There’s so much social media going around that it’s hard to know which trends are worth spending your time on and which ones will fade away before you can say Google Wave. (I just got my good-bye to Google Wave letter this morning). Google+ is taking the world by storm, and this one looks like it will stay.

I love social media, but it’s just so hard to stay current and connected on all platforms. I told myself that I wasn’t going to invest too much time in it until Google+ started supporting business pages. Well they have, so I’ve been having a good time trying to figure it all out. Business pages are a lot like fan pages on facebook, but there are some important differences.

Only one person can be an administrator of a Google+ page. Facebook allows for multiple administrators. That means that unless you’re willing to give out your gmail password to the person that want to administer the page for you, you have to do all the posting to the page yourself. This can be a real bummer for larger companies that have multiple people running their social media campaigns. On the other hand, that means when people like Guy Kawasaki post something on Google+, it’s probably actually him.

There is no way to schedule posts on Google+. Facebook and twitter allow you to use tools like Hootsuite to schedule posts. Not so with Google+. Everything has to be done manually. To be successful with it and engaging, you need to log in to it at least a few times a day. On the other hand, that means when people like Guy Kawasaki posts something on Google+, you know that he’s actually online the same time that you are, and it’s easier to engage him.

There is no way to stylize your page so that it stands out in a crowd. With Twitter you get to play with the background of the page. With facebook, you can have a large logo and use welcome pages to let people know why they should “like” you. At least for now, every page on Google+ looks basically the same. You brand it with a square shaped logo, but that’s it.

There are fewer people on Google+ than on Facebook. That said, Google+ is growing in popularity (not like Google Wave) and has done a lot of things right to make it a very successful social media platform. They have taken what’s best in both Facebook and Twitter and have created a really fun platform that has been catching on like wildfire.

• It’s a live feed (twitter)
• You can add people to your circles (follow people) even if they don’t friend you (twitter)
• You can have posts that are longer then 140 characters (facebook)
• You can share pictures and videos without needing to open a new browser window (facebook)

Circles is another brilliant thing that Google+ has that facebook seems like it’s experimenting with now. By adding people to circles, you can share content that is relevant to them and not to others. In my personal Google+ account, I have circles for geeks and for anipals. I share my geekier posting with the geeks and the cute cat videos and animal welfare articles with my anipals. It’s great because I don’t feel like I’m spamming the wrong group with information that they could care less about.

I have a page for The Pet Wiki. On that, I share everything publicly. I figure that if you decide to add The Pet Wiki to your circles, you must be expecting to get pet stuff, otherwise you wouldn’t have added it to your circles in the first place. Another good reason to share things publicly is that the public posts get indexed by Google. Who couldn’t use some SEO help? I’ve seen some of my Google+ posts show up in search results. Not the pages that the posts point to, but the Google+ pages. That’s reason enough to be on Google+.

It seems like there’s a bit of mayhem going on with Google+ pages. As far as strategy goes for getting people to find your page, there’s a few ways to do it. Pages can’t put people into their circles, but they can put other pages into them. Find pages that fit your niche and add them. Share their stuff. Comment. Interact. People who have those pages in their circles will see you too. Write good comments, and you may get noticed by others and those others will add you to their circles as well.

Make sure to add people following you into your circles. If you don’t they won’t show up in your stream and you have no way to interact with them. No one wants to be in a one sided conversation. That’s not what social media is about.

Make sure to let other people know about your Google+ page. If you have a following on twitter and/or facebook, let them know that you now have a Google+ page too. Some may not have made the move to Google+, but others may have. It’s a good idea to share the information.

Another good way is to display a link to your Google+ page on your website. The +1 has been around for a while and a lot of people have started adding that to their sites. Now is the time to put a link to your Google+ page as well. I had fun adding it to the skin of The Pet Wiki. I’m very pleased with how it came out.

I would say that Google is Google and you know that it’s going to be big, but on the day that they announced the death of Google Wave, that just seems silly. This is different. With Google+ they didn’t try to create something new. The took existing platforms, copied them and made them better. I have totally joined the Google+ bandwagon. I hope to see you there!

Check it out. I’ve started a company called Managing Greatness. Well, my husband, Gil, officially started the company. We’re doing all the things I’ve been doing until now, but we’re going to be doing it better now cause there’s both of us. We help people develop a web strategy, analyze sites to promote better SEO and help people create a community around their content. It’s wonderfully fun work, and it’s even more fun that I get to do it with Gil.

A lot of people have asked me (and probably him too) isn’t it just too much time to spend with your spouse? Aren’t you scared that you’re going to kill each other? I have to say that it really hasn’t been a problem. We’ve done this a few times before. Many, many years ago (more year ago than I’d like to admit) we worked together on technical writing projects (don’t worry, he did the writing and this dyslexic did the technical drawings). We’ve also done a few programming projects for other people in the past. Our most recent venture together was the 10 years that we both worked at Answers.com. We’re really lucky, we have always been able to encourage and push each other to do better.

The first week of working together was a bit scary. I had been working in my office, all by myself, and all of a sudden I needed to share again. What made it even harder is that Gil’s desk hadn’t arrived yet, so we were squished together, without even enough room to stretch our arms. That’s a bit too close, even for us. The office is now completely set up and we have found our groove again.

It’s so wonderful for us to be working together again. I was good alone (if I may say so myself), but together, we really do great things.

I’ve been lucky enough to go to quite a few conferences in the past few years. With each I learn something new. I’ve been to SEO, social media, wiki and technology conferences (I know, I’m a big geek), but BlogPaws was my first blogging conference. What made it all the more interesting is that it was the first conference that The Pet Wiki sponsored.

This might not sound like a big deal to most people, but for me it sure was. It meant that I needed to set up a 6 foot long table. I had never done that before. I don’t have a table cloth with a fancy logo just lying around to throw over a table, like a lot of the other sponsors did (they had obviously done this before). I had to get inventive.

Luckily I was traveling with my family. That’s right, I didn’t come from home, I came directly from a family vacation in Orlando (which was great, by the way). Everything that I needed to do for the conference I had to do on site. It was a bit nerve racking, but I luckily have the most supportive family EVER. They helped me come up with ideas for making the table fun and inviting. I am very thankful to them for helping me out. We pooled our resources and came up with something to be proud of.

The first thing we did was plan a bit ahead. I knew that I wanted to give stuff out at the conference. Since The Pet Wiki is an information and community site, I figured why not give out information? With the help of a very talented graphic artist named Ossa, we had bookmarks printed for “Why Do Dogs Bury Their Bones?” and “How Does Catnip Work?” They came out really nice.

Besides the bookmarks, I felt like doing a bit more. Ossa came through for me again (and on a very tight schedule) to make mini cookbooks for people to take. There are a lot of recipes for pets on the Wiki, so it just seemed like a natural choice. Now I thought of making a poster of what The Pet Wiki is, and how to use it, but instead I decided to put it on the inside cover of the book. I figured that people might pass by and look at the poster for a couple of minutes, but if they were to take the cookbook with them, they’d have the information there to read at their leisure.

I’m not sure if this was a good idea or bad idea, but I just couldn’t help myself. I used half of the book to promote my blog, Vegan Start. Veganism is something that I am passionate about, and I felt that pet people were the type of people that might be interested in alternatives to animal products. It seemed like a natural fit, and I hope that some people walked away with a little more knowledge and some very yummy recipes that they can make for their family.

With the cookbooks and the bookmarks, the table was still way too sparse. My brilliant daughter came up with the idea to let the animals do the talking. She created adorable posters with the animals asking the questions. Luckily she’s had experience in things like this before and knew exactly what to do. We bought poster board and she drew on them, glued them onto foam boards and cut them into interesting shapes to give more life to the table. They came out fabulous.

We also made 5 batches of sugar cookies and the girls decorated them with animal motifs. No two were alike. They came out so cute. At first I wondered why no one was eating them. I finally figured it out. Since it’s a pet conference, people were afraid that they were dog treats. Once we put up a sign that they were for human consumption, they started going. Most of the other tables had food for pets. I think that we were the only ones to have for people, so that threw them off a bit.

And of course we had a computer handy to show off the site. It was so exciting to be able to show off our new homepage. It’s been a work in progress forever. There’s nothing like a deadline for making it happen. I like working with talented people. I enlisted Ari, a very talented webmaster, that I used to work with. It was so nice to have it up and show it off.

I got so much great feedback from the conference. For people that were already familiar with The Pet Wiki, it was so nice to hear that people enjoy using the site. For people that didn’t know about it yet, it was great being able to tell them about it, and about how it can help them.

Besides all that, it was great seeing the people that I know from Facebook, Twitter and blogging. It was a great crowd of wonderful and passionate people. I look forward to doing it again!

On a side note, another great thing that I was able to do was to pick up a painting that I had commissioned from a very talented artist named BZTAT. I’d seen the progress that she’d been making on the painting on Facebook. Seeing it in person for the first time at the conference was amazing. Those pictures on Facebook just didn’t do it justice.

BZTAT spoke at the conference about a project that she is working on to spread awareness of the link between animal abuse and domestic violence. Okey’s Promise has been set up as a public art initiative that will be moved around to six different cities to help make people aware of this connection and what to look for to keep women and children safe. It’s meeting people like BZTAT that makes going to conferences like this so enjoyable and inspiring.

I have been running a MediaWiki based wiki for a couple of years now. When I started The Pet Wiki, I knew that I wanted it to be based on software that was dynamic, robust and being constantly improved. Since it’s the same code that runs Wikipedia, I was sure that I could count on all those things and more.

Wikimania, the Wikipedia conference that people fly from all over the world to attend, was in my backyard this year. At only an hour and a half drive away, how could I not attend? I’m so glad that I did. Being there gave me a glimpse of what makes Wikipedia and the whole wiki movement so great.

The thing that stands out in my mind the most is the passion that people have for making the world a better place. The altruism expressed by the need to create a place to share knowledge throughout the globe is truly amazing. Whether it’s the techies that make sure to keep the servers running and adding new features, to the people in charge of community development, everyone there was unified to one purpose. It was really a beautiful thing to see.

I use Wikipedia. How can you not? It’s such a rich source of information about practically everything. That, plus the robustness of the site makes it practically a one stop shop for all your information needs. The academic community that used to shun the use of Wikipedia has now begun to embrace it. Not only has it become an acceptable reference source in their eyes, some professors have their students write articles as part of assignments. How cool it that?

Not only are the Wikians (the affectionate name that the community calls its members) concerned about spreading knowledge in the languages that they speak, they are trying to build new communities all over the world. Two of the next big things that were spoken about at the conference were mobile and developing Wikipedia versions in southern countries. Many southern countries lack a body of knowledge like Wikipedia. In places where the infrastructure allows, Wikians are trying to develop communities to create great bodies of work.

Mobile is more than about riding the latest trend for Wikians. Mobile is important for them because the only internet access that some people in certain countries have is on their mobile devices. Since it’s the only way for people in these countries to get information, the Wikians want to make sure that these people will be able to access Wikipedia.

As I look at what can be done, and as I look at my own wiki, I know that I can take heart that possibilities are great. With my own, smaller community, I’ve been able to create something great. It wonderful watching it grow and mature. We still have a ways to go, and, like Wikipedia itself, it’s not the type of thing that ever gets finished. It just keeps getting better, day by day.

Being at Wikimania was extremely inspiring. I was able to absorb all the positive energy around me. Although next year it won’t be in my backyard, I still hope to go. It is definitely worth the trip.

I’m involved in running a bunch of Facebook fan pages. Facebook is great, but it has some annoying little idiosyncrasies that take a bit to get used to. One thing I’ve always found annoying is the way that Facebook automatically makes pages for your place of work. It doesn’t matter that your company has a great fan page. There’s no easy way to associate that page with your profile.

There may not be an easy way to do it, there is a complicated one. In one of Social Media Examiner‘s videos, they tell you how to do it. It may be complicated, but it works (even if it only works in firefox). You can only do this if you are the administrator of the page. Here’s how it goes:

1. Install the web developer add-on for Firefox.
2. On Facebook, go to your fan page and click the [Edit Page] button on the top right (this is why you need to be an admin).
3. Your url will now include the id of your page. Copy the number after the “id=”.



4. Go to your profile and click the [Edit Profile] button.
   
5. Click on [Education and Work] in the left hand column of the page.
6. Type in the name of the company in the [Employer] box.
7. If your page employer doesn’t show up, click the [Add] link.
8. On the firefox toolbar, click the Forms menu and click [Display Form Details]. This will make the page look really nasty, but you only need to see it like that for a short while.
9. Paste the id number that you copied in step 4 into the box next to “<input name=”employer_id”>”
10. Turn off the display by clicking the Forms menu and selecting [Display Form Details] again.
11. Fill in the rest of the info in the form and click [Save changes].

That’s it. Easy, right?

If you work in a big enough company, like Coca-Cola, the fan page may show up without you needing to install anything on Firefox. You can just edit your profile when you type in the company (like in step 6) and it will automatically show up.  That didn’t work for me.

I can’t say that this is the prettiest way to update your information, but it works, so don’t knock it. Wouldn’t it be great if Facebook could figure it out for themselves?  I would have thought that Facebook would like to link to pages that have more information than those empty business pages that no one finds useful. Facebook seems to be constantly changing. I’m sure that they’ll get it together one of these days. Facebook certainly keeps us on our toes.

Wow, SXSW (South by South West) Interactive is over. The last 5 days have been so crazy and so amazing. I’ve been to other conferences before, but nothing has ever compared to this. It’s a conference on steroids.

The really funny thing about SXSW is that it’s not really a technology conference. The “Interactive” part was something that was added later. If you look on SXSW’s website, you can see that Interactive is the third tab, after Music and Film. If they are this amazing for tech, I can only image how amazing they are for music and film – the more established parts of the conference.

I’ve been to my share of tech conferences before. You might get one tech rock star for the whole conference, but here it was really hard to pick some of the sessions because they had so many of them, some of the sessions conflicted. I mean, how do you choose between Marissa Mayer and Matt Mullenweg? I went with my husband to the conference (he wrote a great blog post on The Best of SXSW) so at least I was able to compare notes after each session.

I love TED. I have never been able to go to a TED conference, but I’ve watched plenty of videos of speakers from their website. Word of warning: If you start watching videos on TED, you can get sucked in and spend your whole day on the site. They truly have mind expanding stuff on it. But only the elite get accepted to attend a TED conference. It’s actually free if you get accepted.

SXSW is open to everyone. It’s not free, but it’s fairly inexpensive for the magnitude of what it is. I would call it TED for the masses. Where else could you find people like Marissa Mayer (Google), Matt Mullenweg (WordPress), Barry Diller (IAC), Steve Krug (Don’t Make Me Think), Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine.TV), Guy Kawasaki, Sen. Al Franken, Paul Reubens (Actor), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Jared Spool (UIE) and Matt Cutts (Google). That’s just to name a few.

Not only was the Austin Convention Center full, sessions spilled out into the surrounding hotels. There were somewhere in the area of 40 sessions per time slot, making it nearly impossible to choose from. It’s not just big names, it’s also interesting niche sessions.

Of course, sometimes this embarrassment of riches causes problems. I had to pass on my idol Gary Vaynerchuk because there was a panel of Vegan bloggers at the same time. More on Vegans Really Rock on my Vegan blog.

I’m so happy that I just happened to fall upon this one. I’m going to need to come back again next year!

Our current homepage

The Pet Wiki has been doing very nicely over the last couple of months. It’s been really nice to see the growth. I like the way the site looks, but I think that it’s time that we go through a bit of a redesign. I think the site works well in general, but the homepage is a bit lacking.

What is the objective?

Before starting with a redesign, figure out what the goals are. The homepage is the entrance way into your website. Figure out where you want to direct your traffic to go. Don’t just shove a bunch of stuff on there because someone might find it useful. The Pet Wiki’s homepage is sending people all over the place. It’s time to reign it back in.

Make a list of what you got

The first step, before you remove anything, is to make a list of all the stuff you have on the page. You should make sure that you know what is on your page so that when you take it off, nothing gets lost.

Figure out what works

You should already be using Google Analytics. The cool thing about Google Analytics is that they give stats for how users actually use the page. It’s not the same as where the eyeballs go, but you can see where people are clicking. Don’t outsmart your users and try to assume that you know what they want. Check the stats and prioritize correctly.

Get Organized

Once you know what you want to promote and what’s important to your users, organize your page. It should be a blend of what pulls your users into your site as well as the specific area you want to promote. Don’t overdo it. More is not better, more can be just clutter.

These are the basic principles. There’s obviously a lot more to it, but this is a good place to start. I know that I have my work ahead of me!

My friend RivkA died on Friday. She was only 44 years old. She died of cancer. A lot of people die of cancer, but what was really special about RivkA is about how she lived with cancer.

RivkA had a very interesting way of dealing with her illness. She would set up chemotherapy dates with her friends. I know that sounds really strange, but she was even able to take a negative like chemotherapy and turn it into something fun. She would enlist friends to join her for a day of shmoozing at her weekly chemo sessions. It was a great way for her to catch up with friends. It’s so true that our lives are so busy that we just don’t make time for the people that are important to us.

It’s unfortunate that it sometimes takes something like cancer for us to make the time. I know that there are a ton of things that I push off until tomorrow or later or indefinitely. I hope that I can learn from RivkA to do things right away. That there is no time like now.

These dates are the source for the title of her blog, Coffee and Chemo, which went way beyond being a blog about cancer. Instead it was a blog about being a person. RivkA didn’t let the cancer rule her life. It’s not that she didn’t do everything medically possible to treat herself, it’s just that it wasn’t the focus of her life. What was important to her was to be a mom, a daughter, and a wife and to help others with their battles as well.

With this whole vegan thing, I’ve been trying to figure out what kind of person I want to be. What do I want my legacy to be? How do I want to leave the world after I’m gone? What contributions do I want to make to be an inspiration for others to follow?

RivkA, it’s hard to believe that you’re really gone. Everyone you touched is lucky. We will all miss you.

I am in the process of creating a website for the JSPCA. To do that, after researching a bunch of different options, I decided to go with Drupal. Drupal is a very powerful tool for creating CMSs (Content Management Systems) and there are a ton of existing modules you can add to it to get the functionality that you need to make a great site.

In some ways its a lot easier than MediaWiki. There is a very simple interface for turning on and off modules. You don’t need to do a stitch of programming to get a pretty powerful site up quickly.

The  main reason that I chose Drupal was its extensive permissions system. With MediaWiki you can have group-based permissions for the site. In Drupal you can set permissions down to the page level. The site that I am in the process of creating is not a wiki site. It is a content site where some people can add articles, others can add new animals for adoptions, and others can read and comment on existing content. Did I mention that it also needs to have the ability to be trilingual (Hebrew, English and Russian)?

What I’ve been finding frustrating is the number of dependencies that you are expected to know about. I keep installing new modules, think that I finally found the one that will solve my problems, only to find that there are other modules that the ones I have to install to get it to work properly.

Drupal seems to be more powerful than MediaWiki, but it also seems to be a lot heavier. Since it’s a CMS, which includes Wikis, Blogs, Forums, Pages and user-created content types, you can mold it to do what you like.

Documentation is really hit-or-miss with the different modules. I am currently trying to figure out how to use date-range faceted search, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with it. I want to be able to allow people to select the search results for the animals by age, but I’ll be darned if I know how to get it working. This is just one example, but I seem to go on a lot of fishing trips. I’m sure that I’ll figure it out eventually.

It’s a real problem. Having a website all about animals is bound to have some effects on your attitudes towards animals. It’s not that I haven’t always loved animals – I grew up with animals and they have always been part of the family. I knew that I had a lot to learn before I started this endeavor, but I didn’t realize how much it was going to effect my life.

Through The Pet Wiki and all the wonderful people that I’ve met through social media, I’ve learned a lot of horrible truths about how the animals that we put on our plate are treated and raised. It’s one of those things that a lot of people just don’t want to think about. I know that I didn’t. Until I couldn’t not think about it any more.

Not only have I become vegan myself, I’ve dragged half my family into it too. Since I do most of the cooking, it only seems fair that I’ll only cook what I am willing to eat. They are totally cool with that. As a matter of fact, all my kids have decided to become vegetarians. My husband is the only real hold out (and he may be bending).

To make sure that I don’t piss off my family too much, I’ve been making recipes that duplicate the food that they are used to and love. That’s an easy way to go. As long as they get their beloved comfort food, we can all be happy.

I’ve decided to start another blog all about my vegan journey. It’s called Vegan Start, and I think that I’m already off to a pretty good start with a chocolate chip cookie recipe.