Social Sheila Video: HootSuite for absolute beginners

HootSuite is a social media management platform that can save you huge amounts of time in monitoring and interacting with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and more. In this post, Sheila Averbuch shows you how to set up and use this application effectively.




The secret of Hootsuite's success is that it allows you to manage multiple accounts from one master dashboard. If you're a complete HootSuite beginner, this video will walk you through how to set up a free account, import and start using a handful of your social media identities.

I particularly appreciate the way HootSuite makes it easier for me to see my re-tweets, which can often be missed when I'm using the normal Twitter application. But the best value of all comes from eliminating the need to log into and interact with more than one application on my phone or desktop computer for these social networks.

The secret of Hootsuite's success is that it allows you to manage multiple accounts from one master dashboard.

There are a couple drawbacks to HootSuite you should be aware of: the app version for mobile phones can act a little oddly at times (giving me information I don't want, such as repeating old notifications about who has followed me). Additionally, "mentions" (where you'd like to tag someone in your post so they receive an alert that you're talking about them) are a bit more manual in HootSuite than they are in the native applications for Facebook and Twitter.

But these are minor issues – all in all, HootSuite is a tremendous timesaver for me. Social networking can be a time sink and HootSuite is a good way to help me get in, interact with the content and people I need to, and get out again, so I can go back to working on my writing.

Are there other social media how-to videos you'd like to see? Please leave a comment below. You can also view a full list of Social Sheila videos here.




Don't forget to click the "bull's-eye" icon below if you'd like to view this video in full resolution.

---

Sheila writes middle-grade science-fiction and blogs at www.spacekidsbooks.com. She holds an MA in journalism from Stanford University and a BA from Harvard University in American History & Literature. Alongside Louise Kelly, Sheila also co-ordinates the SCBWI network for Southeast Scotland – contact southeastscotland@britishscbwi.org for details on member meetups

Social Sheila Video: how to claim Google Authorship as a writer

Have you heard about Google Authorship? It's part of Google Plus, and it's something you need to know about if you are a children's book writer or illustrator.






You might already be a Google Plus user, although truthfully it hasn't taken off as quickly as Twitter or Facebook. One of the functions of Google Plus is to act as a social network, allowing people to share content among themselves, but it's much more than just a social platform – Google sees it as the "interconnecting fabric" among all the services it offers, from search through to e-mail, and it is increasingly becoming one of the ways Google uses to organise all of the world's information and deliver pertinent, accurate results when people search.

One way to help Google deliver accurate results is for it to determine who is an authority on certain subjects. Forbes magazine has done an excellent job of discussing the role of Google plus and Authorship in helping Google determine authority; I won't repeat their points, but you can read that article here. In short, Google Authorship allows you to tell Google you are the creator of content that should have your name on it, specifically blogs.

Google Authorship allows you to tell Google you are the creator of content that should have your name on it, specifically blogs.

If you own your own blog or are a regular contributor on someone else's blog, it's important that you claim Google Authorship via Google Plus - this will entail setting up a free Google plus ID, if you don't have one yet.

In this video I will show you how to set up Authorship, but a key step of the process is putting a Google "author" link on the blogs where you contribute. I'll show you how to put the author link on a WordPress blog, but if you are not running your own blog and instead are contributing to another blog, you'll need their cooperation to get the author link set up. You can read more about that in the Forbes article above. For those of you using Blogger, Google's own blogging platform, my research indicates that it's a one-click process to claim Google Authorship: I haven't tried this myself, but you can follow the instructions here:


Have you set up Google Authorship? Let me know your comments below.

---

@spacekidsbooks

Sheila Averbuch lives in East Lothian in Scotland and is currently working on SPACE KIDS AND THE SPY FROM PLANET 12, a sci-fi adventure for 9-11's. She holds an MA in journalism from Stanford University and a BA from Harvard University in American History & Literature. Sheila is managing director of the content services and social media training agency ENNclick and blogs at www.spacekidsbooks.com