Why the best social networks must grow organically

Target audience: Community manager, marketing professionals, PR pros, brand managers, entrepreneurs, businesses, nonprofits, educators, Web publishers, journalists.

Way back in 2000, Amy Jo Kim wrote the book on best practices and strategies on how to start, build, grow, and maintain online communities in Community Building on the Web : Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities.

If you can find a copy, buy one. Everything Amy Jo Kim recommends can be mapped perfectly to Web 2.0 and social network services — namely, her belief that communities need to grow organically and not be rigid, planned, communities. That is, more like London than Paris.

Start out as a boutique and then grow in response to the “neighborhood” and the market. A toy store in a retirement community might sound like a bad idea because a toy store should be marketed to parents; actually, grandparents do a lot of the spoiling so allowing grandparents to easily and effortlessly shop for and buy toys for their grand children is a really great idea.

Your community, as it grows, is not really your choice. A lot of the decision as to who and what your community becomes depends on the initial members. Your first 10 members will define your 100 will define your 1,000 will define your 1,000,000. The only choice you have as a business and as a host is who you invite to be your first 10-100 members. After that, you sort of have to get out of the way and then meet the needs of this new thing you have created.

Back in the late ’90s I had an online community about memetics, memes.org, which I wanted to be a place in which to discuss memes, memetics, popular culture, and other social- and pseudo-scientific stuff. Well, after a couple years, the community evolved itself into a community that was really fetishing the existence of alien life, of a global conspiracy, of the reptilian aliens, and of the Bilderberg’s control of all commerce and all choices, the New World Order.

If I hadn’t let the community find itself and kept on steering the community back to my vision, I would have pruned memes.org too dearly, I would have starved off the members and their interests, and I would have alienated the real core of my users, the one in 1,000 who spent a lot of their time making the community ultimately a success.

Most social networks, such as Friendster and Orkut, end up “losing control” of their communities and then spend their entire life trying to being the mission back into line. Orkut evolved into a Brazilian social network and Friendster is now an Asian social network. Instead of selling the sites to Brazilian and Asian investors, they instead try desperately to steer them back into line.

Why building a social networking service in stages is preferable

A community is indeed a family. In order to really have a successful family, you have to let its members to be themselves and trust you. Otherwise, family members will feel that their patriarch and matriarch are disappointed in them.

Do all of your scheming before you launch. After your first hundred members get started, you pretty much should get the hell out of the way and let the community self-organize. You can be a gardener but don’t practice bonsai.

Don’t alienate your online community. Let them grow and have fun and play. Give them the gifts they want, not the gifts you want to give; offer them — your members — the toys with which they want to play, even if it is the cardboard box in which the toy was packaged. And, in the end, don’t judge your community.

Play with them. Enjoy them. Love them.

The beauty of an social network is that it can easily be built in stages. In fact, building an social networking service in stages is preferable, and here’s why: Users don’t like their user experience dictated to them, they want their user experience and preferences to define the innovation of the social network.

It makes everything easier, actually. There have been many applications and virtual spaces that have been very expensively designed, like a terrarium or like a theme park, only to be rejected by the members. Usually, at this stage, too much money, time, and investment has been put into the project, so all the energy is spent to try to persuade the members of all the untapped potential and value they’re missing by not doing as they’re told.

Orkut & Friendster are great examples of social networks that were too rigid in their design, expecting the users to adopt their tools, their styles, and their values of community.

Actually, Friendster is a perfect example. The creators of Friendster made it quite closed and structured, and the designers felt a certain amount of stewardship over its users’ experience. Friendster wanted to define what a community was and should be. People you know and who are either your personal friend or a friend of a friend.

Children do not like having the toy’s box taken from them just because they’re playing with the box and not the toy. It all comes down to play. People who want to build deep, important, and intimate relationships should be allowed; people to who want to compete should have lots of ways to do so, and people who want to date, meet single, and flirt should be able to do that, too.

Before you start — before you create your own social networking site, your own social media — be sure to check to make sure that you actually need to. It could be that all you need is to do a better job of being an engaged participant on communities that already exist, be it on Facebook or Google Plus groups or pages or on messages, forums, or even subreddits.

Go forth and facilitate.

H/T to Attorney April Cockerham for her contributions to this post

The post What makes an online community work appeared first on Inside Social Media.

Annual look at the best strategies, tactics, case studies & insights in the enterprise space

Compared to 2009 and 2008, the past year was a relatively calm one because the amplitude of market gyrations clearly diminished and businesses began to find a new floor on which to build stakeholder expectations. Although I watched with high interest the unfolding financial drama in Europe, I didn’t have the time to conduct the research necessary to do a rigorous interpretation, although I published a brief reflection last week. The big story of the past year was this: 2010 marked a turning point in the adoption of social technologies and in the recognition that analysis and strategy are necessary to achieve consistent results with social initiatives.

Macro trends: Moving from broadcast to relationship building

Social has been in adolescence until recently — “being on Facebook” was an end in itself, agencies produced vapid content and little interaction happened because people rarely interact when brands are talking at them instead of listening. People feel it when a brand is interested in using social tools to promote itself. They also feel it when a brand is interested in building relationship, which is marked by active listening and responding, along with a relative absence of self-promotion. Brands that build relationship learn that they don’t have to try so hard to promote themselves: when they are truly interested in people, people will promote them. However, this approach remains a future state for most companies. Relationships take serious work — thus, a need for a strategy.

The growing use of strategy is also a harbinger for what I call “social business” (a step beyond social media), in which leaders use social technologies to transform their businesses by collaborating openly with various outside and inside stakeholders to innovate constantly. Early movers will begin emerging this year: Only a few gutsy players will aggressively adopt social business practices in 2011. I believe they can change markets.

This year, I have five views through which I analyze social business trends. I also selected 12 articles as Must Read. Most important, I invite you to share your thoughts and questions in the comments.

• Economy, Enterprise, Strategy and Adoption
• Social Business for Commercial & Government Enterprises
• Social Networking Platform Review
• Marketing 2.0 and Customer Experience
• Technology

Economy, Enterprise, Strategy and Adoption

In 2010, the world economy slowly improved at a pace of 1.25 steps forward, 1.0 steps back, but enterprises slowly gained confidence that bad news was finite and mostly behind them — unless they were in Greece, Ireland or, to a lesser extent, Portugal and Spain. Their adoption of social business was predictable, steady and slow. Most of the posts highlighted cited below hail from the Social Network Roadmap (SM) because they focus on the drivers and practice of social business. Heavy client work in the past year included a Fortune 50 retailer, a global semiconductor manufacturer and a prominent local government on the U.S. East Coast.

Business executives have begun to realize that they need a more coordinated sense of purpose — a strategy, and strategy began maturing social initiatives. Not long ago, the mantra was, “Throw a couple of interns at it, they know how to do Facebook.” In the past year I helped clients clean up some of those messes: Activity doesn’t equate to business results. I expect the clean-up phase to continue through 2013 at least because success depends on being social in meaningful ways to customers and practical ways to businesses.

From a business perspective, strategy provides the rationale for prolonged focus, which is required because relationships need commitment. Businesses’ commitments must be grounded in business purpose. Being social for its own sake is a short-lived phenomenon. As this section’s “must reads” point out, most businesses don’t know how to “be social” in authentic, meaningful ways. In most cases, it also requires extensive mentoring to learn the tools, processes and behaviors well enough to be natural online. Social knowledge is indeed a key barrier. Also read the “Decade in Review” to understand the context of where we are today.

• Must Read: Enterprise Adoption of Social Business 2010 — Social Knowledge Gap a Key Barrier
• Must Read: Enterprise Adoption of Social Business – 2010 Midyear Update
• Must Read: Decade in Review 2000-2009: The Rise of Web 2.0, The New Pervasive Human Space
• American Express: The Bearish U.S. Economy Will Drive Social Networking Adoption
• How Social Networks Change the Rules of Sales and Profit
• Alcatel-Lucent Study: Social Networkers Not Very Social
• 2010 Predictions and Recommendations for Web 2.0 and Social Networks
• Social Networking Bootcamp Combines Strategy, Management & Practice
• Social Networking Conference Miami 2010 Wrap

Social Business for Commercial and Government Enterprises

This year’s posts are jammed with case studies that reflected steady progress with social media by business and government, but most businesses are still at the level of learning the tools; they aren’t yet focused on building durable relationships, which require deeper focus and more sharing. I sponsored a collaborative piece on 2010 predictions, collaborating with 16 executives in my enterprise social networking group on LinkedIn (“17 Visionaries..”). I also shared best practices on social business competency teams, which serve as a virtual PMO to drive enterprise adoption of social business as well as a post on comparing different types of social media consultants. Enterprises are also starting to experiment with geosocial apps and algorithms everywhere, both hallmarks of enterprise 3.0.

• Must Read: 17 Enterprise Visionaries Release 2010 Predictions for Social Networks, Web 2.0
• Must Read: Social Business Competency Teams: How to Boost Enterprise Social Business Performance and ROI
• Must Read: Comparing Enterprise Social Media Consultants & Providers
• Social Business Summit Case Study: Donna Rossi, Western Union
• Social Business Case Study: Jennifer DeMarco Herskind, Dave & Buster’s
• Fraud in Social Networks: FBI Countercrime Initiatives
• Case Study: IBM’s Experience with B2B Social Business
• Case Study: Social Networking at the CDC
• Case Study: Miami Dolphins Use of Social Networking
• Case Study: Seattle Seahawks & Seattle Sounders

Social Networking Platform Review

Most chief marketing officers know the names and logos of the major platforms and like their exploding popularity, MySpace notwithstanding, but the lack of in-depth platform knowledge of social media providers produces mediocre success. I encountered many cases of firms just “doing Facebook” because it was popular and, well, who wouldn’t want to be there? It’s disheartening to encounter agency-produced snappy social media speak on Twitter and Facebook, which is far worse than doing nothing for most brands; people can smell it a mile away — brands are just flushing money down the toilet. Likewise, few organizations understand that the power of blogging is largely built on networking and relationships. Two must reads this year discuss network-oriented approaches to building Facebook Pages and blogs. The mind bender post is on LinkedIn body language, which is key to reaching another level of relating online.

• Must Read: Four Steps to Building Facebook Presence, Network-Style
• Must Read: Blogs: The Relationship-Centric Approach to Building Readership
• Social Networking for Professional Services Firms
• How LinkedIn Changes the Economics of Cross-border Relationships
• LinkedIn Body Language: How Touch Creates Stronger Connections
• Blogging: Quick Launch Guide
• Visions of Facebook 2.0
• Suggestions for Facebook: How to Triple the Value of Friend Suggestions
• Executive’s Guide to Twitter Releases Free Online Courses
• Introducing Twitter Value Vectors: The Key to Building a Quality Following

Marketing 2.0 and Customer Experience

In 2010 I guest-blogged on MENG Online, and this section’s must read hails from that. “Rude Awakening” debunks word of mouth marketing as a flawed concept, riffing on Don Peppers’ remarks at the Alterian Social Business Summit. Most of the speakers emphasized how marketing was changing forever, and most meant it. Others shared marketers’ frustrations with trying to drive social initiatives from a legacy marketing viewpoint; the root of their teeth-gnashing was that relationship building doesn’t fit the style of marketing metrics on which they are currently measured.

• Must Read: Rude Awakening — Only 15% of Word of Mouth Marketing Campaigns Show Positive Results
• Social Business Summit Keynote, Marketing Changed Forever — Stan Rapp, Engauge
• Social Business Summit Keynote Continues Disruption Theme — Don Peppers, Peppers & Rogers Group
• New Age of Socialized Engagement
• Social Business Summit Panel: Brands at Risk
• How Do You Know if Your Act is Together if You Can’t Measure?
• Social Business Summit CEO Address — David Eldridge, Alterian

Technology

Although technology enjoys shrinking attention in the ongoing adoption of social technologies, 2010 proved once again that it’s critical to keep one’s ear to the ground because technology enables quantum leaps in capability. I covered the accelerating adoption of Web 3.0, in the particular form of geosocial, a specific type of mobile social networking (Foursquare, et al). Other recommended reads here discuss Facebook Connect and Google FriendConnect, Web 2.0-style single sign-on (with benefits ;^). Make sure to delve into the PopTech coverage, which highlights using social tech for social initiatives. I loved meeting Patrick Meier and listening to his story about using Ushahidi in Haiti and Chile.

• Must Read: Enterprise Adoption of Social Business 2010 — Three Technologies to Watch
• Must Read: Are Geosocial Apps Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt & Brightkite Ready for Prime Time?
• Must Read: PopTech Maps Course of Social Change
• Noodle VII: Tablets Won’t Save Mainstream Media But This Might
• Social Business Technology Preview: Mike Talbot, Alterian

From your viewpoint, what was the most important event of the past year for businesses?

The post Social businesses: Glimmers of a macro trend appeared first on Inside Social Media.

If we look back in history , we will find that much before Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, there was ICQ. For anyone who doesn’t know, ICQ was created in 1996 and is now wholly owned by AOL. Back in the day, ICQ was the pioneer of social media and real time updates. It introduced us to instant messaging and a revolutionary new way to communicate with people instantly in real time.

ICQ could have been a sort of Facebook or Twitter a long time ago. It’s taken ICQ quite a long time to get back to its status as a social pioneer, but now with its new client software, ICQ is getting back to what it was about all the way from the beginning: a place to interact with your friends everywhere. “Everybody Everywhere” is, after all, ICQ’s slogan, and being an ICQ veteran myself, I am very excited to announce the launch of the new ICQ 7.

ICQ 7 is software that brings together all your social interactions from across the Web. Instead of having to open a few different pages and applications to get my friends’ status updates on Facebook, to read tweets of my favorite people and to follow what’s happening on other sites as well such as Youtube, Flickr, Digg and Delicious, ICQ 7 allows me to use one personal communication tool to integrate all my online social activities. I am able to syndicate my updates to all of my social networks with a single click and get status updates and tweets from all my friends in my networks in one single platform. (Disclosure: Blonde 2.0 is ICQ’s social media firm)

ICQ 7 enables real-time updates from content sharing sites and top social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Digg and Delicious and will soon announce the integration of local social networks. Alonside the ICQ Contact List, users can find a separate tab of real time feeds and updates from their friends from their various social networks. Users will no longer need to open up a new browser and log in to separate networks that they’re members of each time they want to comment on their friends’ updates. From now on, consider ICQ to be your social networks’ one-stop shop. No longer will you need to search for content on different platforms – the content finds you. ICQ 7’s interface is also improved with software that is fully compatible with all versions of Microsoft Windows, including Windows 7.

A few cool features to note in ICQ 7

My Status: Status updates I make on ICQ can be automatically posted in my other supported networks as well. I can also easily share pictures and links.

Feeds from friends: Updates made by your friends on leading social networks and content sharing sites appear in real time in the “Feeds from Friends” tab on the contact list. You can comment on these updates directly from your ICQ and the comment will appear also in the relevant social network/site. You can see updates from all your friends in your various social networks – not just from friends that have ICQ.

My Box: The “My Box” tab on the ICQ Contact List is the place where ICQ users get all notifications of their personal online activity – who commented on my status and in which site, who liked the photos I uploaded, etc.

New User Profile: ICQ 7 presents a more enhanced user profile – both within the client and on the website. The user profile is the place where users can display who they are by sharing pictures and personal updates on their page. The new user profile is now offered in color schemes that are fully customizable to suit the user’s mood. Additionally, the new user profile allows ICQ users to view their friends’ contact lists and add new people to their own contact list, thereby increasing their circle of friends.

Picture-Sharing Tool: A new, quick and fun application for sharing pictures with friends — see above.

Faster, lighter: ICQ 7 performance has been vastly improved with installation time reduced by nearly 50% and requested space for installation reduced approximately by 30%.

ICQ 7 offers a social messaging client that enables quick and easy communication friends from across networks, ability to view real-time updates from: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Digg and Delicious.

Israel-based ICQ’s managing director, Eliav Moshe, says: “ICQ 7 brings social messaging into play, integrating users’ online social world with their personal communication tool. The new version answers users’ needs for a quick and easy communication tool that also helps you be up to date with everything that’s going on in multiple social networks and content sharing sites. With a loyal community of over 42 million users worldwide, we are working on the upcoming integration of local social networks into ICQ 7 as well.”

It is only fitting that the company that was the pioneer of the Web 2.0 era has now integrated this Web 2.0 world into one manageable space. Try it out for yourself and let me know what you think. In my opinion, it offers the best solution we have today for one platform that integrates all our social interactions into one convenient platform.

Become an ICQ fan on Facebook

Check out their Twitter

Additional images

• ICQ notifications
• ICQ feeds

The post ICQ launches all-in-one social network tool appeared first on Inside Social Media.

Here is a list of some of the top-rated sites for helping you achieve some of the resolutions most often made: weight loss, healthier living, quitting smoking, philanthropy, and better money and time management. And if you don’t have a resolution yet, perhaps this list can help you find a worthy one!

Inclusion in this list is based on how well a tool is rated in common review sites and the cost of a tool’s service. Reasonably priced services and sites that offer a free version were more likely to make the list, as were sites that offer some sort of collaboration or interactivity when applicable.

Weight loss & fitness

beYOU.tvoffers fitness and wellness videos ranging from yoga to boot camp, pilates to meditation. Videos may be watched for free with advertising or purchased and downloaded.

BodyDaemon is a free lifestyle monitoring tool that allows members to record their workouts, food, body, goals, injuries and lots more. Share as much or as little information as you like. Members can update their journal via the Website, your Facebook application or mobile phone.

Extrapounds is a free online weight loss community that provides you with weight loss tools to help you stick to your diet plans. It is where Extrapounds members share their experiences and support one another on their journeys to becoming weight loss success stories.

Fitness Journal is designed to enhance any diet or exercise program. They do not tell you what to eat or how to workout. Fitness Journal allows you an easy, interactive way to manage your workout and diet information. Their software will help you focus on the end result, and motivate you to keep moving in the right direction.

ProjectWeightLoss is an online community of users looking to achieve a healthier lifestyle. It offers tools to help you count your calories, decide on a diet program and a fitness program, and evaluate where you stand weight-wise. Plus, you’ll be in contact with a lot of like-minded people.

SparkPeople’s mission is to SPARK millions of PEOPLE to reach their goals and lead healthier lives. They offer nutrition, health, and fitness tools; support; and resources that are free. Their weight loss program teaches people to stop dieting and transition to a permanent, healthy lifestyle.

Thintopia is an online community with the purpose of helping each member reach his/her weight loss goals. They are dedicated to providing services the community needs to motivate, inspire, and educate each other. The main service they provide is free weight loss competitions.

Traineo’s mission is to create the most effective health and fitness community on the Web by combining the latest software technology with sound information and services from the world’s leading health and fitness experts. Traineo is the culmination of over six years of development, testing, and focus group studies in partnership with leading experts in weight loss, health, sports, and fitness.

Healthy & sustainable living

Fivelimes is an entirely user-generated community that acts as your independent resource for information on the latest eco-friendly and socially responsible products and services. Our mission is to make the job of finding, discussing, comparing, and shopping for green products and services around the world extremely easy. The more people acting together, the greater our impact will be.

Green Map System energizes a diverse global movement of local map-making teams charting their community’s natural, cultural, and green living resources with universal icons and adaptable multi-lingual resources. Explore hundreds of perspective-changing Green Maps created by local Map teams in 50 countries.

Browse through LIME for healthy living resources. Read about healthy food, health, and balance. Meet new people and view the top topics. Access the food section for recipes, food videos, food features, and news feeds.

rVita leverages Web 2.0 by bringing the power of mash ups, user-generated content, and community to the integrative medicine world. The site’s key features include reputed content about integrative therapies, a trusted practitioner network so you can find the best provider near you, and valuable feedback from other consumers and experts about what remedies really worked for them.

Quitting smoking

The iPhone application My QuitLine puts you in touch with free expert advice to help you quit smoking. This application connects you—by phone or by live help—with a trained quit smoking counselor at the National Cancer Institute Quitline.

QuitMeter is a countdown and tracking widget that you can save to your desktop or embed on other social sites like Facebook or Friendster. It helps you keep track of how many cigarettes you have not smoked and how much money you have saved—in real time.

Qwitter is a social tool designed to help you quit smoking. Quitter is the Web 2.0 way to quit smoking. It’s a social tool supported by Twitter, so you can have your whole Twitter entourage and the Twitter community at large help you quit smoking.

Philanthropy

Better The World is a platform that will let anybody support any cause he finds worthwhile just by browsing the Web. Users download a sidebar that will be employed to display relevant ads while they are surfing the Web. Charities spanning the whole world have partnered with the company in order to give users everywhere many options to choose from.

Care2 provides powerful tools to make a difference in your life, your community, and the world. The Website is driven by passionate people (like you) who want to restore the world’s balance. They’re committed to using the power of business to make a positive social and earth-friendly impact on the world.

Do Something believes you have the power to make a difference. Their aim is to inspire, support, and celebrate a generation of doers: people who see the need to do something, believe in their ability to get it done, and then take action. They provide the tools and resources for you to convert your ideas and energy into positive action.

The mission of YourCause is to empower individuals to change our world—leveraging their own voices, networks, and spheres of influence to improve the lives of others. The dedicated and accomplished YourCause team is committed to supporting and facilitating the efforts of a caring member community and the causes they champion so passionately.

Money, finances & debt management

Geezeo offers personal finance money management tools to consumers for free, but they also have what they call a “community of motivators” where you can ask and answer financial questions in a forum setting.

Green Sherpa looks like a budgeting solution but is really a quality of life upgrade. View your money data in a cash flow format for powerful and transparent financial tracking, forecasting, and financial reporting. You also can invite a team to help you: Green Sherpa enables users to collaborate with financial partners, personal or professional, in order to make better financial decisions.

Moneytrackin’ is a free online Web application that allows you to track all your expenses and income easily and without effort, thus allowing you to have a clear view of your financial situation. Their users build saving collective knowledge by sharing both global and local tips. These tips can be discussed by the community itself using comments.

Wesabe offers the same expense tracking and budget management features as other personal financial management tools, but they also offer a way for people to share their experience and benefit from the lessons of others.

Time management & productivity

From Basecamp: For years project management software was about charts, graphs, and stats. And you know what? It didn’t work. Pictures and numbers don’t get projects done. Basecamp tackles project management from an entirely different angle: A focus on communication and collaboration. Basecamp brings people together.

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave (logo at right) can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. It’s still invitation-only to use the app but you can likely easily find a friend who has an invite.

Google Apps is a Web-based hosted solution, which means you can access Google Apps at any time, anywhere you have an Internet connection and store your content right on their servers. You might hear this type of technology referred to as “software-as-a-service” or “cloud computing.” Applications offered include Gmail for business, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Groups, Google Sites, and Google Video.

From NowDoThis: how do you organize your day? A calendar requires you to predict the unpredictable. A to-do list can overwhelm you with data. I wanted a “boss” to tell me what to do. Enjoy this free tool.

RescueTime is a Web-based time-management tool that allows you to easily understand how you spend your time. Your time gets tracked down to the second without you having to actively track it. Instantly know how much time you’re spending on a particular application (like “Microsoft Word”), site (like “Google.com”) or a category (like “Communication”).

Teamwork Project Manager is an easy-to-use online teamwork and project management software application that helps managers, staff, and clients work together more productively online.

So there you have it. No excuses my real-time friend. Make your new year Web 2.0 accomplished!

The post Top Web 2.0 tools to help with your New Year’s resolutions appeared first on Inside Social Media.

If I were starting out in journalism today, I’d probably opt to work for a Web-based publication — or start my own — rather than learn the ropes at a newspaper. Because those ropes are becoming increasingly frayed.

We’ve been checking in periodically with young people in the journalism field to get their take on how they’re dealing with the enormous changes taking place in the mediasphere.

One such person who immediately impressed me is Sharon Vaknin, a student at San Francisco State University and a producer/gadget guru at CBS Interactive’s CNET.com. She discusses her entry into journalism, broadcasting and the news business in this 6-minute video interview shot at a busy intersection in San Francisco.

Sharon says she’s “not really worried about” the future of the news business. “Web 2.0 has given us the opportunity to be more collaborative,” she says. “Because online is so collaborative right now, news will never disappear.”

She points to innovative programs like the New Media Lab and Visioning Summit as helping in the transition between traditional print journalism and its digital future.

Watch, download or embed the video on Vimeo

Sharon is one of the producers we hired for the project. We have our first meeting as a group tomorrow to help steer the project forward, and we’ll be brainstorming over the next 9 to 12 months to see what comes out of this experiment. Sharon’s roles will include brainstorming with us over the year year on how to effectively use social media, video and citizen media, facilitating conversations with the community about the participating nonprofits’ causes, and producing media.

All in all, I was struck by Sharon’s confidence in being able to navigate the transition to a digital news world and look forward to working with her as we figure this out collaboratively.

Related

• The new journalist in the age of social media (Sociamedia.biz)

• YouTube’s role in citizen journalism (Socialmedia.biz)

The post Transitioning to a digital news world appeared first on Inside Social Media.

Here is part 7 of the series I will post over the next few months based on chapters from my new book, A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization.

The book is meant to be a guide to building an optimized foundation in social Web for beginners and advanced users alike.

Chapter 7 of the book is about social bookmarking and crowdsourcing using news aggregators, enabling users to save and share their favorite Websites and determine the popularity of a news story, blog entry, or Website through various voting and rating systems.

The following excerpts are from A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization: Strategies, Tactics, and Tools for Succeeding in the Social Web by Deltina Hay

Copyright 2009 by Deltina Hay. All rights reserved.

A Social Bookmarking Strategy

The first thing to do is get a good feel for a number of social bookmarking sites. (In the print edition, there are some popular sites listed at the end of this chapter and on the resource CD.) Choose a couple that represent your interests. If you don’t feel inclined to do the research, I recommend starting with Delicious.com, Technorati, and StumbleUpon. Using these three sites should give you a broad reach into the world of social bookmarking. Before you begin using a bookmarking site, it’s important to become familiar with the guidelines. Some sites are much more stringent than others about bookmarking your own sites, or representing a business of any sort. It is best to go forward informed rather than risk getting a reputation for ignoring the rules, or worse, getting banned from a site.

As you develop your social bookmarking strategy, keep in mind that the Social Web is about interacting, sharing, and collaboration—not self promotion. Bookmark, tag, and comment on sites that interest you, and connect with others who share similar interests. You will be amazed at how many people you ultimately reach. There is nothing wrong with bookmarking your own Web pages or blog posts, as long as the site allows it; just balance those contributions with others.

I know I sound like a broken record on this point, but fill out your profiles completely! You don’t want to go through the trouble of bookmarking a bunch of sites, only to have others not even know how to find your Website if they find your bookmarks engaging enough to click through to your profile.

Create a list of your best key terms to use as tags and use them as often as they apply to the sites you bookmark. Use your best tags within the descriptions you give each of your bookmarked sites as well. Many of the social bookmarking sites have developed social networking characteristics as well. If available, you should join groups that are relevant to your area of expertise or interest, and subscribe to email updates for those groups.

A Crowdsourcing Strategy

Crowdsourced [see definition] news sites are different from social bookmarking sites in that they focus on sharing news and information about stories, Websites, and blogs, as opposed to sharing bookmarks to Websites or blogs. As a result, you want to use a different strategy for these sites than you would social bookmarking sites.

There are a lot of crowdsourced news sites out there, so you may want to explore a number of the sites we mention at the end of this chapter in the book or on the resource CD to get a feel for them. You should be able to choose a few sites that are good fits for your message.

As always, fill out your profiles completely so that others can find their way to you easily.

Add some of your more newsworthy blog posts, Web pages, or online press releases to each of your chosen crowd-sourced news sites. Pay close attention to each site’s submission guidelines and do not add information that does not adhere to their guidelines or is not a good fit for the site. When considering whether to add something to one of these sites, ask yourself if it is something you would find newsworthy and if you would naturally share it with others. Just like with social bookmarking sites, be sure to offset your own content by contributing other content as well. You will get a natural following of readers from these sites if you contribute regularly and engage in the conversations that happen around topics of interest. The advantage to this strategy is that you can hone in on your target audience by seeking out and commenting on topics relevant to your product, book, or message.

Many of these sites have also added social networking features, so explore any additional ways the sites may offer to connect, such as groups.

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Beyond strategies for social bookmarking and crowdsourcing, this chapter also includes real world examples of social bookmarking and crowdsourcing in action, as well as lists of some popular social bookmarking and crowd-sourcing sites, such as Technorati and StumbleUpon, Reddit and Mixx. The resource CD offers linkable resources and four fillable PDF forms called “Social Bookmarking Strategy,” “Crowdsourcing Strategy,” “Social Bookmarking & Crowdsourcing Submission Form,” and “Social Bookmarking & Crowdsourcing Tracking Form.”

Read more about this social media book at the publisher’s site.

As always, Socialmedia.biz readers also get a special price of $16 (shipping included — retail $24.95) for this book. Just click the Buy Now button.

Previously in Socialmedia.biz:

• Survival Guide Chapter 6: How to advertise your business on Facebook
• Survival Guide Chapter 5: Podcasts, vidcasts and Webcasts
• Survival Guide Chapter 4: Building a WordPress-powered website
• Survival Guide Chapter 3: RSS feeds & blogs
• Survival Guide Chapter 2: Preparing content for the social Web
• Survival Guide Chapter 1: Cre­at­ing your social media strategy

The post Do you have a strategy for social bookmarking and crowdsourcing? appeared first on Inside Social Media.

Here’s my end of day show report for Le Web, the Web 2.0 conference in Paris. I’ve been in Paris for the week reporting with the Traveling Geeks (watch video of us on a train). Watch the video for a quick summary of the companies I saw, plus a quick story at the end about an outbreak Robert Scoble had at the expense of the French entrepreneurs.

Companies and links mentioned in the video.

• Square
• How Dell handles customer service and sales through social media: Interview with Richard Binhammer (@RichardATDell)
• AllMyApps
• blueKiwi
• TicTacDo
• Wikeo
• eBuzzing
• DEZineforce
• Video: Dating tech service Wuiper offers a fun way for people to meet
• DEZineforce
• TrueKnowledge
• Yatedo

The post Le Web day 1: End of day show report appeared first on Inside Social Media.

This book is meant to be a guide to building an optimized foundation in social Web for beginners and advanced users alike.

Chapter 5 of the book discusses in detail podcasts, vidcasts and Webcasts, including what they are and how to create and publish your own. This chapter provides tips for preparing a script and key terms, as well as tips for optimizing podcasts for search engines and podcast directories.

The following excerpts are from A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization: Strategies, Tactics, and Tools for Succeeding in the Social Web by Deltina Hay

Creating podcast episodes

Preparing the Script and Key Terms

Below is a typical podcast script. You can get royalty-free music for your podcast episodes at a number of sites on the Internet, such as PodsafeAudio. Always make sure that the music you use is royalty-free and offered freely for use in podcasts, and give the author credit. This script outline can also be found on the resource CD.

• Opening (30-60 seconds)
  • Introduce the podcast as a whole.
  • This should be the same for each episode.
  • Mention the name of the podcast, what its purpose is, and the URL where it can be found.
  • Introduce yourself and who you are.
  • Introduce the topic of the episode.
  • Mention the episode number.
  • Introduce guests if you have any.
• Opening Jingle (30 seconds)
• Main Topics (6 to 12 minutes)
  • Depends on the type of episode you are recording.
  • An informational podcast is typically only six minutes long.
  • A panel or interview could be as long as twelve minutes.
• Intermission (30 seconds)
  • Break up longer episodes with an intermission.
  • Use music for the intermission.
• Closing (2 minutes)
  • Thank your guests if you have any.
  • Thank the audience for listening.
  • Announce the next episode topic.
  • Repeat the podcast URL.
• Closing Jingle (60 seconds)

Make a list of the best key terms for each episode and repeat these key terms at every opportunity that feels natural in your script. Of course, you can write the script first and extract the best (most repeated) key terms for use in the metadata and landing page of the episode.

Copyright 2009 by Deltina Hay. All rights reserved.

###

This chapter also includes information about publishing options for a podcast, including publishing to a blog or Website, or using a service, as well as creating and optimizing a podcast or Webcast. The resource CD offers further reading, linkable resources, an example podcast, and a fillable PDF form called “Podcast Script Outline.”

Read more about this social media book at the publisher’s site.

As always, Socialmedia.biz readers also get a special price of $16 (shipping included — retail $24.95) for this book – just click the buy now button.

Previously in Socialmedia.biz:

• Survival Guide Chapter 4 Overview
• Survival Guide Chapter 3 Overview
• Survival Guide Chapter 2 Overview
• Survival Guide Chapter 1 Overview

The post Survival Guide Chapter 5: Podcasts, vidcasts and Webcasts appeared first on Inside Social Media.

It is a useful book, to be sure. It is practical and holds your hand and addresses your concerns, as long as you’re a business owner who is considering getting into Social Media as a business tool. If you’re a fan of Salesforce.com, you’ll appreciate the smarts here since Ms. Shih is a Salesforce alum and the forward is by Marc R.  Benioff, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com.

The book does promote Salesforce.com a little shamelessly but it doesn’t hurt the neutrality of the text: you’ll get good advice on how to leverage Social Networks, Social Media, Online Community, and Web 2.0 to manage, promote, offer service on behalf of you, your brand, or your company.

What I really liked was Part I, A Brief History of Social Media, which is a brilliant primer for people who didn’t actually live through the precursors and foreshadowing of Facebook and Twitter; however, for me, it showed me that Clara Shih understands the continuum of technology, computing, community, platform, and how they evolved over time.

Other topics you might really love to explore, though they’re less practical and a little more philosophical, but in a good way, and explore ways to use Social Media to develop strategies for your business for Social Sales, Social Network Marketing, Social Innovation, and Social Recruiting.  What’s great about this part, Part II, is that these teachings are pretty platform agnostic, giving you skills in tools not limited to just Facebook, the primary focus of this book.  What this means is that this book will even be useful to you when Facebook dies and something else rises up in its place.

At the end of the day, most folks who buy the book will skip to Part III: Your Step-By-Step Guide to Using Facebook for Business.  Fair enough. It is pretty comprehensive and walks you through more than philosophy, it gets you onto Facebook and marketing, selling, recruiting, prospecting, branding, relating, engaging, and participating if you take some time and follow the steps.

Is this book good?  Well, it is if you spend a little time opening your mind and reading through Part I and Part II — and do it away from a computer.  If you get into context, read the case studies, explore some of the examples and best practices, Part III will make more sense and you will do a better job and be more effective.

Did the book bore me?  Nope, I liked it, and that makes me happy because I am not being paid to read these things, it is just flattering to receive free review copies — it makes me feel like I am important and influential!

Related articles

• The Facebook Era is for Business (socialmedia.biz)
• Clara Shih, The Facebook Era, and Business Opportunities on Facebook (sachinrekhi.com)
• Hearsay Social Executives to Share Latest Thought Leadership and Best… (prweb.com)
• Salesforce.com Invests In Introhive, A Startup Filled With Former Radian6 And Blackberry Employees (businessinsider.com)
• Dr Natalie Petouhoff – List of Publications, Books, Research, White Papers, ebooks, (drnatalienews.com)
• Bring Out the Brooms: Salesforce.com Sweeps the CRM Market Awards (blogs.salesforce.com)
• ‘Have you lurked her texts?’ How the directors of ‘Noah’ captured the pain of Facebook-era dating (digitaltrends.com)
• Evolution of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud (blogs.salesforce.com)
• Going Social Increases Your Chances of Getting Hired (blogs.salesforce.com)
• Social Media for Hospitality on Salesforce (kloudhaven.wordpress.com)

The post The Facebook Era is for business appeared first on Inside Social Media.

This book is meant to be a guide to building an optimized foundation in the Social Web for beginners and advanced users alike.

Chapter 3, the longest chapter in the book, is about RSS feeds and blogs. This chapter is packed with information and useful tips about content preparation, feed readers, optimization, and much more to ensure maximum exposure in the Social Web.

The following excerpts are from A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization:

Chapter 3: RSS Feeds and Blogs

Optimizing Your Blog And RSS Feed

Your RSS feed or blog will do you little good if nobody knows about it or cannot subscribe to it. This section highlights ways for you to optimize and promote your feed. Most of these tips are for both blogs and RSS
feeds, but some of them only apply to blogs. It is made clear if something only applies to blogs….

Your Feed or Blog Content

Edit Your Content
Edit and proofread your feed or blog entries for accuracy every time you post. If you or your staff do not have the time or skills to do so, consider hiring a professional editor. If you write your posts ahead of time as suggested in the previous section, you can save money since editors usually have a minimum charge and can get a lot done in one session.

Titles
Always use at least one or two of your best key terms in your blog or feed titles. This gives you better placement in the directories as well as better search engine placement.

Categories and Tags (tags only apply to blogs)
When posting blog entries, you should assign categories and tags to them every time. Most blog indexing sites use categories and tags to index blog entries. Draw from your top level key terms for categories and all of your key terms for tags.

Links
Link to as many other blogs or Websites from within each of your posts as you can and trackback to them whenever possible. When creating links within a post, use key terms as the link text. For example, link “Facebook” to Facebook.com, link “Facebook application” to the Facebook application page, Facebook.com/apps, and so forth.

Each link in the post also contains a key term that is used as a tag and/or category for the post. This tactic gives each of your posts more relevance in directories and search engines.

Signatures
Attaching a signature at the end of each of your posts can encourage visitors to subscribe to your feed and aid in promoting your other sites or products. This is also a good place for a copyright statement if you need one. It is best to keep your signature clearly separate from the post content. One way to do this is to include three pound signs before the signature.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO For Your Blog (only applies to blogs)
Since WordPress produces PHP as opposed to HTML, posts and pages do not necessarily have the metadata in their source that is required for search engine robots. However, there are ways around this problem. A good SEO plugin for WordPress is The All in One SEO Pack. This plugin lets you assign proper metadata to
each of your posts and WordPress pages so that they get good placement in search engines. You input the metadata from the same interface that you enter the post. The title, description, and keywords entered here
become the metadata for that post.

This plugin also helps you assign metadata for your site as whole.

Permalinks (only applies to blogs)

As discussed in the previous section, permalinks are the direct link to each of your blog entries. You want to use a permalink structure that does not use any special characters (these are often called “pretty” permalinks). Since WordPress is written using PHP, the default permalinks look something like this: http://yoursite.com/?p=6. Search engines often ignore links that contain characters like the ones in “?p=6.” Choose a permalink structure that does not use them. To change the structure, go to the backend of WordPress; go to Settings/Permalinks. To make your permalinks “pretty,” choose any of the options except the default.

External Links or “Link Baiting”

This is actually an SEO tip you can use for any Website. Use meta keywords in any link text that points back to your Website. These are the meta keywords that are in your site’s header, not just arbitrary key terms. Whenever you can use text as links back to your site, use these terms to do so. As an example, we use the following blurb at the end of each article we submit to e-zines and the like for Social Media Power:

Deltina Hay is the principal of Social Media Power, a Web 2.0 development firm in Austin. Ms. Hay’s graduate education in computer science, applied mathematics, and psychology led her naturally to social media consulting. Find out more about using social media and Web 2.0 tools from her new straight forward, easy-to-follow e-book on social media marketing and Web 2.0.

The term “social media” links to SocialMediaPower.com and “social media marketing” links to the e-book page on that site. We are also careful not to clutter these bios with links—two is a good limit. Search engine robots consider external links that are similar to meta keywords very relevant and will increase your page rank accordingly.

Copyright 2009 by Deltina Hay. All rights reserved.

###

This chapter also includes information about RSS feed and blog promotion using FeedBurner and other RSS Feed and blog directories. The resource CD offers further reading, linkable resources, and seven fillable PDF forms that you can use to prepare and organize your content.

Read more about this social media book at the publisher’s site.

As always, Socialmedia.biz readers also get a special price of $16 (shipping included — retail $24.95) for this book – just click the buy now button.

Previously

• Survival Guide Chapter 2 Overview
• Survival Guide Chapter 1 Overview

The post Survival Guide Chapter 3: RSS feeds & blogs appeared first on Inside Social Media.