So it has been a while since I posted here. A lot has changed in my life and my personal social networking reflects this. I thought I would give you some insight how even with limited time, you can use social networks.

Even if you have limited time for social networks, it does not mean you have to avoid them. If you clearly define how you intend to use social networks, you can benefit and others can decide whether to follow your updates.

For instance many people prefer to find out about new content via twitter or facebook, rather than follow an RSS feed in a blog reader. You could choose to automate the process of tweeting or updating a facebook wall with twitterfeed. You don't have to engage in a conversation with people to use facebook and twitter, neither share personal insights. Many people would perceive this is the wrong use for facebook or twitter. Sure they are 'networks', not a one way street, but a social network should work for an individual in the manner they wish to engage. With people wishing to stay updated via social networks, there definitely is a place for using them to keep people informed.

You can create viewable content with limited time using free software.

With regard to YouTube you don't have to spend hours editing a video to produce content. You can use free tools to produce screencasts, presentations or simply to upload a short video with a voice over. Most the time I won't do any editing and just upload the unedited video file. Free software worth checking out is Audacity and OpenShots.

I personally find it is more important to network how I want, with my limited time, rather than to sacrifice other areas in my life to have a strong presence on social networks.

You do not need to be a famous celebrity seeking privacy for your facebook profile, to justify having a facebook page. You don't need to be engaging with dozens of people to tell people on twitter about your recent blog posts. You do not need to be a video editing guru to enjoy sharing on YouTube.

Facebook Pages are not just for the popular.

People get tunnel vision when it comes to online presences. I know I did. People find themselves trying to update often, rather than updating less, but with a stronger contribution. High levels of engagement can be fun, but ultimately the experience is using your precious time. Could that time be used better elsewhere?

With my limited time I've had to reduce my social network, no choice. Instead I'm choosing to create more enriched personal content on my blog, plus engage with others on their blogs and via a few forums, rather than spreading myself too thin attempting to engage across the web.

Updating less, but contributing higher value content is best.

I've got over three hundred YouTube videos all created with limited time. The videos appear ad-hoc, sometimes with gaps of months between updates, sometimes a day or a week between new videos. I don't worry about not updating regularly and it has enabled me to build a strong archive of personal content.

Times will change and no doubt so will my social network habits, but it is important to not jump on the bandwagon and know what is right for you, rather than to follow the crowd.

About the Writer: I'm a thirty-something writer, geek and tea mad chap in the UK. My personal blog oftens covers vegetarian recipes, uk travel and tech.

All too often websites are neglected, I’ve been there got the t-shirt. It is easier to tweet or write a facebook update, than write a new web page or blog post. Yet the experience for both the reader and writer can be more enriching.

From a business viewpoint ‘tweeting’ regularly should be coupled with new content. Providing fresh content is even better. Instead many, especially small businesses are afraid of being forgotten and not heard.

Some websites don’t have ‘blogs’, but news pages which soon become stagnant. Again regularly producing an update for clients and prospects not only helps with marketing and communication, but also increases your website footprint.

From a personal blogging viewpoint people can be worried about opinions, to the extent of stopping themselves from writing. Thinking their posts are too mundane, yet in reality many people could be interested in what they have to write. They are just not given the opportunity to find out.

For both personal and business content creators it is important to write regular updates. Each piece doesn’t need to be a masterpiece and wordy. Indeed if you write something that is 600 words plus, people might not take the time to fully read and if lucky it is bookmarked.

Part of my core business and freelancing work includes content creation. I write blog posts, web pages and Press Releases for umpteen businesses. I’ve studied the statistics and whilst quality relevant material counts, it is also about writing in a style that attracts visitors and other factors. I go beyond SEO techniques and the questions, ‘How do people search?’, ‘What is popular’.

Personally I write best when I’m interested in the topic, the words just flow and then I go back and review. I don’t stifle myself with fear of whether x,y or z people will deem it the must have read of the day. Perhaps not, but it will be meaningful content, written with passion and insight. Often demonstrating a continued theme.

Currently each day on my personal blog http://www.andrewemmett.co.uk I’m writing a blog post. There are themes that shine through on my personal blog. Each day a post appears on a topic I found interesting and wanted to share. I don’t care about hitting a word count or consider SEO. Yet my personal blog traffic is regularly growing, which for a blog that has no ad revenue, is just nice to see, appreciate and enjoy visitor comments. I could share why it is growing, but go take a look and assess for yourself.

On a business level I write content daily also, either for myself or others. Relaxed, but professional and not missing the opportunity to improve lead generation, whatever the topic.

Your welcome to hire me to write your content and help shape your message, but why not take the time to assess and write your own. Do you have a passion or insight to share? Write a 400+ word blog post today. I just did.

This blog post was written by Andrew an englishman who drinks too much tea and lives on an island off the south coast. Editor of the Small Business Tech blog (which has over 8400 twitter followers), freelancer and business owner.

When it comes to social networks my feet are firmly in the twitter corner. I occasionally take a stroll to the facebook and linkedin suburbs, but twitter is where I’ve found a comfy chair to watch the world scroll by and engage. I've reduced my tweeting, even took a break, but do find it enjoyable and has many uses.

I have more than one twitter account. My personal account is set to private and I vaguely discuss work every once in a while, but business connections isn’t its purpose. It’s primarily water cooler chat with people I find interesting and feed of tweets on topics I enjoy out of work. Indeed my company has its own twitter account.

For many though wishing to use twitter for both business and personal use, one twitter account is understandable enough. The end result being they are not only enjoying a twitter general conversation, but also promoting themselves.... only problem is many are forgetting to sell themselves or being too shy.

One could almost think many feel it is rude to promote themselves. Possibly worried of scaring people or feeling dirtied by a bold tweet?

I would love people to tweet ‘I offer x,y or z, here is a link to my portfolio and testimonials. 10% discount if ordered today <link>’. How hard would that be to tweet? I’ve never seen someone in my streams tweet that yet, close but not that.

I follow some firms that are quite good at promoting themselves via twitter. They understand that as they’ve signed up to use it to gain business they should consistently tell people what they do and repeat the process if it works. If they engage in some water cooler chat with others on twitter it adds to the experience for all and gives their business personality. They also encourage communication and build business relationships with businesses that provide synergy. They add value to my twitter stream.

They have a clear objective of what twitter means to them and they clearly demonstrate this through action.

For many though they are not selling themselves. Often all I see is a tweet with a link to a blog which in turn has a link to a sales page or website. often this the extent of their action. It is a shame people are not being bold. I often find it hard to quickly work out what people do exactly. Increasing the time it takes to understand what is offered, understanding how to make contact etc isn't a wise marketing tactic.

I’ll give you three examples where people are scared to sell themselves even when encouraged via other twitter users. All examples cost nothing and engage with twitter as part of promotion. They all promote people who use their service via twitter as well the benefits of uing their services or website for free promotion.

For over two years I’ve run a business blog and it welcomes guest posts. The blog has thousands of twitter followers, yet few step forward to write a post. Just to highlight it further, I’ve even ‘featured’ a few of the guest posts at the top of the home page. Each week I see google visitors who have used keywords related to many of those posts. With a continued growth in followers and visitors and of course the better the blog does, the more exposure the guest posts receive.

I run an online forum that encourages related businesses to promote themselves. It is very young, yet already has received many hundreds of visits in its first month on a soft launch. One business that has synergy with the forum topic has been heavily promoting the forum. He has done it so well, that I’ve twice given him free advertisement. He didn’t ask, I offered. You visit the forum, you will see his posts also providing value to the community, yet naturally sitting in the signature is the link to his business. For months, years etc he might never post again, but his posts will still be found via search engines, the forum search facility or people just browsing through the threads.

A firm I work with recently offered free marketing on one of their website to anyone for a year under certain conditions. I jumped at the opportunity, so did others, but it was obvious others were wondering what was the catch. I know the firm well and obviously in a year they hope people will decide the advertisement warrants a sign up, that was all. I’ve asked them to tell me if they do the offer again, it is a great promotion.

Perhaps every x number of tweets should be a link to your site, a mention of a product or service. Even better a mixture and also worth getting creative with the way you use twitter. Stand out!

So if your running a business that uses twitter. Perhaps you could be selling yourself more? Put together a strategy, find businesses or sites with synergy who also use twitter in a number of ways. At the end of the day if you lose followers that is surely okay, you have to be clear on why you are tweeting.

So I hope this article has added value to your day. So not wanting to miss an opportunity for free marketing.... do you need any free stock images for your business, charity of personal work? Yes I hear you shout?! Then please visit my free stock image website and enjoy. http://www.andrewemmett.co.uk/freestockimages/

This article was written by Andrew Emmett and his awesome genealogy forum is here: http://www.unitedkingdomgenealogy.com/

Guy gave us some background around NGE and how they've listened to the community as they've grown and developed new features.

- look and feel needs to reflect those who are going to use it
- NGE continues to grow through viral word of mouth and staying relevant - look to ways that members wanted to use the service and developed along those lines
- NGE provides a many to many experience with the organization within the middle
- have private groups within the community - leading organizations recognize the sustained growth, power and value of Web 2.0 environments and engagement tools

Key observations

- evolving at a rapid rate
- consumers are adopting this technology quickly
- can't control the message
- complement with traditional
- many people will be lead by the few
- compelling message - well said
- principles are the same as offline
- organisations have been slow to uptake true engagement - need to address the gap between customer and organization Risks
- terms and conditions
- moderator controls
- forum rules
- contributor responsibility

You need to have strategies in place for how you will use social media and how you will respond to challenges.

Sent from my iPad

• Desire for power over their lives - better choices
• Sociability/ belonging
• Ideas can be socialised across any media - bought, owned and earned.
• Bought is push advertising, Owned - properties you own, Earned is the conversations people are having 
• Listening and learning on a massive scale - monitoring 
• Learning on an individual personal level - like twitter, RSS
• The changes - The big conversation - participation/collaboration, partnership, real-time
• Treating people as people, treating them the way you would expect to be
• Build on natural instincts
• Amplify natural social behaviour - lending ebooks etc
• Make it personal - Save Mr Splashy Pants - building a community who have an interest and personal connection
• Make it tangible and manageable - visualising data - black balloon/green house gas
• Make it useful - logging issues with local government via an iphone app (Brisbane council have the MMS service)
• Go where the people are - victorian police using Facebook to serve an order
• Help people explore and understand data that affects their lives
• Everyone loves a challenge -  30 seconds to eat a picnic on television - make your own ad
• Use public initiative to solve a problem - crowd sourcing

• be relevant, or entertaining, be useful, 
• go where people are, 
• use SEO and each type of media,
• socialise the idea
• let people participate at the level they choose
• benchmark
• continue conversations

• More Mosh turning off their Facebook comments during a crisis -  the switching off was a bigger issue
• Nestle Killer -  Nestle complained to youtube and had the video removed and were deleting comments - correcting people's comments - the story takes on a life of its own - the issue disappears to be replaced by the handling of the situation on Facebook
• Westpac - so over it today tweet
• Time out - Banksy cover became the "sell out" t-shirt - didn't answer
• Guardian Newspaper - bloggers are inadequate, pimpled etc

• the structure of government needs to fit purpose
• leadership from the workforce
• acknowledgement of positives

• the need of cultural and attitude change within organisations
• key shift to have public service officers engaging with public
• need for the level of innovation to increase in the public sector - risk averse culture prevails and needs to change
• risks can be managed

• democratising data
• citizen centric services
• participatory government

• What you can do with higher band networks
• Gov 2.0
• ICT and the creative sector

• identifying the outcomes required - what questions needs to be asked
• finding the influencers - the stakeholders

• Discussion - lightning talks - capturing social media conversations
• Live event

• Captured all the data produced during the live event
• Publishing that data and analysing it 
• publishing the draft and promoting and monitoring
• finalise and quality assurance

• No budget - used the tools already available in the cloud, they are the tools that the public already use.
• Not only digital, you can interact without being online - come in person, send a letter etc.  Working together with the tools without excluding anyone.
• Absolute openess - capturing non participants data
• Purpose - defined focused purpose - would have failed without an end purpose

• computers
• internet
• email
• social networks

• how many staff you have
• how many people do you want to reach

• all inclusive
• three platforms that are key - policy, training and monitoring
• move to two way engagement 
• analytics - see if it's working

• fundamental shift in approach - began with a vision - moving to solutions based model rather than product - using social media to advise on experiences
• see themselves as revolutionary in how they do business
• social media is the future of Dell
• developed a social media strategy
• must be relevant, engaging, simpler - constant refinement
• the customer is the centre of this

• the shift is happening to social networking - websites no considered traditional media
• social news
• targeted material and results driven by profile data

• Web 3.0 how we can interrogate the data and establishing standards (the semantic web)
• machines talking to machines through data - not possible to trawl through sheer oceans of data ourselves
• 3.0 driven by technology changes as opposed to 2.0
• common language to develop global patterns and allow connections 

• intelligent searching
• identify meaning
• combining relevant connections

• There is no real consensus of what 3.0 is supposed to be.  
• Web 3.0 is the internet of things.  
• A social media for machines.  
• We often make questions more complicated than the answer.

• by creating a common nomenclature globally it becomes easier for collaboration
• by extension within web 3.0 machines will be able to share common information between each other
• with a common language and the ability to interrogate the data sets clearer pictures and trends are identified earlier, in the case of pharmaceuticals this saves lives.

• individual genome mapping from birth
• nanomachine generated data - constant monitoring of the human body state