Cool tools | David Lee King

A visual Social Media Strategy: Show, Don’t Tell

September 4, 2012 By David Lee King

My new book, Face2face: Using Facebook, Twitter, and other Social Media Tools to Create Great Customer Connections, was just mentioned in this Inc.com article -Â Better Social Media Strategy: Show, Don’t Tell. Sweet!

In the article (sort of an author interview type article), I provide five tips on communicating with your organization’s customers using visual social media tools like Pinterest, Facebook photos, and Instagram.

Here are my five tips to create great visual communication that are mentioned in the article:

Show your stuff
Show your staff
Get close
Great lighting is key
Make your photos helpful to customers

Each point is explained in more detail at Inc.com, so go read the article for more information (and thanks, Marla Tabaka, for the mention!).

And if you like that info … remember to buy my book!

Face2Face – my Handheld Librarian 7 Presentation

August 21, 2012 By David Lee King

Face2Face: Using social tools to make Great Customer Connections from David King

I had the honor of giving a presentation at last week’s Handheld Librarian 7 online conference. I presented a very condensed version of my book,Â Face2face: Using Facebook, Twitter, and Other Social Media Tools to Create Great Customer Connections.

The presentation slides are embedded above – enjoy!

PS – earlier that day, I gave another Social Media 101 presentation at a local Goodyear plant. That was a fun group to present to – lots of questions! Here are those slides, too – just for kicks.

iPads at the Airport

August 16, 2012 By David Lee King

Like iPads, and think they could work in a public space? Check this video out! I recently saw a bunch of iPads at the Delta terminal at LaGuardia airport in New York, and took a short video of them. Here’s a link to some photos, too.

Basically, here’s what I saw – hundreds of iPads in the airport terminal gates, secured to tables with a cable. Each iPad had airport info, news, games, a restaurant menu, and web access apps installed. You could order items from the restaurant via a credit card swiper beside the iPad. No signup, no waiting list – just find an empty iPad and start using it. Here’s a couple of newsÂ articles written about this experiment.

The only real problem I saw was one of sorta gross smudges on the iPads. Thankfully, I also saw someone walking around, cleaning the screens.

I think this type of setup could easily work in a library setting! Here are some starter thoughts on potential uses:

catalog-only computers
computer “overflow” – get out the iPads!
Simple browsing stations. Who needs PCs?
Complete mobile technology in the library – no PCs needed (with those handy self-service tablet checkout machines that were being shown in the exhibit hall at ALA Annual). Just check out an iPad, then take it wherever you want to in the library.
Out-of-the-building events
For staff, they could work nicely as roving reference tools.

Question – how does your library use iPads or mobile tablet technology? I’ll start: so far, we have some iPads that staff can check out for a learning opportunity, we have experimented with them for roving reference, and we teach a class on using an iPad. How about you?

Playing with the ProJive XLR iPhone Cable

May 15, 2012 By David Lee King

I just bought theÂ ProJive XLR mic cableÂ for my iPhone. What’s it do? It’s an XLR to headphone jack cable adapter, and it’s made to plug a normal XLR microphone into an iPhone.

This lets me use my better-quality microphones (well, better than the built-in iPhone mic, anyway) for recording. It works with any audio app (like the voice recorder) or with video apps, too.

So – check out the video above, and listen to the sound. Not bad for an iPhone video, huh? Also listen for the unmistakable cell phone interference – that “beep beep beep” noise that you sometimes hear when a cell phone is close to some speakers. I’ll have to experiment more – if that interference happens a lot, the cable isn’t going to be all that helpful.

But we’ll see. Until then, I can now get quality audio in my iPhone videos effortlessly. Sweet!

Web Design Trends for 2012

April 30, 2012 By David Lee King

I’ve been working on some large writing projects this year, and in the process, came across some great lists of web design trends for 2012 that I thought I’d share. Let me know if you are incorporating any of these into your websites!