“How Insects Tell Us Time of Death” will be presented from 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. by Marlene Lanz, former McHenry County Coroner.
“Twitter Tips and Tricks,” led by April M. Williams, is scheduled from 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
A lunch break will take place from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m., followed by “Research Methods” from 1:30 – 2:30 p.m., taught by Raymond Benson.
“How to Write Serial Killers,” from 2:45 – 3:45 p.m., will be instructed by Michele May & Michael Major.
“Editing Tips: Cleaning It up Before Sending Your Manuscript to Your Editor,” led by Diane Peron-Gelman, Mary Welk and Emily Victorson, is slated from 4 – 5 p.m.
Twitter cover or header images launch follows the Facebook and Google+ cover image roll out. The new Twitter header image displays at the top of the Twitter profile. Your profile image, bio, location and website appear as an overlay on top of your Twitter header image.
Unlike Facebook, the Twitter header image roll out does not include restrictions on what is included in the image. Facebook does not allow calls to action (click here), contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that Facebook believes should go in your Facebook Page’s “About” section.
Update your Twitter profile cover image and let your followers see what you are about. To update your Twitter header image, log in to your Twitter account.
Click on the “Settings” wheel at the top right corner of the page.
Click on “Design”.
Click on “Change Header”.
Select “Use Existing Image.” Navigate to the location of the image you would like to use. Use the slider bar to zoom in or out of your image. Note the minimum dimension are 1252×626 and maximum file size is 5MB.
Click “Save”. Your new Twitter header image will now show on your profile.
As autumn approaches, I uploaded an image highlighting fall foliage. I plan to update my header images on occasion. Check out the images we are using now at @aprilmwilliams, @cyberlifetutors and @waytb.
Click on comments and share links to your favorite Twitter profiles with great header images.
Social media marketing is challenging for small businesses in McHenry County. Just keeping up with Facebook changes is almost a full-time job. Did you know there assistance for businesses in McHenry County and it will not cost you an arm and a leg?Bring your Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, FourSquare, YouTube, Twitter questions and more.
Social Media Roundtable: A no-cost seminar to discuss the latest trends in social media marketing and share various approaches with your peers. A social media professional will help facilitate the discussion and be available for questions. There is no fee to attend, reservations required as seating is limited.
Social Media for Small Business: Do you have questions about social media? Want hands-on help? Bring your questions to our computer classroom and work with a social media expert. Learn new ways to reach and engage an online audience and boost your bottom line through the use technologies like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus. Cost: $30.
Consulting: The Shah Center consulting services are free to all clients, start-up entrepreneurs, owners and managers of businesses. We’ve helped businesses in our area attract customers, improve their operations, increase sales, and get financing. We can review your business plan before you talk to your banker to help you prepare. Use our research and contacts to strengthen your plan, improve your operations or develop your marketing and e-business strategies. Plus, we catalog and track all federal, state and local government business assistance programs. We offer counseling and seminars/workshops on these and other topics:
Business planning, people and other business management issues
Marketing and advertising
Finance and accounting, regulation and taxation
Production and operations, office automation and computer training
Business data analysis, technology and other issues necessary to promote business growth
Operational, project and strategic planning techniques
All classes are held at the Shah Center. The McHenry County College Shah Center at 4100 W. Shamrock Lane in McHenry, near Centegra Hospital. For more information or to register, please contact the Illinois Small Business Development Center at (815) 455-6098 or sbdc at mchenry.edu.
For information on all of CyberLife Tutors presentations, workshops, classes and events visit our events calendar.
Want a cool infographic to learn more about your Twitter tweets and followers? You can create your own with Visually. Just enter your Twitter name or another Twitter user’s handle and your infographic is created instantly. You can follow Visually on Twitter at @visually.
Here is my Twitter infographic. Are you one of my strongest connections?
BlogCatalog Twitter Counter is a internet tool to manage Twitter accounts and create fun and useful tools to add to your website or blog.
The Follow button below encourages others to follow me on Twitter:
The Twitter Counter widget queries Twitter for specific tweets and displays them in a customizable format. You can see which Twitter users visit your blog or website. Plus with this cool widget, Twitter users can follow directly you without leaving your website.
Set up your own Twitter Counter profile to see your statistics: Number of Twitter follower, following, tweets, mentions and retweets.
No need to know HTML to install these tools as Twitter Counter creates the code for you. Once you have a Twitter profile, visit Twitter Counter to get your own widgets and buttons.
How do I use Twitter? To keep up with what is happening. Here is why I am an active Twitter @aprilmwilliams user.
Lists: My business is in McHenry County, Illinois and many of my customers and fellow businesses are located here. Monitoring my McHenry County Twitter list keeps my informed on what’s happening locally.
News: Top trending stories appear in my Twitter feed real time. Politics, finance, weather and celebrity updates are instantly available.
Retweet: Many tweets I read will interest my followers. I retweet or repost these Twitter messages.
Jobs: Some companies only post job openings on Twitter. If a client is interested in a company, I recommend they find out if Twitter is one of the company’s recruiting tools.
Networking: Through Twitter, I develop new connections with others both locally and around the world. We share resources and encourage each other from near and far. It is especially fun to meet IRL (in real life) after communicating over Twitter for a time.
Search: When I am looking for information on a topic, I’ll use Twitter as a search tool. Tweets include keywords and hashtags (#) to group topics.
Learning: My industry, social media marketing, is constantly changing. I follow industry experts like @hubspot on Twitter to keep up with what’s new.
Communicate: Twitter is a just in time messaging system for my updates on upcoming workshops, classes and presentations.
Business: It is not uncommon for one of my Twitter followers to contact me for proposals which lead to coaching or s0cial media work. Business happens on Twitter.
Are you a Twitter user? How do you make Twitter work for you? Let us know in the comments!
What does Bob Newhart know about social media and websites? And what can we learn from his example? Do you really need a website?
When I visited Bob Newhart’s website I was greeted with a huge photo of Bob Newhart smiling back at me from my computer screen. I admit being taken aback. The only other items on the page are a small Facebook and Twitter icons. Now, Bob is 82 years young and many of his fans are his generation. Bob uses social media to reach out and touch is fans because it is an effective form of communication.
He’s still got his famous brand of humor. Here is one of Bob’s recent tweets:
USING SOCIAL NETWORKING IN YOUR JOB SEARCH MCHENRY, ILLINOIS
Learn what social networking tools can do for your career
ALGONQUIN, IL. August 10, 2011. – Job seekers know it is hard work to land a job. Those job candidates who use social media tools effectively can shorten the length of their job search. By using LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and blogs to develop connections and build credibility, a candidate can land a job that is just the right fit.
The McHenry Public Library recognizes patrons desire to learn how social media to boost their careers. They offer a series of career and job search sessions specifically for those in career transition.
April M. Williams is presenting two of these career sessions at the McHenry Public Library:
Jan 25, 2011 – Effective Social Networking in Your Job Search
Learn about social networking tools as a way to shorten your job search. See how you can showcase your qualifications and expand you network. Find out how headhunters and hiring managers post jobs and recruit through their connections. April M. Williams will discuss LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogs.
Feb 29, 2011 – Expand Your Professional Network Using LinkedIn
If you’re not on LinkedIn, are you Linked OUT? April M. Williams will focus on LinkedIn as a networking tool to identify key contacts, build relationships, demonstrate credibility and learn insider information to grow their career. Find out how to use LinkedIn for prospecting prospective customers.
Session are held at the McHenry Public Library from 7:00-8:30 PM. The library is located at 809 North Front Street in McHenry, IL 60050. For information call the McHenry Public Library at (815) 385-0036.
“As I have noticed that many of our patrons are looking for work, I have scheduled a series, starting in September, of programs designed to build job search skills. The series includes programs that address Writing a Resume in September, Conducting a Job Search in October, Preparing for the Interview in November, Social Media in January, and LinkedIn in February. In addition to these programs, the MPLD has many resources, including books, magazines, videos, and computer software available to patrons to assist them in their job search,” said Colette Leeser-Freeman McHenry Public Library Adult Services Librarian & Adult Programming Coordinator.
“In general, the public library is uniquely positioned to act as a resource to patrons in the community for any of their research needs. Now, more than at any other time in recent history, the public library has become a very rich resource for job seekers.”
About April M. Williams: April M. Williams is a nationally recognized speaker, author, blogger and coach who has assisted hundreds of people in their career. By demonstrating the power of social networking tools, April shows clients how to leverage their strengths to enhance their careers. April published two books and numerous articles on career building as well as other related business topics. She has been featured in major publications including the Wall Street Journal, Project Management Institute, Savvy and Nations Restaurant News. April is a contributing editor to the Blacks Gone Geek IT forum and Hawaii travel website 808Talk. For information on upcoming events, visit CyberLife Tutors calendar.
EDITORS: If you would like more information about this topic or to schedule an interview with April M. Williams, please contact us at 414-502-7745 or http://www.cyberlifetutors.com/contact/.
Social Networking Throughout Your Career book cover
Ignite Your Passion: How to Find and Ignite Your Fire InsideNetworking For Results DVD – 51 minute live presentation.
Following Twitter etiquette and showing good social networking manners is not hard to do. Here are six steps to stay on the good side of other social networking and not become an online clod.
Use @ replies: When mentioning another Twitter account, use the @username to let them know you made a comment. Without the “@”, the account you are mentioning will not likely see your tweet.
Retweeting: Share others messages by retweeting or rebroadcasting tweets to your followers. If a message exceeds the 140 character restriction, it is OK to trim or modify the message to fit. Be sure to keep the original message intent.
Be interesting: Include a variety of content in your Twitter tweets. A stream of pure sales messages will likely turn off followers. Post pictures of interesting sites, links to industry news articles or just plain old fun comments. Be personable.
Follow back: With Twitter, it is a good practice to follow those who follow you. Twitter restricts the number of accounts you can follow based on the number of Twitter accounts following you. Once you follow 2,000 accounts, Twitter will not allow you to add new accounts to your following until you either unfollow some or others begin following you. If you do not follow back, you will find many accounts will unfollow you.
Stop the auto messages: Don’t set up messages to automatically send a response when an new Twitter account follows you. I recently received a direct message from someone I followed saying. “Thanks for following me. I look forward to reading your tweets.” This was a meaningless message to be because this account did not follow me back. They never did see any of my tweets. The message was meaningless and cluttered up my messages pages.
Use social networking etiquette and manners on Twitter
By following these six social networking tips you can navigate Twitter and use tweets for business while using social networking with etiquette and good manners.
Looking for a creative ways to use Twitter to get hired? Ed Morita posted a link to this Alltopvideo on using Twitter to land a job. Using five different Twitter accounts, they targeted specific people in their industry involved in hiring decisions.
This creative use of Twitter worked. They successfully landed jobs in their field by gaining the attention of those in a position to hire them.
The online profiles and 140 character tweets reenforced their message.
What other creative ways have you discovered for using Twitter to enhance your career? Click on Comments and tell us your ideas.
