIME
Don’t expect to be an instant success. If you go into your social media efforts with the understanding that it may take nearly a year to grow a strong community, then you will most likely continue growing your brand’s presence. I’ve seen too many people give up, simply because “it didn’t take off.” 2 months is not enough time to grow a community and develop influence, to whatever scale that may look like. It’s going to feel awkward, much like growing your hair out. Once you get past that awkward phase, then you’ll see what your presence can truly become.

2) KNOW YOUR INTENTIONS
I tend to always start here when developing a strategy. I like to identify at least three things that make your “brand” unique. If we can identify three unique factors about your “brand” then we can develop diverse content all day long.
It’s also important to know who you have the opportunity to influence. Who will be the brand champions that will have the most reach to spread your message? Who will they influence? Think beyond your immediate followers.

3) DEVELOP YOUR APPROACH
What is it that you can deliver to your community? What can you deliver more passionately or effectively? What are you willing to deliver? You don’t have to be an expert to start talking. Just be yourself, speak from an authentic passion. Let your personality come through in your social media presence.

4) WHERE WILL YOU SPEND YOUR TIME?
Experiment with different networks, discover where you community is the most engaged and active. For me, it’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest.
Where you decide to spend your time, decide to Measure and Monitor what’s happening. What type of content gets the most interaction? Deliver more of that.

5) ENGAGE, ENGAGE, ENGAGE
This might be the most crucial of all the steps. Be there. Be involved. Engage your friends, fans, followers, or whomever is reaching out to you. As you engage online, make every effort to connect offline. Ask those you’re learning from, those that inspire you, or influence you, to get coffee. Actually take the time to meet people. My friend Ben makes a good point in saying “Everywhere you go, you should try to meet up with someone.” Use twitter to discover new people and ask to connect. It’s amazing the people you’ll meet through social media.

Part II coming tomorrow. Until then….
What are your top social media lessons?

I’ve been scouring the web all week, so you don’t have to. Here’s a little list of the top 7 sites I found useful and engaging…for your Saturday viewing pleasure.

Destroyed.Moby :: Pardon the pun, but Moby destroyed it with this one. They collected pictures through Instagram, using their open API, to create a “digital album.” What makes this album so different, is how interactive it is. Open the site, click on a city, and you’ll see pictures that were taken in those cities. They tracked the pictures using the hashtag #Destroyed.

Let me Google That For You :: You know those people that prefer to ask you a question, rather than Google it for themselves? Yeah, this site was created for you, to help them. Next time someone asks you a question, whether it be through social media, email, or IM, go to LMGTFY, type in the question and send them the link to the Google search. Such snarky fun.

10 Twitter Tools :: It seems everyone has a new platform they’re rolling out to “simplify social media.” Occasionally I’ll find some that I find extremely useful. In this post, there are 10 listed, but honestly, I’ve used two of them. Numbers 4 & 5. Both helpful websites. I chose to post the entire blog in hopes that some of you may find these other tools useful.

Influencers Film :: Watch this film. Learn something about Creativity. Find some inspiration. It’s Saturday, you can take some extra time to watch a documentary.

Wunderkit :: “Wunderkit is a place that lets you organize and accomplish all of life’s projects, however big or small they are, with the help of your friends, family and colleagues.” This is an incredibly slick app, accompanied by an equally slick web interface for managing tasks, projects, ideas, or anything of that nature. The program allows you to work with a team, keep notes, or share socially, allowing all things to be seen and tracked. 

Ted Talk : How Great Leaders Inspire Action  :: In all the Ted Talks I’ve watched, I’ve never been more inspired to take notes and tweet what I was taking in. Simon Sanek lays it out there and gives a great talk on working from the “Why we do things” instead of the “What we are doing.” Incredible.

Audiobulb :: This. Is. Genius. Ok…maybe not Einstein genius, but you’ll have to admit, after seeing it, it’s pretty damn clever. Light bulbs, that are also speakers. But not just any speakers, speakers that can sync with your iPhone, iPod, or iPad. GIMME!

Alright, those are mine. Now, show me yours!

The church, however, is trying to figure this out. The social media aspect of it, that is. In my opinion, one church hasn’t been able to step up and become the thought leader in this space. I’m waiting for it to happen. Any day now. I see a few that are primed to make it happen, they’re just at the Tipping Point.

We need more leadership in this space.

Churches need to know how to reach their current church community and the city they occupy. How to reach people that don’t attend a church, how to recruit more volunteers using social media, or to show churches how social media can increase involvement in initiatives outside of the church and for their live worship experiences.

As soon as one Church decides it will lead the way, the opportunity will be provided to influence others. Leading the way is not a communication director or church’s selfish gain or as a popularity contest, but it’s for the simple reason of teaching other churches how to reach more people. Churches CAN unite under the medium of social media. Cities can be reached through social media, people can be activated into opportunities outside of the church, making your city a better place as a result of your social media efforts!

The church as a whole could be vastly impacted if a few churches would start making the investment in that Online Communications position, providing the right resources, talent, time, energy, and materials that are needed to improve in that space.

Never has the opportunity been greater to reach your target audience, the people you live life around every single day. The people you worship with every single sunday.

Who will step up and lead the charge? Who will set the pace for other churches? Who will be the thought leader that shows how to effectively reach a community through Social Media?

The ROI of Social Media for the Church is a topic that not many have dared to touch within Church Communications. Perhaps, this is because of its difficulty to define, but ROI in social media needs to be discussed and discovered. It needs to be discussed on a strategic level, before you even establish your presence in social media. The Objectives of your strategy also need to be discovered before your ROI can be established.

The ROI of social media for the church is going to be a bit more unique than that of a business, such as, Dell or Ford. There’s not exactly a tangible product being sold through the church and there are not many opportunities for customer service support.

So, how exactly do you define the ROI of social media for the church?

It’s important to understand that you must first set measurable goals. I would say the majority of most churches are guilty when it comes to setting measurable goals and tracking the results of those goals. A good place to start is by defining the overall objectives of the church (I usually like to know at least 3 main objectives/priorities of the church I’m working with) and then discover the approach of transcribing those into the appropriate social media spaces. Define what you will be measuring, so that, you can discover if you are successul or not. By knowing the objectives of the church, this will allow you to begin to define the ROI of your presence and efforts.

What exactly are key performance indicators to measure ROI for your church?

Increase of Visitors to a Worship Experience – Through your social media efforts you can effectively grow your weekly amount of visitors. How? Run searches. Look for the people who are asking about churches in your area. Follow influencers in your community and engage in conversation with them. Host social events. As the Social Media Manager attend some tweetups or meetups in your area. I have seen people start to attend a church simply because I was engaging with them on Twitter.

Measure along these lines: The amount of visitors that begin attending should increase 20% with an increase of 8% coming from social media.

Increase in Membership - Social Media can cause a visitor to feel loyal within the  first week or two of a visit, rather than after months of visiting. By following and reaching out to them you’re showing you truly care about them. By simply asking a question or saying “thanks for visiting” you are making an extra, unexpected contact, that could possibly boost their feelings and loyalty towards you. They no longer have to visit for a month before feeling engaged or connected. This can happen within the first week – thanks to social media, emails, etc.

Measure along these lines: We want to see a 12% increase in membership in the 3rd Quarter, of that 12%, 5% should state Social Media was influential in their decision.

Increase Online Giving – This is the part of ROI the executive team really gets into. If you are the social strategist and you start increasing the online giving, I guarantee you will get instant buy-in from the leadership, as well as, credibility! This is one of the few opportunities you have to measure ROI just like any business would – by the money that is coming in as a result of your efforts. The same could be said for increasing Campaign Funding.

Measure along these lines: 20% increase in giving online, with 12% increase coming from Social Media traffic.

Increased Volunteering - A large part of a church’s success is dependent upon its volunteers. The thriving churches have masses of volunteers activated to carry out the church’s mission every week. Those same churches are always looking to increase volunteers on a weekly basis. Once again, you start to increase volunteering and you get credibility.

Measure along these lines: Through traffic driven to your volunteer sign-up page, you should see an increase of 5% new volunteers obtained in upcoming quarter.

Increase Reach in Your Community: The great thing about social media is that, your church can now extend its reach beyond the stage. You now have the ability to reach into your surrounding city. Your message is one that your community wants to help spread. They are waiting for content to share. Remember, thousands of enthusiastic members can cover far more ground in a much quicker time.

Measure along these lines: Our facebook presence which currently has 4, 336 Likes, should grow to a total of 6, 200 with an average of 23 comments per post within 6 months.

Develop Deeper Relationships: Churches are emotional organizations that require a buy-in of your demographic’s emotions. No member wants to feel like just another number. People want to fall in love with your church. By helping your members develop deeper relationship you will ultimate increase trust, mindshare, and loyalty to the brand. Yielding an increase in positive public sentiment. and empowering them to make a difference.

Measure along these lines: The positive mentions about Your Church should increase by 35% through Twitter alone. The positive mentions should out weigh the negative by a ratio of 10:1. RT’s of the churches and/or Pastors posts should increase by 18%.

How has your church measured the ROI of your social media efforts? What else could be added to this list?

Well, that is, with the exception of one particular table. This family decided to bring in Wendy’s for their not so small children. Yes, Wendy’s, the drive-thru chain. I’m not a chef, but I could imagine that this is the highest form of belittlement that could be offered. To say to the chef, “We know you have something good here, but we don’t care enough to give it to our kids.”

This insult spun off a couple different thoughts and feelings I had been contemplating regarding Social Media. It has to do with content. Not just content creation, but content sharing.

As Social Media Performers (aka “specialists”) I think it is time we stop bringing our “Wendy’s” content into different “restaurants.” It’s time we start showing all these other spaces the respect they deserve by giving them their own selections, so to say. Let me break that down for you.

It’s time to stop using Facebook to post to Twitter and Twitter to post to Facebook.

There I said it.

I’ll explain this in typical four-point fashion:

It’s Not Personal - It’s like the family that brought the food from Wendy’s into a restaurant just to enjoy that restaurant’s space. Or perhaps dumping content from one space to another just because your friends are there. Where ever you are, be all there.

When I see your post and it’s not even a complete post, because of the fb.com link and the 140 character max, I feel like you are giving me your second best in my number one channel for information, resources, and connections. I don’t like your second best.

Confusion – Distraction – Retraction - Obviously, there are millions more users on Facebook than on Twitter. When those Facebook users that aren’t on Twitter are seeing your posts including “RT: @name #hashtag @friendsname MT“, you are doing nothing more than confusing them with your posts, distracting them from future posts, and causing them to retract from following or engaging with you. There is going to come a time where you will need your followers to read a post. And it will have been too late.

Inappropriate Duplication - I remember my friend, Phillip, calling me out one day on Twitter for something I had posted on Facebook (we’re friends in both spaces). I had posted something about my Twitter followers specifically (and at that time had the two connected) and it went to my Facebook page. The response was something along the lines of “This is a great reason to not have Twitter and Facebook connected.” I immediately disconnected the two. He was right.

Different Purposes in Different Spaces – I have heard it said that “Twitter is for meeting people and Facebook for the people you already know.” If that is the truth then you would most likely speak differently to someone you already know, than to someone you don’t know. And if that is the truth, then why would you not treat your content the same way? You could be introducing your blog, website, or business for the first time on Twitter at any given day. If that post you are sharing doesn’t capture them because it is an incomplete post with a fb.com link in it, do you think they will actually engage? Doubtful.

What are you thoughts on linking your social media accounts?

I understand this blog may not be for all of you. Some of you are casual, for-fun, social media users. In that case, your occasional posts on both sites is causing no harm. This is more for those that “get it.”

My wife and I do a lot of traveling, if you follow us on Twitter or Facebook you’ve probably seen that. And if you do follow us in those spaces, you’ve seen that we hashtag all our trips. You’ve probably seen us tweet things like #Floridacation, #InTheHills, #InTheYahd, or most recently #74andSunny. Yes, we are the quintessential social media nerd couple and we make no apologies for it. It’s fun. And it serves a purpose.

A hashtag, according to Twitter, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages.

Here’s a couple reasons why we hashtag our trips, along with a couple thoughts on why you should use and engage hashtags for your business, brand, or organization.

Track conversations – A hashtag is an amazingly simple way to search through all the posts that have been generated using a particular hashtag. We like to hashtag our posts, check-ins, and pictures that we’ve posted while traveling to retrace our steps and places visited. It’s a great way for an organization to stay tuned in to what people are saying about you, as long as their using the hashtag you’re tracking.

Archive posts – The last few trips we’ve taken I’ve used either Twapper Keeper or Storify to save all the posts for future reference. If your diligent with your hashtag you can consistently go back to one of these sites to save your conversations. Helpful for those of you who are monitoring what people are saying about your brand and not using a paid service to do so.

Host a chat around a hashtag – Yes, you can host chats in Twitter around a hashtag. It’s simple really. Post your questions and conversations as you normally would, but include your hashtag in all those posts. Encourage your followers to save the hashtag search in their Twitter client. This will allow them to easily follow along and engage. Jumping into a Twitter chat is a great way to find and follow people who are talking about similar interests. As you engage and interact in these chats, you’ll also find that your follower count will begin to increase.

Simple Searching – A hashtag was created to categorize Tweets. To categorize something is to group it. You can find items when they’re grouped together. See how that works? Your brand, your product, your church series or even your event should be hashtagged. It allows others to search what people are saying about you, it allows you to track, and others to jump in the conversation. It all comes back full circle with the hashtag!

For the Fun of it – Some might say the hashtag is being abused by people hashtagging random thoughts or full sentences. I don’t think there is anything wrong with it. The #sarcasm hashtag gets used quite a bit, even when it doesn’t need to be. The #IJustUsedAHashtagBecauseItsARandomThought Hashtag gets used quite a bit as well. It’s ok. Use them up, I don’t think those hashtags are going to be used for true searches anyway. Social media should be about the fun, so if you enjoy a  128 character hashtag’s, go for it. Just don’t expect us to try and read it!

To own a hashtag is to own a conversation, to follow that conversation, engage in that conversation, and to keep that conversation. When you own and monitor a conversation, the discoveries you can make about your community are priceless.

What do you think about hashtags? How do you use them? Have you followed our trips hashtags?