Be Personable… to a Point (re: Using Facebook if You’re a Business)

I’m all for being personable on your business Facebook page.

In fact, I love interacting as a consumer with businesses on Facebook that are prompt and helpful, in addition to coming across in a friendly manner.

But, this (see below) is ridiculous.

I don’t follow your business page because I want to hear about your pets… or the food that you’re eating, or your medical problems. I follow you because I’m interested in your… uh… business.

If you are a photographer, I want to see photos, updates on sessions, insight into how you run your business. Keep your cat vomit stories to your personal profile please.

You may disagree. If you do, tell me why by leaving a comment. I’m interested.

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Side note: I didn’t get my panties in a bunch because of this single post. I’m constantly wading through my feed – seeing updates from ‘businesses’ on Facebook that have nothing to do with their business. Call me crazy, but I don’t think it should work that way. And that’s my opinion as a consumer and as a page admin representing several businesses.

Jenna Baze is a rather geeky girl with average social skills and an affinity for: Google Apps, Salesforce.com, Pinterest, natural light photography and finding creative ways to avoid doing dishes (which includes updating a handful of blogs).
Email: rathergeeky@gmail.com
Twitter: @RatherGeeky
Facebook: Rather Geeky Tips

New Mobile-Optimized Blog Format

I recently discovered that Blogger (formerly known as Blogspot), which I use to publish this blog, has introduced an optional mobile-optimized format.

So, whether you are viewing this blog on your computer or on your mobile device (such as an iPhone or BlackBerry), you should see the appropriate version for that medium.

On my iPhone it looks like this:

I hope that this improves the blog-viewing experience for all readers.


If you use Blogger, you can enable this setting by doing the following:

• Log in to Blogger
• Click on the blog for which you want to customize the format
• Click on Template
• Click on the cog icon under the 'Mobile' graphic and subheading
• Choose the template that you wish to apply

#DF11 Afterglow (in brief)

While Dreamforce 2011 might be over, I am still compiling my notes and ideas.

I'll be sharing a post with my thoughts soon, but in the meantime, thanks to Salesforce for organizing yet another awesome conference. I appreciated getting to meet many new people and reconnecting with others.

I'm eagerly awaiting some of the new tools and features that will be coming in the next year.

It’s the @Dreamforce Community Conference!

This morning is kind of a big deal for all of us involved in the Salesforce community: the Community Conference. It’s an opportunity for us to share our experiences with Salesforce and our perspective as individual customers.

You can view the itinerary for the Community Conference here.

Where You Can Fine Me

I’ll be speaking in at least two sessions:

• Building Your Brand (10am – 10:45am and 11am – 12pm)
• AppExchange: Discover Top Apps on the Leading Cloud Marketplace (3:30pm – 4:30pm)

Come up and say hi! I’d love to meet you. And I’ve got quite a few extra geeky pins that I’m happy to share.

San Fran: Pre-Dreamforce, Day 1, in brief

I’m too exhausted to post much today but I’ll share some highlights so I can dive into them more later.

• Took a course with a few other Salesforce MVPs - “Intro to Object Oriented Programming for Non-Developers.” It crammed a normally-5-day course into one day. Eek.
• Did a scavenger hunt (involving some equally awesome and embarrassing moments) as part of a team building exercise for the MVPs, organized by Erica Kuhl.
• Hung out with great people – a few familiar faces and some new ones too.

The community conference is tomorrow (more on that coming soon) and then the official Dreamforce conference follows. There is always so much to cram into such a short time, but we make memories here that last all year!

Note: I’ve still got quite a few geeky girl and guy pins available. Find me tomorrow to claim yours!

Jenna Baze is a rather geeky girl with average social skills and an affinity for: Google Apps, Salesforce.com, Pinterest, natural light photography and finding creative ways to avoid doing dishes (which includes updating a handful of blogs).
Email: rathergeeky@gmail.com
Twitter: @RatherGeeky
Facebook: Rather Geeky Tips

Awesome @Dreamforce Session Calendar Import Tool from Mavens Consulting

After finalizing my schedule for Dreamforce, I recalled a tweet from @BotosCloud about a neat tool that his company (Mavens Consulting) had put together.

In the Dreamforce app, you click on "My Calendar", then "Email My Calendar." Then forward the email you receive to dfcalendar@mavensconsulting.com. You'll receive back an email with an attachment that you can import and add to your calendar.

This is a great way to provide an integration that works for those of us that no longer use Outlook. (Yay for Google Apps!)

Also, I love that I'm now able to see all of my sessions and I can add my own meetings (like with my boss or evening events), which isn't possible with the Dreamforce app Calendar (yet - although I have suggested it. Maybe next year).

Thanks for sharing a neat solution guys!

Now my calendar looks like this:

Note: it appears that their website is currently down for maintenance, so I viewed a cached copy of the original link by going to Google, searching for the url and then clicking on 'cached.'

Dreamforce Countdown: 2 days. San Fran: tomorrow.

I leave for San Francisco tomorrow to attend Salesforce.com's annual Dreamforce conference.

So far, I've got my schedule pretty well planned.

For those of you that might be looking to grab a pin, I'll be sharing my location on twitter periodically. I'll also be updating the Dreamforce app with the sessions that I'm in. I'm toying with the idea of posting a daily 'this is what I'm wearing' pic so that it makes it easier to find me. :)

If you're interested in listening to me speak (eek), you can attend one of these sessions:

• Building Your Brand, Tuesday 8/30 10-10:45am, Moscone West 3022
  With Mike Gerholdt and Nick Westergaard. We've got some great tips for building your brand and blogging, whether you're a Salesforce admin or not. Note: It's possible that they've scheduled another session for us right after, so if there isn't room in the first one, please stop by the second!
  
  
• AppExchange: Discover Top Apps on the Leading Cloud Marketplace, Tuesday 3:30-4:30pm, Marriott Marquis - Lower B2 Level - Yerba Buena Salons 1-3
  Discover a few apps that you might not have heard about and how we are using them. The solutions I'm discussing might appeal to smaller Salesforce orgs, while my co-presenters are from much larger orgs.
  

I hope that you all have a great learning and networking experience at Dreamforce 2011. And for those that aren't able to make it, don't forget that you can join online!

If you're interested, you can read about my experience at last year's Dreamforce conference here.

Admin Journal: A Confession About Chatter

I have a confession… and I’m rather ashamed.

We don’t use Chatter (well, a post here and there). I haven’t devoted much time to training my users to use it. And, I haven’t tweaked it at all.

But, there’s hope. I plan to attend a session (or 2) at Dreamforce to learn about getting people on board and some customization options.

Anywhoo, something happened today that made me realize that I shouldn’t be so intimidated about discussing Chatter with my users.

I created a new user. 15 minutes later, I received a notification that she had commented on a chat.

15 minutes.

That tells me that I need to give my users more credit. It’s not that hard.

Additional Resources

• More about Salesforce Chatter

 

Jenna Baze is a rather geeky girl with average social skills and an affinity for: Google Apps, Salesforce.com, Pinterest, natural light photography and finding creative ways to avoid doing dishes (which includes updating a handful of blogs).
Email: rathergeeky@gmail.com
Twitter: @RatherGeeky
Facebook: Rather Geeky Tips

A Letter to Juno: My Nana is Dead. Stop Charging Her.

Shame on you Juno. Shame on you for continuing to charge my dead Nana.

The other day, I was helping my mom type something up on the computer that we inherited from my Nana. She died a few months ago and we have slowly been picking up the pieces and getting through the grief.

As I showed my mom how to align her text, she mentioned that, despite several efforts of my family members to close down my Nana’s paid Juno account, the company was still charging her.

I couldn’t believe it.

First of all, I didn’t realize that people had to pay for Juno. Exactly what sort of ‘additional features’ are included in their premium plan. I decided to check out what $14.95/month gets you:

• I think it’s rather likely that my Nana was already paying for internet service, so it’s nice to know that she was doubly covered for ‘Fastest Dial-Up Surfing You Can Get’.
• Unlimited Access: What does that even mean? Unlimited access to The Internet? Uh, I didn’t realize you had to pay for that.
• Spam and Email Virus Protection: Hey, did you know Gmail does that for free?
• No Credit Card Required: Well, thank goodness that you’re willing to find alternative ways of taking peoples’ money for technology that should have been left behind in the 20th century.

Regardless of the ‘services’ provided, shame on you Juno. Shame on you for continuing to charge my dead Nana.

If a Juno representative happens to stumble upon this post, you can reach me via email at rathergeeky@gmail.com.

Jenna Baze is a rather geeky girl with average social skills and an affinity for: Google Apps, Salesforce.com, Pinterest, natural light photography and finding creative ways to avoid doing dishes (which includes updating a handful of blogs).
Email: rathergeeky@gmail.com
Twitter: @RatherGeeky
Facebook: Rather Geeky Tips

The #DF11 Goodies Have Arrived. Yay! @Salesforce

Thanks to Zazzle and Moo, I'm ready for Dreamforce 2011 in San Fran. One more week to go!