Category Archives: technology

What is Klout and why should you join?

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Ever wonder who you influence on social media these days? This service called Klout analyzes your interactions on social media and shows you how influential you are to your friends online. Based on your social interactions, Klout assigns you a Klout score. The higher it is, the more popular you are among your social connections. In addition, your Klout score can determine the kinds of rewards, dubbed Klout Perks, you might receive in terms of giveaways, discounts, and special deals from company sponsors.

Klout shows you the insight on the topics that you influence the most among your social network of friends. What this service does is track the social response to your posts, such as how many comments, replies, shares, retweets, likes, etc, from an array of social networking accounts. Klout explains it further in detail.

Based off what Klout finds out about connected networks, the service designates a Klout Score and lists topics they are influential on. In addition, Klout allows you to track topics that your friends influence you in as well as allow you the option to give away points, known as “K+”, to those who recently influence you in a certain topic. It is a simple version of a referral system in which you can learn who you directly influence.

Networks

Klout analyzes your social media activity on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, FourSquare, Instagram, Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress.com, Last.fm, and Flickr. Based on what networks you connect to, Klout can find out how influential you are to your friends. In the near future, users may be able to connect and analyze social influences with Quora, Yelp, Posterous, Livefyre, Disqus, Bit.ly, and BranchOut. So far, it looks promising.

Klout Perks

Do you like to get rewarded for using social networks? Sponsors have teamed up with Klout to offer specials, discounts, and giveaways. These can range from free business cards, sample products, discounted services, or specials only available for Klout users with certain Klout scores. While this may be a great way to reward users, it is another avenue of direct marketing. Klout’s approach to provide a channel for advertisers to promote their products and services to tech-savvy and social media fans is brilliant and somewhat convoluted. What is great about this system is that it’s not “in your face” advertisement, which some social media users dislike with a passion.

Are Social Media Connections Safe?

In order for Klout to analyze your social interactions, it needs access to your social media accounts. This access is currently done via OAuth, which is a service that you can link up your Facebook or Twitter account with Klout. This system is also how users would log into Klout, much the same way Pintrest, BranchOut, and some news sites allow you to use your login name for Twitter or Facebook to log in instead of creating a brand new account from scratch. (Even WriteTechie uses OAuth via WordPress to allow readers to post comments.)

First, you have to allow Klout to connect to your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ accounts in order for the service to begin analyzing your social media activity. Not to worry, Klout won’t spy on your information; it just reads it for tracking purposes and displays statistics about your usage. The nice part about using OAuth is that you can revoke access if you believe there is suspicious activity.

Why join?

What is there to lose? There may be more to gain by learning what you are influential about and what others might think about you. In essence, it’s a social network of social networks. While Klout may not offer specific statistics, like Google Analytics, it’s a great way to measure oneself and others on social media.

Add me as an influencer on Klout: http://klout.com/RogerRenteria
Friend me on Facebook: http://fb.com/roger.renteria
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/RogerRenteria
Add me to your circles on Google+: http://profiles.google.com/roger.renteria
Connect with me on LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/rrenteria

Is Distance Learning Worth It? New TechWhirl Article

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Do you think that one day you may end up taking an online distance learning course instead of attending traditional classroom?

Is Distance Learning Worth It?

Distance learning allows you a lot of flexibility, but is it worth the time and effort?

The wonderful folks at TechWhirl published my article which I ask and answer the question: Is Distance Learning Worth It? My article delves into some history regarding distance learning in technical communication and includes insight from colleagues who have had varying experience with this method of instruction to advance their careers.

I also found a nugget of information from STC Conference Proceedings published in 1996 which defined an early version of distance learning nearly 15 years ago and how (at that time) was only the beginning.

Please check out my article on TechWhirl: Professional Development in TechComm: Is Distance Learning Worth It?

More articles I’ve written for TechWhirl: http://techwhirl.com/author/rogerrenteria

Also, before you take your time to read my article, I wanted to let a couple of readers know my status on attending LavaCon 2012: See you in Portland!

 

Evolution of a website – Part 4 of 4

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Note: this is a four-part series which I discuss the first two versions of the website pre-WordPress, the third and fourth versions of the site using WordPress, implementation of the fourth version using WordPress and its intricacies, and lastly how to keep the site alive.

Part 4

Maintaining the site and keeping content fresh

While we moved houses and unpacked, the tricky part was to keep the content relevant and fresh. The problem with static websites and why they suffer is because content updated infrequently. It can be a time-consuming task being webmaster, but with WordPress, the task of updating the site can be delegated to a team. Instead of having a webmaster as a bottleneck for updating information, contributors can use the self-service interface and update the website themselves.

I love being a webmaster of website that will take little effort to update or add content. WordPress offers that convenience for a small price: the time to learn and familiarize oneself with the software and associated plug-ins.

I am truly satisfied how the final product came out. While the website is one step closer to having a fully functional chapter, it is definitely a start to communicate with members and represent the community. Many thanks go out to the previous webmasters who contributed their efforts on the website. I also want to thank my colleagues who helped with site content with their suggestions and advice–without their availability, this site would be stuck in a black hole.

Is the Future in Social Media?

The next step in moving forward is to promote the Kachina Chapter through our social media channels. What is great about the latest design is that there are social media links at the top of the website which direct visitors and members to view our site on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. I hope that we can use these tools to communicate with current members and recruit new individuals who may be interested in the field of technical communication. So far, this is only the beginning!

Conclusion

Websites take some interesting paths to get to where they are now. In this case, I believe the STC New Mexico Kachina website is at its best since it was originally created. While I understand that different technologies are working together to display the site in its current state, to most people this implementation may seem complicated on the back-end, but it was meant to make updates easier and have greater accessibility on the internet. The point I want to make is, while the current site took a tremendous amount of effort to implement, it is the best version that utilizes previous design cues, color schemes, and content. Now it should be easier to maintain and faster to update and change without having to use a WYSIWYG editor. All that future web masters can do is log into a web interface and update the site with ease.