Connie Bensen

What is this ACDSee & what should a photographer know about it?!

That was the question I was asked by a few after I announced that I would be ACDSee’s Community Manager. If you’re a photographer or know one then here’s a quick rundown of the main reasons why a photographer should have them & a list of their main products (all the of the products have a 30 day trial):

• Powerful products, but not RAM hogs
• Highly customizable for viewing, organizing & photo editing
• Options maximize your workflow

ACDSee Pro 2   For the serious photographer & just released on Sept 10 after a beta

• Optimized viewing & processing of RAW images
• New features for browsing, viewing & organizing
• pop up previews are awesome
• ACDSee’s organizational capabilities are preferred
• Metadata support
• User friendly Advanced Image Editing
• Shadows & Highlights tool is amazing!
• Batch Processing features are very popular
• Integration & Sharing
• Options for uploading your photos to online services
• the photo widget was made using ACDSee

Digiscrappers LOVE the following products!

ACDSee Photo Manager 9 is the personal version of ACDSee Pro 2

ACDSee Photo Editor

• Fully functioning photo editing software
• supports layers
• makes text on a curve easy

Canvas – for technical illustrations

FotoSlate – a publishing software

If you have questions, please ask. ACDSee is a world leader in digital imaging products & I’m proud to have joined them!

Branding is a journey. The topic has come up in a few conversations this week. Since July I’ve been working on my personal brand. Over the past months I’ve seen Jeremiah Owyang periodically mention how he branded the term ‘web strategist’. I didn’t feel a need to brand a term, but I needed to brand my name. As a librarian, I become known as the ‘library lady’. At the Hardee’s drive thru, I’d hear “Oh you work at the library!”. I knew this was the result of my photo appearing with my monthly newspaper column, so I had a sense of how it worked. Online is a bit different though and I admit that I’ve had great help!

My sister saw in my bio that I’m editor for Dan Schawbel’s Personal Branding Magazine. She & I work together pretty closely but she was wondering how it came to be? Well last July I blogged about branding & Dan posted a couple of comments. That started a conversation between us & I browsed his blog. Dan has an amazing amount of information on his blog. And what struck me the most was his understanding of the human spirit. At 23 he has achieved what took me until my late 30’s to realize. He asked me to write an article for his magazine & shortly after reading the first issue, I agreed to serve as editor.

You can get get his magazine here – Personal Branding Magazine

Thanks to Dan I realized some important things & did the following to make it easy for people to find me:

• purchased multiple domains:
  • digiscrappinginfo.com; conniebensen.com, conniebenson.com
• created gmail accounts that match
• and started planning this blog

By the time I brought this blog up, I had a pretty good idea of how I wanted to brand it. My photo is used across all the forums I participate in as well as Facebook, Twitter, etc. It dictated the color here. Red has significance for me. I wear it when I have an important meeting (or dark purple). It’s a bright loud color that makes me feel good! So coming here is cheering too. When I asked about choosing a blog style on Twitter many said choose something that represents you. My sister has personalized it to suit me.

Dan made a comment recently that I’ve been mentoring him… that must have been my encouragement about Facebook & Twitter *grin* I’m probably a bad influence! I was looking at the meetup list for Boston in October. It’s my pleasure to connect my friends to each other. Enjoy!

The value of Twitter has been debated by many. Their opinion seems to reflect the amount of time they’ve used it. I wonder if people who are the most critical have fully experienced it & given it a chance?

I’ve been encouraging some to try it, but it’s difficult to explain. I’d like to share my perspective. When I first registered, I admit to not seeing the point. You need to become involved in the conversation to realize it’s worth.

Just reading there is going to be boring. People’s ‘tweet’s are going to seem disjointed. And if they’re twittering @others, and you can only see their side of the conversation it will be even more surreal.

For me: Twitter = Interaction

Morning news – people post links to the latest news – it’s great reading. Ann Handley of MarketingProfs is doing a great job of using Twitter to expand their blog’s reach. jowyang always has informative links.

Personally interacting with people – Twitter gives you personal insight into to other’s worlds. People express what & why they’re doing things. I enjoy chrisbrogan’s provoking questions. Sass is in social media rehab. Definitely worth a smile!

And as so many have said, it’s a water cooler to check in with friends. Because you get to know these people on a more personal level. It’s not invasive, because you check in when it’s convenient for you. People offer advice if you ask for it & are very generous. I’ve even seen impromptu job postings blip thru! Can you tell that I’m addicted?!

My rule is that if people follow me, I follow them. But if their stream is too noisy & doesn’t provide me with value, then I unfollow them. It’s interesting to note that people I’ve met on Twitter have extended to befriending on Facebook! I think that says a lot.

If’ you’d like to try it, create a Twitter account & choose a short username. Add the people above to get started (I provided links). Add me, cbensen, & I’ll be glad to help you.

Jeremiah Owyang outlines how to use it for your org. & Ann Handley provided 7 reasons why marketers should use it.

There are 3 main things to get started:

1. ‘tweets’ are limited to 140 characters, but you can tweet multiple ones to finish a thought. Posting your blog post is another way to express yourself too.

2. Use @UserName to direct it to someone specifically (but everyone sees it)

3. Direct message allows you to send a private message (but only if they’re following you).

Questions? Let me know & I’ll be glad to help. See you on Twitter!

The title should probably be “Connie’s random thoughts”. My goal today was to get my email under control & reply to comments on this blog. I did get a fair amount done, but certainly am not finished.

Organizing – In the past 10 years I’ve learned the value of purging & getting organized before starting a new project. Working at a library taught me the value of having some sets of operating standards. It didn’t take me long to realize that I could tolerate only so much chaos on my desk. At home we also have a standard for our living areas.

In the past two weeks though, my email had gotten out of hand. I must be more careful moving forward to keep ahead of it. I swear that being active in social networks is like spamming yourself! I could turn the alerts off, but I like getting them. Here are some things that I find helpful in dealing with my email:

• respond immediately as much as possible
• use Thunderbird & forward email to the main accounts that you reply from
• set up folders that make sense to you & use filters to send regular mail into them
• Copernicus is a cool app that searches my desktop – it’s a great timesaver when I’ve forgotten where I stashed something

Blogging - I am SO loving all this blogging! At first I was paralyzed by the concept of three. But each has their own perspective & there’s a bit of cross over of course. My sister helps out with the one on our site & my vision for the ACDSee blog is that more staff & evangelists will get involved. I posted some photos today at ACDSee’s blog.

I find writing very therapeutic so this is a great way to express myself. I look forward to getting a few blog posts written in advance. When I saw Jeremiah O’s explanation of that, it made total sense! And when I did it for awhile it worked great! I love how Twitter results in a number of links to respond to. And I look forward to returning to reading blogs on a regular basis.

Do you like my buttons below each post? My sister has been doing her magic again. She’s amazing!

How do you keep ahead of your email & blogging?