partay! partay!

I can't tell you how excited I am right now!! We just had a hook-up afternoon where 5 of us got together and aligned all of our networking pages into synchronistic management! I tell you, it is a revolution in communication. (ooh, I can feel a whole other blog topic building *puts on shelf for later*)...

Okay so basically what we have done is hook up all our individual pages like twitter, facebook, fan pages etc into one operational system called 'Hootsuite', which basically becomes the mothership of all network communication.

Very easy to set up, from the Hootsuite homepage. Follow the prompts to set up an account.

Once set up, systematically go through installing your profiles - twitter account, personal facebook account, face book fanpage, facebook group page etc. You should end up with a number of profile icons available to you.

Hootsuite will automatically create a new tab for each profile, so you can see each on its own tab page. What you want to do is select one tab, and then add a column for each profile you want to manage, so that you end up with all of the profiles on the one tag. You may need to adjust the column size from 1 to 5 in order to see them (its the slider tab to the right, next to "add column".)

From there, you can post to all any number of the chosen profiles, by clicking on the icon you'd like to use.

You can also schedule postings for later - choosing the best time to make an announcement, to tweet while you are asleep and the rest of the world is awake, make it look like you're hard at work while actually sipping margaritas under a palm tree ...

And it is on a live feed stream which means every 5 minutes (or whatever you set it to), all the pages automatically update themselves with the latest from around the world! You can quietly work away on a separate page, and check in throughout the day to keep your fingers on the pulse of your friends and fans. This way, you are totally available to communication IN THE MOMENT (oops, shouting) with whomever receives your, when they receive it (timing!)

I tell you, its a buzz! Go forth and conquer, and I'll catch you all soon...

(Now, I know I keep promising to do the facebook fanpage - it's coming, it's coming!)

*scoots off to make some jewellery*

"and most of all, I'd like to thank all my fans..."

Well, it has been an eventful 24 hours! After posting my first blog last night, I awoke to discover 11 followers! How did that happen? Aaaah, the magic of "internetworking"...

Here's what I did:

1. set up blog, and made it pretty and colourful using the 'add a gadget' feature (there are some cool gadgets out there, and some ...umm ... not so cool ones - you be the judge)

2. linked it to my facebook profile and fanpage using the funky new facebook widgets.

Quick how to:

• select the widget you want to add to your blog
  
• highlight the html text and copy
  
• go to your blog and into layout area
• click "add a gadget"
• find the gadget in the basics tab called "html/java script" - select
• paste the html you copied from the fb widget gallery into the txt body
• save changes, view your blog and sit back, quietly chuffed at how clever you are!

3. once I was happy with the basic format and blog, I went to my social network sites: twitter and facebook and announced the blog, attaching a link below the post. You can manage both sites simultaneously using hootsuite - worth taking a look at. (I'll probably cover hootsuite in a bit more detail down the track - remind me!)

4. within minutes, I had my first reader response, who then retweeted the post to all her friends (bless you, Julie) and voila! the house is live!

So, thank you, fans and friends for demonstrating how quickly the internetworking system shares the love, and stay tuned... I'll be diving into the facebook fanpage scenario NEXT.