Heidi Cool's Page

When we first heard that Ning was doing away with it's free network option, network admins around the world began worrying what to do. Many of us in #smchat use Ning networks for various purposes, and we also use it as our home base for the #smchat group. So the issue is one of interest to us both generally and specifically.For this week's session, I wrote up a framing post,…See More

When we first heard that Ning was doing away with it's free network option, network admins around the world began worrying what to do. Many of us in #smchat use Ning networks for various purposes, and we also use it as our home base for the #smchat group. So the issue is one of interest to us both generally and specifically.For this week's session, I wrote up a framing post,…See More

Nestle has been in the news this week as the latest business to stumble in the social media sphere. What can we learn from their mistakes? This week Andrew S. Townley (@atownley) and I (@hacool) will be co-moderating a discussion of Nestle's mishap, with an eye to how we can learn from their mistakes.Plenty of people have already written about this topic, so rather than writing a full post, I've suggested some…See More

Nestle has been in the news this week as the latest business to stumble in the social media sphere. What can we learn from their mistakes? This week Andrew S. Townley (@atownley) and I (@hacool) will be co-moderating a discussion of Nestle's mishap, with an eye to how we can learn from their mistakes.Plenty of people have already written about this topic, so rather than writing a full post, I've suggested some…See More

Over the past few weeks I've been thinking a lot about the topic of listening in social media. So many folks publish without paying attention that I think this is an underused, but critical, part of our social media plans.To that end I've written a rather lengthy post on the subject that we can use for our topic framing: Listen now. Talk Later.…See More

Over the past few weeks I've been thinking a lot about the topic of listening in social media. So many folks publish without paying attention that I think this is an underused, but critical, part of our social media plans.To that end I've written a rather lengthy post on the subject that we can use for our topic framing: Listen now. Talk Later.…See More

When I started blogging 5 years ago, I had no idea I was laying the foundation for my personal brand. It just wasn't a concept we pondered back then, so I ended up creating my brand almost by accident. Now personal branding is all the rage and many people are working to catch up.For this week's discussion I think we should try to cover why personal branding is important, techniques you can use to build your brand, and how your brand functions—both independently and in conjunction with your…See More

Our Tweets and Facebook status updates are useful, but not rich enough to form a full content strategy. If you are implementing a social media strategy, then you (usually) need some sort of Web site to serve as home base. For many it's a traditional site, for groups like ours, it's a Ning Network, and for many others it is a blog.In my framing post, Blogging as the backbone of a social media…See More