Howto | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

Yammer 101: Getting Started with Yammer

I’ve previously written about Yammer and how I think it has some neat potential applications. I’m actually writing this post to show some work colleagues how to get started with Yammer and how it could practically help in

Limiting the mass e-mails that tend to overwhelm our inboxes,
Ensuring that we are included in conversations that interest us, and
Making non-confidential information that could help anyone in the organization easily available to everyone in the organization, instead of having it locked in the inboxes of a few.

Here’s a slideshow that takes you through the process, step-by-step, of joining (or creating) your company’s Yammer network.

I had originally planned for this to include a narration track (as you see in this video I shot in the SMUG Annex last night), but I think the slides themselves are fairly self-explanatory.

As we get into some of the subsequent courses in the Yammer curriculum, there will definitely be a place for screencasts and slidescasts. But for now, here are your…

Assignments:

Create or join your work-based Yammer network.
Share your questions or comments about Yammer in the comments below, so they can be addressed in future courses.

Thanks to my colleague, Bob Nellis, for serving as the guinea pig and allowing me to capture screen shots of his sign-up process.

Blogging 112: Pages vs. Posts

The great thing about blogs is that the newest and freshest material is always right at the top.

And the bad thing about blogs is that the newest material is always right at the top.

So you can write a great post, but over time it gets pushed further away from the front page, accessible only through the monthly archives and via Google.

That’s why Pages are a helpful alternative to Posts.

Pages become the overall high-level structure of your blog. So, for example, on this blog the Pages are

The Curriculum page is the “Parent” page for the Blogging, Core Courses, Facebook, Podcasting and Twitter curricula.

Then each page can have links to posts that have been done over time. So, for example, the Podcasting page has links to courses from Podcasting 101 through 110. These posts were written between March 31, 2008 and July 29, 2008. During that same time, I probably wrote a couple of dozen other posts, and I didn’t write the podcasting posts in numerical order.

By creating the Podcasting page, though, I could bring links to all of the podcasting-related posts together in one place, so that people stumbling upon SMUG (or one of the podcasting posts) can work through the related posts in a sequential manner.

As I write this post (part of the Blogging curriculum), it is Sept. 30, 2008. Soon it will be part of a previous month’s archive, and within a couple of weeks will be off the front page. But several months from now, when someone is wanting to learn all about blogging, she will start at Blogging 101 and work her way through.

Creating Pages is easy. In your WordPress dashboard, click the Write link:

Writing a Post is the default, but if you then click the Page link, you’ll be able to write a Page.

From that point, it’s just like writing a post, except a Page becomes part of your overall navigational structure.

Use Pages with care; once you start them you shouldn’t get rid of them. But if you need to bring order to your blog, Pages are important tools.

10 Steps to Your Own FREE Podcast

A podcast is the perfect vehicle for providing in-depth audio and video information to an interested audience. And not just an “audience,” but a community: if you use a blog to distribute your podcast, listeners can provide feedback through their comments. This post is a recap of Social Media University, Global’s 100-level Podcasting courses, and will take you step-by-step through everything you need to create your own podcast

Best of all, the education is completely FREE. SMUG has no tuition, and all of the tools to create and distribute your podcast used and recommended in these courses are free.

You’ll learn how to:

Subscribe to podcasts for FREE using iTunes
Record your audio files for FREE using Audacity
Use WordPress.com as your FREE server for delivering podcasts (a $20 savings over typical costs, exclusively for SMUG students)
Enhance your podcast feed through Feedburner so you can get traffic and usage data, and so your users can more easily subscribe, and
Get your podcast listed in the major podcast directories like the iTunes Store and Podcast Alley.

You’ll do all of this without spending a penny, but just investing your time, assuming you have access to a computer with a built-in microphone. Then, after you’ve experimented with your own personal podcast, you will have the confidence born of first-hand knowledge and hands-on experience that will enable you to make decisions on how and whether to use podcasting in your work or volunteer organizations. Here are the 10 steps to your free podcast:

Upon completion of these 10 steps, you will receive your non-accredited Associate of Arts in Podcastology and will be added to the SMUG Dean’s List. Then you’ll be ready to explore advanced courses at the 200-level and above, learning about production enhancements like better recording devices, adding music to your podcast without going to jail, conducting interviews remotely through Skype, mixing tracks and adjusting recording levels, and otherwise making your podcast more professional.

Please give your feedback on this 10-step free podcast program, either in the comments below or on the individual courses. We’re always open to suggestions on how we can improve the educational experience.

And if you find the program helpful, please use your blog, Twitter, Facebook — or the buttons below — to share it with your friends and colleagues.

Podcasting 109: Hotter Podcast Feeds through Feedburner

Note: This post is part of the Podcasting curriculum for Social Media University, Global.

In Podcasting 105 through 108 we demonstrated how you can use a WordPress.com blog as a server to create an RSS feed for your podcast, and can subscribe to your podcast by cutting and pasting that feed URL into your iTunes program. But using the native RSS feed from WordPress.com has a couple of disadvantages:

It doesn’t give you feed statistics, so you don’t know how many people are subscribing. That’s fine if you are doing a personal podcast just for fun, but if you’re doing this in a work environment your employer will likely expect better statistics so you can determine whether the podcast is worthwhile.
Cutting and pasting is a little clunky for your users. They have to know how to subscribe manually in iTunes, and it would be a lot better if there was a nice interface to guide them through the process.

“Burning” your feed through Feedburner.com provides solutions to both of those problems, as you will see and hear below:

Homework Assignments:

Go to Feedburner and set up an account. You will be able to use this to burn your RSS feeds for your WordPress.com blog as well (to be described in a future post in the Blogging curriculum), but it all starts from having a Feedburner account (as Toby Palmer now does).
Go back through the earlier courses in the Podcasting curriculum so you can record an audio file and launch your own student podcast. As you will see in Podcasting 105, we have a standing offer for any SMUG student to create a free podcast hosted from the SMUG Podcast Blog (and thereby avoid paying the $20/year additional fee to WordPress.com in order to experiment with your own podcast.)

After you’ve learned how to do a personal podcast, you’ll be ready and confident in your abilities to launch one for your business or non-profit organization. You’ll probably want to spend a little money on better recording equipment, and at that point paying the $20 to be able to podcast from your own blog will be well worth it.

But our goal at SMUG is to let you experiment with all of these tools without spending even a penny of your own money, only investing your time in the on-line education process. So please take advantage of the opportunity and start your own podcast today.