Social Media University, Global (SMUG)
Suus Non Ut Difficile • Home of the SMUGgles
As I was writing this post at the Ragan conference at SAS, I noticed a new orange button as part of the “Add media” toolbar.
So naturally I “moused over” to see what it was…
So here is a series of screen shots as I went step-by-step through the five-step process.
Continue reading “Blogging 205: 5 Easy Steps to a Poll on Your Blog”
As I was helping Dad with customizing the blog he and his fellow local Republican activists are starting, I spent some time browsing through the free themes available on WordPress.com. That got me thinking I should give SMUG a facelift, so I experimented with a few themes and settled on Sapphire.
I like it because the links stand out better, in a different color than the surrounding text.
It’s really easy to apply different themes, which is a way to get a new look without paying for the Custom CSS upgrade (and without having to know how to edit CSS!)
I don’t know whether this works or not, so I’m giving it a try. That’s the great thing about a blog: You can experiment and see what works, and then modify your approach based on what you learn. And so that’s why I’m doing this as a SMUG research project, so that later I can add a fully cleaned-up post to either our Mayo Clinic News Blog or Podcast Blog. And by doing this learning in public, hopefully I’ll get some additional ideas from the SMUGgle community. I hope you’ll share those in the comments.
So here’s the issue: Mayo Clinic’s Nicotine Dependence Center has created a series of three Stop Smoking videos, such as this one I’ve embedded below:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ewwzazHfq4]
I created a playlist too, which we’re going to feature for a time at least on the front of our Mayo Clinic YouTube channel.
But I also wanted to see whether that playlist could be embedded within WordPress.com blogs. I tried embedding below using the standard “Add Video” button, but at least in the preview it wasn’t visible.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F65A784F26782AF6]
If you still can’t see it in the space immediately above now that I’ve published it, that means it still didn’t work.
YouTube does have embed codes for its playlists that would work on Blogger or Typepad (and I expect for WordPress blogs that aren’t hosted on WordPress.com). But for security reasons, WordPress.com doesn’t allow Flash widgets on its blogs, because it doesn’t want someone to upload malicious code that could bring down millions of blogs. So your users can’t view the entire playlist unless you embed each video individually.
I would suggest that if you’re on WordPress.com and want to highlight a YouTube playlist, you should embed one of the videos (and probably add some annotations) but then just say something like:
“Check out the whole Mayo Clinic Stop Smoking playlist on YouTube” and have it open in a new window.
YouTube playlists also can be shared directly from within YouTube by e-mail, and individual videos also can be shared through Facebook and MySpace. I guess that probably makes the annotations even more important, because they can include links to the playlist, so people who find one of the videos will also have links to the others.
I also have featured this playlist on the wall of Mayo Clinic’s Facebook page, and then I Tweeted it. I also shared on Facebook by posting it to my personal profile. I suppose I could send an update to Mayo Clinic’s fans on Facebook, but I want to be pretty judicious in how many of those I send.
I have, of course, added the Get Social series of buttons at the bottom of this post so it can be shared easily via Facebook, StumbleUpon and other networking sites. I suppose that in the post I do on the News Blog, adding these would be a good way to spread the word.
Even though we don’t have our own sports teams (which helps us keep tuition down!), Social Media University Global still needs a nickname for our student body. Referring to the whole bunch as “SMUG students” has an unfortunate connotation, but until a few weeks ago it was the best I could do.
Then, in a comment on this post, Jim Streed suggested “SMUGgles” as the collective shorthand designation. For those who haven’t read the Harry Potter books, it’s a take-off on J.K. Rowling’s name for ordinary mortals, Muggles: those who lack magical powers.
And while “muggles” is sometimes used pejoratively by Harry’s peers, SMUGgles is a label we should all wear proudly. It reinforces one of the founding principles of our institution:
Everything you see here is accomplished through free or ridiculously inexpensive services like YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and WordPress.com, and with no professional IT support. And with SMUG you can work through the learning process step by step, until you feel confident using these tools in your organization.
But having chosen SMUGgle as our “team name,” that still left us with one problem. We all can picture a Cardinal, or a Blue Jay, or a Viking, but what does a SMUGgle look like? What could be our school mascot?
For now, we’re going with something that bears an eerie resemblance to the “I just joined Facebook” avatar that represents all of us on that social networking platform until we upload a picture. Somehow that seems appropriate, because it shows that SMUG is not only open to newbs, it’s intended for beginners.
But with that, I also want to renew the call for those, newb or not, who have artistic abilities and would like to design a new masthead and logo for SMUG. It would be great to have an official seal that incorporates our Latin motto, Suus Non Ut Diffucile, and if we could get an original drawing for the SMUGgle mascot, that would be fantastic, too.
If the Obama campaign can have an official seal complete with a Latin motto, why not SMUG? To borrow a phrase, “Yes, we can!”
I promise that once we select a SMUG seal, we’ll use it a lot longer than Obama did.
Long-time SMUGgles will note something new at the bottom of each new post (and I will be adding these retroactively as I am able.) It looks like this:
This social sharing toolbar lets readers quickly and easily share interesting posts quickly and easily with specific friends or with the wider Web, through Facebook, Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Blinklist, Ma.gnolia.com, Technorati, Furl and Newsvine.
So if you see something you want to share, like the 10 Steps to Your Own FREE Podcast post (which is featured in the screencast below) or this podcast on Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), it’s easy to spread the word.
And it’s easy for you as a blogger to add these buttons to make your content easy to share. The screencast below takes you through the process of adding the buttons a post and also using the buttons to share.
But before we do that, I want to take a moment to thank Jan from the Typepad vs. WordPress blog (who will soon debut as a SMUG visiting professor) for sharing how to add this functionality. Because WordPress.com doesn’t allow import of Flash-based widgets, I had thought it was impossible to have these social sharing buttons on my posts. Another friend, Monty, calls WordPress.com “Digg-proof” and I think that’s why.
But no more. I saw these buttons on Jan’s blog (which is on WordPress.com) and asked how it was done. Jan sent the link to where I could download the GetSocial program, along with a tutorial.
But I thought a show-and-tell screencast would be simpler, so here it is:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCnVpj6XCYs]