ZOHO: Free Suite of Online Applications

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Free is good!  And ZOHO is really, really good!  ZOHO is a free suite of online business, productivity and collaboration applications that you access from the ZOHO website.  ZOHO’s website states, “The applications are free for individuals and some have a subscription fee for organizations. Our vision is to provide our customers (individuals, students, educators, non-profits, small and medium sized businesses) with the most comprehensive set of applications available anywhere (breadth); and for those applications to have enough features (depth) to make your user experience worthwhile.”

Examples of ZOHO productivity and collaboration applications are:

• ZOHO Mail
• ZOHO Writer
• ZOHO WIKI
• ZOHO Share

Examples of ZOHO business applications are:

• ZOHO CRM
• ZOHO Meeting
• ZOHO Projects
• ZOHO People

Chris Brogan has some great thought about Websites like ZOHO and what the future may entail for social networks.  Here is an excerpt from Chris’ blog post:

“I’ve long been a fan of what Zoho does, but with this new Marketplace, I get the feeling that we’re going to inch closer to one of my predictions for the future of social networks: velvet rope social platforms.

By this, I mean to say that Facebook won’t cut it in the near future for professional networks. If you and I are journalists, we’ll want to hang out on a site that has tools that make sense to us, alongside our friending features. If we’re realtors or hoteliers, we’ll want tools specific to our trades. If we’re educators, the same.

Tools like these in the marketplace are a great way for us to move even closer towards that future, as I see them potentially extending into use on various social platforms, if you just squint your eyes a bit.”

Read Chris’ entire blogpost here.

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Writers Wanted!

In addition to being an adjunct professor, business owner and PhD student, I’m also a contributing editor for Bright Hub – hence My blog title, Social Media Scribe!  If your not familiar with Bright Hub, its a science and technology website dedicated to utilizing deep domain expertise to focus on creating valuable information about new and emerging scientific and technology applications through a host of articles, software and hardware reviews, buyer’s guides, blog entries and forum discussions.

Bright Hub needs writers! If you are a blogger than you are a writer!  Bright Hub has a several different channels that you can write for, according to your expertise – my channel is the project management channel.  Other channels include :

Computing & Hardware

Education

Engineering Technology

Environment

Health & Wellness

Internet

Mobile

Multimedia

Office Productivity

Science Technology

Video Game

So you see, there’s a channel for everyone!  One of the great benefits of being a writer for Bright Hub is the PAY.  I’ve researched other writing sites and Bright Hub pays – not per word, or per click, but per article and through their revenue sharing program.  You can read more about being a writer for Bright Hub on their website.

I can attest to how great the company is.  Bright Hub is consistently updating the site, adding features to increase writer productivity, and offering incentives for writers.  For example the September promotion is for every for every 5 (300 word count or more) articles published in September, the writer will receive a $30 bonus.  How Fantastic is that!

If you would like to know more about Bright Hub, feel free leave a comment or contact me at: natasha.m.baker@gmail.com!

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Improve Your Blog Posts With Peer Reviewed Articles

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There is a lot of junk in blogsphere and not every post is vetted and thoroughly reviewed.  Unfortunately, there is not always a clear line drawn between opinion and fact.  To assist in production of high quality articles or blog posts I recommend using a peer reviewed article as a source.

What is a peer reviewed article?

In the world of academia peer reviewed journals are similar to blogs written by trusted writers. Peer reviewed journals undertake rigorous protocols in the selection and publishing of articles.  Drafts of articles undergo critical review and assessment by other scholars in the author’s field before they are accepted for publication.  This process is similar to the way in which a blog post is scrutinized.

For example, when a writer publishes a post on his blog, the blog’s readers weigh in (or comment) on the post.  Whether positive or negative – the feedback either supports or disproves what the writer has written.  Such is the process of the peer review, also known as refereeing. The reviewers are frequently not employed directly by the journal which helps to ensure objectivity and neutrality.

How to Find Peer Reviewed Articles

Google Scholar is a free bibliographic database that indexes scholarly texts, including peer-reviewed online journals.  Google Scholar does not require users to a subscribe or pay a fee.  Google Scholar allows users to search for digital or physical copies of articles, whether they be online or in libraries.

As a current PhD student at Walden University, I religiously use Google Scholar to research articles and publications for my assignments and papers.  I find it user-friendly, accurate, and concise.  One of the features that I continuously take advantage of is the link on the citation that lists other publications that cited the article in question.  This allows me to see the popularity of the article and how other writers have utilized the information in the article, and sometimes guide me down different research paths that I have not considered.

How do I know is an article has Been Peer Reviewed?

I order to figure out of an article has been peer-reviewed or not you have to research the journal that published the article.  The simple way to accomplish this would be to visit the journal’s website.  Once you locate the publication’s website, locate the article submission section. This section will outline the guidelines for article submission which normally states whether the publication participates in the peer review process.

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

When and if you do use a peer reviewed article in a blog post, give credit to the author. You can reference the article used, provide a link to the publication, or place a footnote at the end of your post. Citing a peer reviewed article can provide truth and credibility to your posts – which every writer can use.

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Tips and Techniques for Better Blogs

I found this fascinating quote today by Chris Brogan:

Your blog topics are getting weak. You had a nice run with passion for a while, but now, you’re looking for better blog topics, more interesting content, and you’re still trying to grow that elusive community. How are you going to succeed?

You should read the whole article.

Chris Brogan advises businesses, organizations and individuals on how to use social media and social networks to build relationships and deliver value.

Reliability and Validity of Social Media Marketing Research

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Validity is the degree to which your assumption (construct or hypothesis) is measured by your chosen method of measurement.  Basically does your research project (the type of data gathered and the means of gathering that data) truly measure that which it is intended to measure?
Reliability is how consistently your chosen method of measurement produces the same results.  To elaborate on that ideal, reliability is also estimated by whether or not the results of your research can be reproduced under a similar methodology.
Testing the reliability and validity of social media as effective marketing channels for organizations.  The term social media refers to web 2.0 applications such as social network sites such as Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, blogs, wikis and Twitter (microblogging).  One can assume that not all social media is a useful marketing channel in every organization.  For example, a musician would benefit more from using YouTube as a marketing channel than would a photographer.  The photographer would more than likely benefit from using Flickr than from using YouTube.
One can implement a marketing campaign utilizing a social media application and measure the validity of the social media(SM) as an effective means of marketing for the organization.  The SM’s effectiveness could be based on a measurement of “total response” to the campaign.
From a reliability perspective it can be asked, how reliable is the use of “total response” as a reliable measurement of the effectiveness of a social media marketing campaign for an organization.  If a marketing research firm conducted research of a client’s use of MySpace, in its marketing campaign, and the research results showed that MySpace was very effective way of marketing; would another marketing firm’s research yield the same results if all of the parameters in their research were identical?

The Inc. 500

In early 2007 the results of a groundbreaking study into the adoption of social media
within the Inc. 500, an elite group of the fastest-growing companies within the United
States, were released. As one of, if not the first studies of corporate social media adoption
with statistical significance, it proved conclusively that social media was coming to the
business world and sooner than many anticipated.  Now, approximately one year later,
that same group was studied again in an effort to look at longitudinal change in the
adoption of these digital communication tools.

Social Media in the Inc. 500: The First Longitudinal Study