After walking down the aisle in September, I’ve just started the massive task of changing my name everywhere. I’m sure most women (like me) don’t realise how big this task will be until they actually start the process. Bank accounts, phone, electricity, drivers licence….the list goes on.

But, these days we also have social media to deal with. How on earth do you change your name on Facebook and LinkedIn? I’ve just figured a couple of these things out and have some basic steps below. [Although...these sites do tend to change frequently so to future readers of this post, apologies if the steps aren’t quite right.]

FACEBOOK

Once you have logged into your Facebook page, on the menu in the far right you will see a small down arrow. If you click this you will see a number of options, one of which is ‘Account Settings’. Click this.

Within ‘Account Settings’ you can update things like Name, Username and Email.

Change your name

To start, change your last name by editing the ‘Name’ field. Change your last name to your new married name then add your maiden name to the ‘alternative name’ field. This will ensure that people from your past can still find you even if they don’t know your new married name. If you’d like your maiden name to appear in your profile, tick the box.

On my profile page my name now appears as Angela Logovik (Brown).

Change your username [or Vanity URL]

A Username in Facebook will make it easier for people to find you. This URL is also sometimes referred to as a Vanity URL.

Type in your preferred username and Facebook will let you know whether it is available.

If you already have a username and need to update it, Facebook will allow you to update your username once only. Type in your new username and save changes.

Change your email

If your main email address has changed update the information by adding another email to your account and updating your primary email address. The primary address that you choose will be the email you use to login to Facebook with (unless you have created a separate username).

Facebook does give you the option to include multiple email addresses in your account so you can add in your new address but also keep your old address for a while.

Remember to use the correct email the next time you try to login!

LINKEDIN

You may need to change a few things in LinkedIn, or at least I did.

Change your email

To change your primary email go to settings. There is a drop down list when you hover over your name in the top right hand corner of the page. Select ‘Settings’.

Towards the bottom of this page there are four tabs [Profile / Email Preferences / Groups, Companies & Applications / Account]. Select ‘Account’.

Under ‘Email & Password’ select ‘Add & change email addresses’.

A lightbox will appear where you can add and/or remove email addresses from LinkedIn. Add your new email address and update your primary address. Your primary address will be the email you use to login to LinkedIn with.

Remember to use the correct email the next time you try to login!

Change your name

Go to the profile tab (next to Home on the main navigation) and select ‘Edit Profile’.

This screen shows your entire profile and gives you the chance to edit various information. Select  ‘edit’ next to your name.

Complete your new details on this page. Change your last name, add your maiden name to the appropriate field and select how your name should be displayed.

Next to the ‘Former/Maiden Name’ field there is a lock icon that will allow you to set the visibility of your former name.

Change your Public Profile URL [or Vanity URL]

If you don’t already have one, you can follow these steps to create one.

If you have created a Vanity URL you may need to change it. For example, my URL used to be http://au.linkedin.com/in/angelabrownbluewire. For me it didn’t make sense to keep using this URL as I am no longer Angela Brown.

Go to the ‘Edit Profile’ page. If you have just changed your name you are already here. If not go to ‘Profile’ then ‘Edit Profile’.

At the top of the page you will see all of your personal information listed including name, current position, education, connections etc. At the bottom of this list is ‘Public Profile’.

Select ‘edit’ next to the URL at ‘Public Profile’ and this will show you your Public Profile page. This is the profile that people see when they search for you.

On the right hand side of this screen at the top you will see ‘Customise Your Public Profile’ and below that ‘Your Public Profile URL’.

To edit or create your URL, select ‘Customise your public profile URL’ (it’s a blue link).  A lightbox will appear where you can add setup your URL. Don’t worry it’s easy.

My new Public Profile URL now looks like this http://au.linkedin.com/in/angelalogovik.

Finally…

Don’t forget to update these details in your email signature. You don’t want people trying to click through to links that no longer exist!

If like Sharon you’re keen to apply for one of our internship positions, visit our jobs page.

Sharon will be with us for the next 10 weeks so stay tuned for more posts.

Take it away Sharon.

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When you think about the digital age you picture sassy, open minded people cruising the information highway, facebooking (yes it is a verb now), snatching news headlines on the run, while commenting about pertinent world issues on Twitter. What we imagine is an opening – a broadening of knowledge as people from all walks of life, cultures and political landscapes connect through social media, swapping ideas and sharing understanding. We picture a consistent learning on a global scale. But are we really becoming more knowledgeable and open-minded? Or is all this social media and personal connectivity in fact creating a narrowing of our knowledge base?

These questions were raised during the recent Ideas Festival, held in Brisbane in May this year, and are certainly worthy of our consideration. We live in a rapidly changing society and it is broadband cable that is connecting us. The faster we connect, the faster we can exchange ideas and the faster we can potentially encourage different behavior and influence the shape of the future planet. All of this seems positive and exciting, but the truth is that the consequences of this brave new world are unknown.

The argument runs like this. Research shows that more people get their information from social media networks than from anywhere else. And let’s face it; we’re all guilty of this. On a busy day, a quick check of the twitter or facebook feed is often enough to keep us relevant and up to date. The problem is that more and more we will have a population that has a tiny bit of knowledge on a whole range of topics. Not only that, but they will have only the perspective that matches like-minded people. Our facebook friends are usually similar to us, and on twitter we share interests. Consequentially we get a narrowing of our understanding of the world, rather than a deepening. We’re getting little sound bites – homogenous views across our shared networks. We end up with a select and often restricted view of the world. If knowledge really is power, then suddenly our increased personal connectivity through social media appears disquieting. Perhaps this will be the real challenge for the digital era – maintaining depth of understanding.

We need to consider the danger of creating a blinkered world view through our use of social media, and make the effort to broaden our scope. It’s fine to get the snap shot, to keep up to date using facebook and twitter, providing our search for knowledge and quest for the truth are not abandoned to convenience and mobility. Rather than absorb a readymade opinion from the news feed, let’s all commit to a little further research on issues that matter. Let’s try for some authenticity in our understanding of the important stuff.

Here is a recent experience I had with an industry who aren’t usually known for stepping outside the box when it comes to customer service…

We all know how expensive electricity is becoming and you have probably been exposed to several electricity suppliers trying to vie for your business by offering a better deal.

I normally only receive bills from my supplier, until the recent letter and personal business card I received from Origin Energy. The stand out for me was that it was from someone unexpected:

Manager

Department of Call Us if Another Offer’s on the Table

The message was simple (even if the name of the department wasn’t). If another provider offers a better deal, phone Origin before switching!

What an interesting way to stand out from the crowd! I had a bit of a chuckle, have now told several people and will always remember the Department of Call Us if Another Offer’s on the Table.

What are some of your memorable customer service experiences?

Where do you begin when first writing a reference manual?
As with any writing, it helps to start with general information and gradually become more specific.

In the case of a reference manual, I’d start with basic contact information for support, log in details, and an overview of the system to provide the user with a very basic starting point. Then start going into more detail, first about the consistent areas of the system (global navigation, common buttons etc.) and secondly, about really specific parts relevant only to that particular client.

Do you find it difficult explaining technical information to the lay person?
It can be hard, as simply replacing jargon with regular words doesn’t necessarily work. Sometimes the concept itself can be quite foreign making it very tricky to communicate even if using 10 year old English.

To illustrate, compare two explanations of a WYSIWYG editor:

Example 1
A WYSIWYG editor is a content editor that allows you to edit text, images etc and have them look how they will in the final context.

Example 2
A WYSIWYG editor allows you to update content on your website using tools similar to the basic functions of Microsoft Word. This means that you can see what the finished product will look like on the website before you hit save (and also you don’t need to know any code!).

How do you overcome this?
One of my favourite techniques is the analogy, which can help explain not just how something works but also why things happen. If you get an analogy wrong, though, it can make things even more complicated!

During your time at Bluewire Media how have your methods of writing improved /changed?
I’ve had lots of opportunities to get feedback from both colleagues and clients over the past couple of years, which has helped me discover what concepts and words the general public needs explained. It’s also helped me write instructions more clearly and even change my tack on reference manuals completely…

In what way have your made help information more accessible to clients?
The majority of the manuals I write are for content management systems. In the last few months, I’ve been experimenting with embedding the help information I write into the administration area of the system itself. This means that when a client has a problem entering content or editing something, the help information relevant to that part of the site is just a click away. So far, feedback on this technique has been positive.

How is writing a process for staff different from writing a reference guide for clients?
The main difference is the amount of background information required. Staff processes don’t need lengthy explanations or glossaries – they just launch straight into the meat of the document. I expect that the staff I am writing the process for already have the technical background necessary to understand the process.

How do you decide what processes need to be written?
Deciding what processes need writing is possibly more difficult than actually writing them! I’ve recently been doing just this for our development processes and I found the easiest way was to write a really general overview of our entire development process, then decide what parts of the process needed further explanation. I’ve created a list of required processes and am slowly making my way through them – I’m sure the list will change and/or grow as I write more.

Why go to the trouble of writing processes down? Can’t information be passed on verbally?
There’s nothing worse than wondering how to do something and thinking “I bet John Smith would have known…” if John left the company 3 months ago. Writing down processes regularly and thoroughly means that the company isn’t reliant on any one person – which lets them withstand sudden resignations or fast-tracked inductions far better.

Everything used to be passed on orally hundreds of years ago… then we invented the printing press. Now we have computers, so why look back?

I understand that you will be expanding on your technical writing skills next year. What areas of your writing do you hope to improve upon?
I’m planning on taking a technical writing course. The course focuses on communication around technical issues in general, so it’ll be useful for everything from internal processes, blog articles, help manuals and even everyday emails to clients.

Make sure you let us know how the course goes!

‘If that click doesn’t do what it is supposed to, I react like a two year old who has let go of their helium balloon….’

Unless you are someone who is seriously involved with the technology it can be easy to overlook how much happens ‘behind the scenes’ of a simple click on a website.

Stefan goes on to give a blow by blow of what happens when you click the purchase button on a shopping cart. I’m sure he only brushes the surface but it is already way too complicated for me.

The article is an interesting and fun read, and certainly points out that we should all give our IT people a bit more slack. They have a lot to try and coordinate!

They have just been awarded 2 Grand Prix awards at the Cannes Lions 2009 56th International Advertising Festival for their ‘Best Job in the World’ campaign.

For those of you who have been living under a rock and managed to miss the publicity that surrounded this very successful campaign, head to the Cannes Lions 2009 website to check out their awards for Public Relations and Direct Marketing.

Great job guys!

Keeping this in mind, I am still reeling from an experience that I had with one of our suppliers this week. For an unknown reason we had an outstanding invoice so I contacted them by telephone to make a payment.

Problem #1
Billing enquiries has very cleverly been included as part of the technical support option in their automated telephone system. This meant that I was cuing with other customers who had technical problems and were going to take a lot longer than me.

Problem #2
After providing my customer reference number and explaining why I had called I was asked to provide my password. Not realizing that I would require a password to pay an invoice I had no idea what it was. The fact that I wanted to pay the company money was apparently not a good enough reason to bypass this ‘security question’. No password – no go!!
After being told that our password would be emailed to us I was to hang up and call back later.

Seriously guys…….
I may not have mentioned the name of the company here but let me tell you….in the last 2 days I have told roughly 8 people about my BAD experience.

So what am I trying to say?
Ensure that your customers can complete the tasks they need to complete quickly and efficiently! If you cannot do this you may be saying goodbye to them along with all of the potential customers who have heard the bad story.

So, late last year when I was asked to prepare a presentation about Google Analytics I had my own little nervous breakdown. I had no idea what it was let alone how to use it. Ahhhhh!

As it turns out once I started exploring, it wasn’t as scary as first appearances suggested. And in true Google style, simple explanations of reports and terms were only a click away [and not the really convoluted explanations but simple easy to understand explanations.

So what is Google Analytics?

I am currently working on a white paper as an introduction to Google Analytics. Not for experienced users but for those people like me who become nervous and frustrated when doing something new on the internet. Watch this space.