Archive for the 'Social Networking' Category
October 10, 2008
Creating Member Value with Social Media
I gave a presentation a few weeks ago to the Maryland Society of Association Executive on creating member value with social media. This presentation is always very well received and I post my slides below for your perusal.
I offer professional speaking services and can tailor this presentation for your staff or leadership in keynote and workshop formats. Give me a call at +1 (410) 742-9088 If social media is on your radar and you want to maximize the value your organization creates with it.
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September 30, 2008
Quoted on MSNBC.com about Cleaning Up Your ‘Digital Dirt’
I was quoted yesterday by an MSNBC.com columnist about what to do when your online history, as shown by Google search results for your name, begin to cause career problems.
Here is the main portion that quotes me:
Many of us may want to find ways to erase the negative information about us on the Web, but that may not be the best strategy.
“What to do when you don’t like the impression given by your online persona?” asks C. David Gammel, a corporate technology consultant. “The counterintuitive response is the best: Post even more content about yourself online.”
However, he adds: “The content should be of a nature that is at least neutral, at best positive, for your career prospects. Blog about your professional interests. Discuss research you have conducted yourself on a topic of interest.”
Gammel believes in burying the Internet skeletons in positive cyber dust. “Once the less savory items are pushed off your first page of ego search results on Google, you’ll be fine with most people,” he notes. “That’s why you have to post more, not less, to get rid of the impact of those skeletons.”
The same thing is true for organizations as well.
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September 25, 2008
Podcast: Social Media and Young Professionals: An Interview with Lauren Turner
Today I have a real treat for you: an interview with Lauren Turner who is leading some innovative efforts to use social media to engage with young professionals for the Chamber of Commerce in Fort Worth Texas.
In the interview I ask Lauren about where their young professionals are engaging online, how they have reach out to them and which techniques seem to be the most effective.
Here are a few links mentioned in the interview:
- Vision Fort Worth. The web site the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce created specifically for the young professionals audience.
- Vision FW Facebook Group. Requires login.
- Vision FW Twitter Account.
- Vision FW LinkedIn Group.
The podcast is a tad over 15 minutes long. I will also be discussing Vision Fort Worth as a case in an American Chamber of Commerce Executives webinar on October 2. Be sure to register for that event if you are interested how to engage with young professionals in your community.
Play the interview below or follow the link to download the MP3 file.
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July 29, 2008
Speaking at the American Chamber of Commerce Executives Convention This Friday
I am presenting two sessions at ACCE’s Convention in Pittsburgh, PA, this week. My first session explores how to formulate and implement web strategies that create value for the organization while the second looks specifically at doing so with social media. Both sessions are on Friday morning, back to back, while the Convention itself kicks off tomorrow.
Be sure to stop by one of my sessions and say hello if you are at the conference.
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July 24, 2008
Twitter Misplaces Their Network
Twitter gets a well deserved rap for downtime and other hiccups related to their exponential growth. However, their most recent tribulation is really bad for a social networking service.
Yesterday they lost a bunch of the data in their system about who follows whom on the site. These connections are the core conduits for the value of the system. It’s as if your address book erased half your entries and your phone no longer accepts their calls to boot.
They are still trying to reclaim the lost data but it appears to be slow going. My connections are not back to what they were just yesterday.
And, yes, I’ve gone active on Twitter after a long hiatus and now with a new account. You can follow me @davidgammel.
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July 21, 2008
Three Reasons Branded Online Communities Fail
A Deloitte consultant just released result of a study of 100 businesses with online communities. From the WSJ:
One of the hot investments for businesses these days is online communities that help customers feel connected to a brand. But most of these efforts produce fancy Web sites that few people ever visit. The problem: Businesses are focusing on the value an online community can provide to themselves, not the community.
The three main reasons for failure were not surprising:
- Focusing on the technology over the value of the community to its members;
- Failure to assign experienced staff to develop the community;
- Poor or no metrics for measuring success.
Let’s tackle those one at a time:
Bells & Whistles
It is so very tempting to focus on the gee whiz things you can do with technology, especially with the very hot social media arena. However, you have to center all of these efforts on the value you will provide to your anticipated community members, making sure that is aligned to deliver some value for your company or organization when it takes off. Constantly ask yourself “So what?” as you develop your plans. Once you have the value identified you can make rational choices about the technology you choose to deploy.
Leadership and Management
Would you launch a new product or service line without an experienced person to develop and manage it? Not usually, no. The same goes for online communities. They require care and feeding and interaction to do successfully. This requires dedicated staff who can interact with others online effectively and keep your online space focused on the value it should provide to participants and the company. It boggles the mind to read the story linked above and realize many of these companies spent over a $1 million on their site and then put half a staff person in place to run it.
Measuring Success
This goes back to value: your measures for success must tell you if you are creating the value you planned to achieve. Are your community members getting value? Is this participation generating value for the sponsoring company? Simply pages views and site registration won’t do. If you goal is to convert community members into customers, be sure you have processes and tools in place to measure that conversion rather than simply hope for the best.
(Story spotted via the most excellent CMSWatch.)
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July 14, 2008
Tweeting vs. Blogging: Attention and Time
Compare following a person’s blog and their tweets.
Which helps you to get to know them faster?
Which helps you to get to know them better?
My feeling is that both are effective at helping you to become acquainted with a person’s public persona, opinions and attitudes. However, Twitter can do it faster if you dedicate more attention to it while blogging takes longer but requires less daily effort.
What do you think?
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March 25, 2008
Social Value
Kevin Holland doesn’t care about your Twitter tweats. I’m with ya Kevin. I posted last year that the only interesting use I saw of twitter was as a mini travelogue posted by a friend traveling Cuba, using SMS to get around limited and heavily filtered internet access in the country. Now that was some compelling text written for the medium.
Any online media you publish has to provide value. The same goes for social media, where you are hoping to facilitate connections and collaboration among people. The value may be personal, professional or some mix of the two but it has to be there to maintain audience and participation.
Focusing on value is a cornerstone of how I work with clients and Kevin’s post shows very well why that is critical. It is too easy to chase after the shiny new toy instead of making a realistic assessment of the value you can create with it.
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March 21, 2008
Fear of litigation is the mind killer.
Hullabaloo over social media legal issues rears its head yet again in the association world.
Here is the deal folks: if your association tends to get sued or investigated over the comments of your members or staff every few years, then sponsoring participatory media activities may enhance that risk. For everyone else, get over it.
I am not a lawyer, therefore I can actually offer common sense advice about the online world.
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February 25, 2008
Early Adopters Have Been Social Networking The Whole Time
A Pew Internet & American Life Project survey of early Internet adopters showed that the most common reason they got online was to connect with colleagues. Granted, they were social networking through BBS’s and mainframe shared time, but it was social nonetheless. (You other early adopters can probably cite the appropriate quote from The Breakfast Club. A fabulous prize will be awarded to the first to cite it in the comments of this post.)
The pre-2000 buzzword for people connecting online with each other was virtual community. This term was put out with the dot com bubble trash and is now covered under Web 2.0/social media/etc. What is different now is the greater scope of people connecting online and the greater diversity of easy-to-use tools for doing so (and lots of money being made by putting advertising on all of it). These are not insignificant changes but it is all rooted in a common desire of many internet users, then and now.
To paraphrase one of my favorite quotes, social networking is simply more evenly distributed these days.
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+1 (410) 742-9088 | david@highcontext.com
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