RyanShell.com

Marketing, public relations, social media... and a little of this and that.

Pleasant Surprise

By

I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised on Friday when reading an article from netbanker.com. The article in question was titled “Citibank Launches a Blog at New.Citi.com” and was about the launch of the megabanks new blog.

From the article,

“To my surprise, new.citi.com is an online microsite aimed at sharing the things Citi is doing to bring itself back from the brink. And it’s being told in blog format. It started in February with seven posts on Feb. 1. There was no activity for two weeks, but since then the bank has posted 15 new entries, about 2.5 per week, a good pace.

The content is good. For example, yesterday they wrote about their no-overdraft philosophy on debit cards, a policy they’ve always adhered to. The bank even linked to Ron Lieber’s NY Times Your Money column, “Overdraft Protection. Why Bother?“, just like a real blog.”

The surprise came when I got to the end of the article and read,

“Note: For an even better example, check out Truliant Federal Credit Union’s superb new blog. The CU has an internal team that’s been doing five relevant posts per week since Jan 27.”

As you may (or may not) know, the credit union referenced is my employer and the blog was part of the social media strategy that I put together. It’s really nice to be recognized as an “even better example,” especially when you compare available resources.

Actually, strike that last statement.

This should be a great example that even though budgets aren’t equal, you still have the opportunity to use social media tools that can rival heavily funded projects. A little imagination and planning can go a long way.

Facebook Adds Page Insight Email Updates

By

I was pleasantly surprised to receive a new email yesterday that Facebook is sending out to Page admins. The subject line of the email is “Your Weekly Facebook Page Update” and it’s actually a nice little feature.

If your profile has multiple pages connected too it all of your updates will come in one email. Information in the updates  includes:

  • Fan addition/losses
  • Wall posts, comments and likes (along with last weeks info)
  • Number of visits to the page (along with last weeks info)

Like the page Insights that admins have access too, the data in this email seems to be a week behind. That’s one little tweak that I’d like to see Facebook address, but emailing the data on  a weekly basis is a nice touch.

Inline Speed Skating Accident

By

I’m going to keep this short. I started inline speed skating again late last year and am training for a national competition later this year. I fell last night during a sprint exercise at practice and the first thing that hit the floor was my back… and the pain was instantly excruciating.

This short video highlights what happened, what’s hurt and where things currently stand. I’ve had a lot of falls throughout my many years of inline speed skating, but there’s never been a time that I physically couldn’t get up from a fall – that’s a scary feeling.

Facebook Moderation: Tools that Moderate… and then Some

By

When developing your social media strategy you’re going to answer a number of questions, one of which will probably have to do with moderation. Let’s dig a bit deeper and specifically discuss Facebook moderation.

Unfortunately for Facebook pages you don’t receive email updates when a new comment is posted or something you posted gets commented on… and that stinks.

One of your fans might say something that needs to be addressed, but that comment currently stands the chance of being overlooked. You could be missing out on customer service opportunities, or even worse, negative comments could potentially go unaddressed.

If your page has a few hundred fans you might not have a hard time catching/addressing comments, but if you have a page with thousands of fans it probably isn’t the easiest thing to do.

Rather than driving yourself crazy and constantly hitting refresh on a Facebook page, you might want to consider some of the online tools that provide Facebook moderation.

At a minimum they will allow you to:

  • Moderate pages
  • Get alerts when comments are left
  • Respond to comments directly from the console

Some will even let you:

  • Create applications
  • Publish directly to your page
  • Get detailed analytics

I haven’t tested all of the tools available, so I won’t be giving you any specific recommendations as to what you should try. If this is something that interests you simply Google “Facebook page moderation” and several options will show up.

It’s great to have thousands of fans, but if you don’t know what’s being said and engaging your fans in conversation then you’re really missing out.

Get Fit: It’s all About the Turkey. Workouts. Mental Fitness.

By

This post is part of my ongoing “Get Fit” series, an effort to lose a little weight/tone up, and save money by reducing the number of meals I eat out.

It’s all About the Turkey

If you’re a regular reader of this series you know that I’ve managed to save $200 – $300 a month by bringing bread and turkey to work every Monday so that I have the makings for a sandwich at lunch. For whatever reason, I didn’t do this the first week of March and got off to a terrible start for the month. I think I dropped $120 in the first week alone…

I was able to get back on track last week and actually didn’t spend a dime eating out until Friday, which is my designated cheat day. Actually, I should be more clear about Friday – Sunday. I allow myself to eat out on the weekends (not every meal) simply because it allows me to be social and around friends.

The heading for this section could have easily been, “It’s all About Being Prepared.” At the end of the day you have to figure out what your stumbling block is and then come up with a solution for getting around it.

Workout

In the last post for this series I wrote,

“So, I’ve decided inline speed skating is my thing this year. I still plan to cycle this summer as it’s a perfect cross training sport for skating, but I’m going to spend a decent amount of time on my skates, both indoor and outdoor.”

I’ve been on my skates quite a bit and my performance level is headed in the right direction, but there’s still a long way to go. I practice with some of the top skaters in the United States and their fitness levels are down right amazing. From endurance to speed, they really have it all.

Skating with top athletes (this is true for just about any sport) helps me get back to where I need to be because it provides a constant challenge. On the other hand it can also be mentally draining at times, especially for an older athlete making a comeback, because you’re constantly getting beat or a couple steps beyond exhaustion.

At this point I’ve reduced the number of cycle classes I’m doing to one to two a week. As a result my weight training has decreased, and that’s not exactly a good thing. In terms of skating, I’m training (on a typical week) Tuesday, Thursday, Friday (I skip this day sometimes as it’s a late night practice 10 pm – midnight), Saturday and Sunday. Saturday and Sunday’s training sessions are outside and tend to be a bit grueling.

Mental Fitness

I think at times we forget how mental getting in shape is and don’t learn how to get over the hurdles. Let me elaborate on that a bit.

At our outdoor practice yesterday we started with a 40 lap event at a medium pace (10 miles), followed by a 20 lap event at a fast to faster pace. I gave the first event maximum effort and lapped the pack (tough on a 400 meter track) a couple times, but it hurt… bad.

I actually found myself wanting to quit after the first event, but managed to find the motivation to skate the second. I stayed with the pack and all was well, but I was spent. Needless to say I sat down, took off my skates and didn’t skate the third and final event.

As I was driving home I processed the training session, what went well, what didn’t and the fact that I wasn’t feeling motivated. During this processing time I started thinking about the rest of my day. I could easily go home, nap, do nothing and have a lingering feeling that my motivation had faltered. But that just isn’t my style, or at least I don’t want it to be.

By the time I got home I’d somehow talked myself into visiting another team’s practice last night (meaning two training sessions in one day) in an effort to try and overcome my lack of motivation. This decision didn’t come lightly because my legs were already hurting from skating outside…

Needless to say I went to the practice, hurt a decent amount, worked through the pain and woke up today feeling absolutely exhausted… but I don’t feel the lack of motivation that I felt yesterday.

Thanks for reading my ongoing “Get Fit” series; hopefully it will motivate you in some way or at least give you insights to someone else’s training highs and lows.