Stories

Kin Lane

Moving on in life...

I have been through some major changes lately. Feel like I am really moving on into the 2nd half of my life. (Mid-Life...don't like that?). Anyways I recently went through a divorce with my wife Ishbel. I am learning how to spend time with my daughter Kaia both virtually, phone and in scheduled weekend times. For the first time I do not have any entrepreneurial aspirations. I have chosen to end all my business relationships I have had going with various individuals and companies and m...
Kin Lane

Learning to Be

I have a serious problem with working too much. I have trouble sitting still and watching TV let alone something as simple as reading a book or...
Kin Lane

Random Thoughts Blog

From time to time I publish my personal thoughts on the www.kinlane.com blog. Most of the time I hold back because I try to keep it technical and based upon my professional experience. I am finding the need more and more to record some of my personal reflections and thoughts rather than just letting them go by. So here we go...
Kin Lane

Managing My Brand

So I am always working to get a better handle on how people view me and my personal brand. My brand consists of my profile, work experience, technologies, blog, pics and just the general image of how people view me personally and professionally online. Maintaining my brand is a full time job and I do not always achieve the results I want. When people look for me they usually start at Google, so this is where I start. The first two pages of Google search for my name is where ...
Kin Lane

2.0 Incubators and Pilot Projects

I was just reading another great blog post 2.0 from Dion Hinchcliffe, he always delivers with his posts. This one is called Ten Aspects of Web 2.0 Strategy That Every CTO and CIO Should Know and has some critical 2.0 advice for decision makers in any company.There is one tip that really stood out and rang true for me because it has been something I have battled it at the last two major companies / projects I was working on.
Kin Lane

One Wiki to Bind them All

I have been using wikis a lot lately to layout strategy for social media marketing campaigns. Social media marketing really overlaps into a lot of different areas, some are internal and some are external.So we are designing what we call "online ecosystem" strategies for companies that help visualize all of their online virtual real estate. Using a simple wiki you can layout all the elements of your online presence from your web site and blog to your Facebook and Youtu...
Kin Lane

Image Search

When is image search going to move past what the picture is named and more about what the picture is about. If the picture author named the picture appropriately then the picture search is valid...however most of the time the results are crap. Makes it very frustrating to search for relative pictures.
Kin Lane

Google Chrome is Added to My Tools

I have used Google Chrome for the last few days, and I am happy with it. I still definitely can't live without my Firefox and its Add-Ons. However as a browser Google Chrome is very smooth and functional...I like it...it is an excellent start.I added to my desktop shortcuts right next to Internet Explorer and Firefox.I tend to use Firefox heavily for social media marketing campaign execution because of the add-ons and Go...
Kin Lane

Crowd Sourcing of Projects

I am seeing more and more talk of crowd sourcing of projects. I am reading more about virtual assistants and how they are changing how businesses operate and grow their business in this tough economy. In my work with Ahren over at Social Media Squad I have assisted him in the development of crowd sourced strategies for social media marketing campaigns. It is not without its problems, we have trouble finding quality and r...
Kin Lane

Gmail Features

I just want to say I really like how my Google Talk conversations show up right with all my Gmail email conversations as well.Closer to how I have my SMS, Email, Chats, Phone Calls in one listing on my Blackberry.
Kin Lane

In-House Social Media Marketing Campaign Strategy and Execution

Lately we have been receiving a lot of requests for in-house social media marketing trainings. Clients are requesting that we come on site to assist them in developing a social media marketing campaign strategy. The downturn in the economy has really hit small businesses and they are looking for new ways to find and retain customers. Social Media and Social Networks are a great avenue for finding new customers and maintaining...
Kin Lane

Reputation Management

I was Googling my name as I usually do on a Monday morning as part of my personal reputation management.I noticed a social network profile I signed up for a few months back called Naymz has grown significantly in PageRank as well as made it to the first page on my Google Results.So I figured I better work to complete my profile on it and make it as robust and relevant ...
Kin Lane

Twitter Redirect

I was just reading a Techcrunch blog pos...
Kin Lane

Facebook Takes Over As Number 1 Social Network

Was just reading an article on the latest comScore report showing that Facebook has beaten out MySpace as the number one social networking site.Facebook grew 153% last year and has 132 Million unique visitors.MySpace better clean up its act!
Kin Lane

The Power of Having a Voice

Was just contemplating the power the Internet gives you in having a voice in this world. Within minutes you can have your own domain and site or blog up and being broadcasting to the world.That is really powerful stuff.
Kin Lane

Social Application and Social Widget Advertising Integration

So was just having a random thoughts while designing a couple of social applications. I was thinking out you can build social applications that run on different platforms and work with a web service that allows various information to drive the application.So why can't you start evolving advertising to be widget based and run more like application. They would feed from any demographic or targeting data you would have on the user and feed them an intelligent and interactive ad.
Kin Lane

Conversational Marketing Assessment

As part of every social media marketing strategy that we build we conduct a conversational marketing assessment that evaluates the target arena we are considering entering as part of the social media marketing campaign.We are noticing that pretty much every one of our clients has a very fragmented presence on the Internet and in the social media space.This is not their fault it is the nature of technology and the Internet moving forward as a company grasps their goals ...
Kin Lane

Social Media Marketing By The Numbers

Kin Lane

Test Driving co.mments.com

I was just test driving a new bookmarking and comment tracking tool called co.mments.com. I test drive these types of web services to see if there is a fit for use on social media marketing campaigns.It is a pretty simple straightforward approach...which I like. I prefer applications to do one thing and do it well.The tool has me bookmark my conversations as apposed to CoComment which is a firefox add-on and just tracks comments I place automatically.Mayb...
Kin Lane

Streaming and Syndicating Your Companies Activity

Telling the world about your businesses products and service has been around since the beginning of time, how you do this has evolved with each generation of business. The latest evolution of this consists of streaming the activities of your company, its staff, and your marketing efforts online in the social media space.There are many web 2.0 tools these days for getting your message out onto the social web. These tools include video sharing sites such as YouTube and Social Networking sites s...
Kin Lane

Social Networking in Your Social Media Marketing Campaign

Social Networks are a phenomenon amongst the younger generation of Internet uses, and has continue to grow in popularity amongst old users as well. The next growth in social network sites and usage will be among business users with networks such as LinkedIn. The business usage of social networks is still in its infancy and many small and large companies are struggling to understand how to best leverage for their own uses as well as being able to sanction usage by their employees.There are man...
Kin Lane

Social Media Marketing Campaign Overview and Direction

There are so many opportunities on the Internet for marketing your business using social media, it is easy to get distracted and dilute your efforts. Having a strategy before you embark on social media marketing is extremely important, and revisiting this strategy regularly is critical to evolving and changing your approach so that you find success.Focusing your campaign in one specific conversation or topic is critical to keeping your approach and target audience small enough so that you can...
Kin Lane

Gmail is Down

Kin Lane

Conversation Monitoring and Participation

On the Internet there is a conversation going on. Everyone is participating in this conversation, using Social media. Pick a topic, the environment, politics, Britney Spears or your product and people are talking about it. They talk about it using Blogs, on video using Youtube, with images using Flickr, and they share and interact with others using MySpace and other social networks.This conversation happens everyday with or without your company being involved, people are talking about busines...
Kin Lane

Content Creation for Your Social Media Marketing Campaign

Social media content is at the heart of the web these days. Blogs, Video, Images, Audio, and other social media is what you use to listen in on the conversation and build an awareness of the audience and conversation that is taking place. To participate in the conversation you need to communicate through the creation of content as well. Content creation is as simple as posting comments on blogs or employing a complete production team to make videos each week.Content creation starts with adhoc...