Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’

Social media fields in the QuickBooks 2012 Lead Center

I have been experimenting with the new features of QuickBooks 2012 and was pleasantly surprised when I noticed that the new Lead Center contains optional contact information fields for LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Skype. Social Media in Lead Center Apparently, Intuit has recognized the value of these social media tools for marketing and added them as a means for QuickBooks users to connect with prospective customers.  It is cool to see accounting software become a little more social.

Five Useful RSS Feeds I Follow That Are Not News or Blogs

I previously wrote a blog post about how I have been using RSS feeds to stay current on the news.  The majority of the feeds that I subscribe to are news and blogs, but there are a few that don’t fall under either of these categories that I have found to be useful.
  1. Tweets of a few individuals. I follow about 200 people on Twitter and I can’t log in to Twitter enough times to keep up with every single tweet of the people I follow every day.  However, there are those among the Twitter users I follow who share great information and I don’t want to miss any of their tweets.  It’s easy to add a Twitter timeline to Google Reader (which I use to read RSS feeds).  Copy the Twitter user’s URL (for example, http://twitter.com/whe97007), click on the “add a subscription” button and paste the URL in the box that appears.
  2. Twitter searches for certain words and hashtags. Using Twitter Advanced Search, I created RSS feeds for tweets from Las Vegas, Nevada, that include the words CPA, accountant, tax, or QuickBooks.  I have found a few interesting people to follow and some potential business opportunities.  For example, a tweet saying “next year I think I’ll have to invest in a good tax accountant” caught my attention and I contacted that Twitter user.  The only drawback to subscribing to these feeds is that I have to sift through a lot of unimportant tweets like “I just got my tax refund so now I can buy that HDTV!”
  3. LinkedIn Network Updates. LinkedIn is a great site for professional networking, but I don’t visit it daily.  I use RSS as a more efficient way to see what my connections are up to.  Occasionally, I notice that one of my connections connects to someone I know, who I then connect to as well.  You can get RSS feeds within the LinkedIn account settings.
  4. Notifications for new downloads. For example, I subscribe to the RSS feed of the CPA Technology Advisor to know when a new podcast is available for download.
  5. YouTube channels. In particular, I enjoy the YouTube channel for K2 Enterprises, which provides technology tips for CPAs.  Thanks to RSS, I am alerted when a new video is available to view.
If you have any ideas for using RSS feeds, please share them by leaving a comment in the box below.