Lee Aase | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

In Case You Slept Through 2007

Jeff Jarvis has a year-end wrap-up column in The Guardian that does a great job of summarizing the key developments in the media world. He calls 2007 “the year of Facebook.” I certainly agree with that, as regular readers of this blog would attest. I highly recommend this column for anyone looking for a succinct analysis of trends affecting both mainstream and social media. And check out his blog for more regular dispatches on the topic.

Jeff says it’s been Facebook’s year, but the century belongs to Google…so far. It’s good that he added that qualifier, because the century is still young. Facebook didn’t exist four years ago. Google is less than a decade old. We can’t imagine the changes we’ll see in the next 92 years.

Technorati: Jeff Jarvis, Facebook, social media, Google

Planes, Trains, Automobiles, a Bass and Basketball

Earlier this week as I was traveling to the Association Forum Holiday Showcase I wrote that locating national headquarters in Chicago makes sense because travel is more convenient than it is for many cities. I still think that’s true, but my experience over the next 24 hours made me glad that at least I didn’t have to spend the night with John Candy as a bunkmate.

Our plane departure from Rochester to Chicago was delayed until about 7:35 p.m., and then we had an excellent flight, 45 minutes at most. But when we got there we were in for a rude surprise: the pilot announced that all the gates were full, and we weren’t going to be able to disembark for about 35 minutes. About 45 minutes later, he came back on the intercom and said we still didn’t know when there would be an open gate. This was no Jet Blue situation; at least we knew that we didn’t have a flight ahead of us after the delay on the ground. But it did take about twice as long to get from the tarmac to the gate as it took to fly 300 miles from Rochester to Chicago.

I immediately headed for the train from the airport to the downtown Hyatt Regency. This was uneventful, but still took about an hour. I checked in to the hotel at about 11:15.

When I woke up at 6:15 to prepare for my presentation, I turned on the news and saw that an ice storm was headed our way. Must have had something to do with our gate problem the night before. And by 7:45 I had gotten the news that my flight back to Rochester had been canceled, so I was going to have to stay over another night.

Or would I? That’s where the automobiles part of this journey came in, as I rented a car right after my presentation for what turned out to be the seven-hour drive home. It was rainy in Chicago, but at the Wisconsin border it turned to slush, which meant that I was maxing at 45 mph for about an hour. But then I drove out of it, and made it back to Austin by about 6:15.

These were expensive tickets, as the Hertz pricing for a one-way rental was about six times the rate for a local rental. But I got to see my son Joe’s orchestra concert at 7, and my daughter Rebekah’s basketball game at 7:30. Well worth it. Here’s the combined 1:11 highlight reel:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLBXfaqDYt0]

And here’s the post I wrote highlighting some key steps association executives should take in exploring Facebook. All-in-all, it was a memorable day. I enjoyed the great give-and-take of discussion about Facebook and social networking, and still made it home to watch the Packer girls execute the give-and-go.

Technorati: Chicago, Association Forum, Basketball, Orchestra, Cello, travel, nightmares, airlines, planes, trains, automobiles, Hertz, Hyatt, Facebook

10 Facebook Assignments for Association Executives

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Note: This post is now part of the structured curriculum for Social Media University, Global (SMUG). It has been designated Facebook 102.

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What would a Knowledge Lab be without some take-home assignments that let participants get hands-on experience?Here are 10 steps I’m suggesting for people who attended my part of the Knowledge Lab at the Association Forum of Chicagoland Holiday Showcase 2007.

Join Facebook and “friend” me. I’ll add you right away, and you can check out my profile and some of the groups I’ve joined or created. Check out groups like this one (which I created for my daughter’s high school basketball team) that use video and photo sharing, or the Web Strategy Group or the New Media group. These are just some examples of how groups can be used in Facebook.
Join the Association Forum of Chicagoland group.
Invite your staff or leadership team to join Facebook, too. You can be “friends” if it’s mutually agreeable, but as you will see, that’s not necessary for you to interact in Facebook.
Form a “secret” Facebook group, not necessarily as a crisis communications “dark” site, but to experiment with some of Facebook’s group features without anyone seeing it. Invite your work colleagues from step #3 above to join the group and experiment with you.
Have some fun. Challenge me to a game of Scrabulous if you’d like. Part of the reason Facebook is so potentially powerful is that people like to go there. With 58 million active users (visiting at least once a month), half of whom visit every day and spend an average of 20 minutes a day, it has a level of user engagement that makes it practical for communicating.
Upload some photos that include your Facebook friends, and “tag” yourself and your friends. Then you’ll start to see some of the viral potential as your photo shows up in your friends’ mini-feeds. You also can upload photos to groups, like the Association Forum group.
Check out Facebook pages, which could at least be the equivalent of a free Yellow Pages ad for your non-profit organization.
Explore Facebook’s demographically targeted social ads program. You can use either a pay-per-click (PPC) or pay-for-impressions (CPM) model. Here’s an explanatory post. You can advertise things that aren’t on Facebook (like your association’s web site) just to try it. I recommend PPC, because you only pay for clicks. Because the click-through rate is quite low, you won’t be spending a ton to try this. But you’ll at least get a sense for the possibilities.
Add an application like Simply RSS to your profile or Page. In the spirit of shameless self-promotion, here’s an RSS feed (Just copy and paste this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/LinesFromLee) you could make one of the three that Simply RSS updates for you. (OK, maybe I’m a little bit ashamed.) Then as I write new posts (lots of them are about Facebook), you can continue your education.
Join my 12-step social media program. (You know the drill, first you have to admit you have a problem.) This covers more than just Facebook, but it’s a good way to get a feel for the broader subject of social media. My program was originally intended for PR professionals, but then Lisa Junker asked if she could modify it for Association Executives (which I’m sure had something to do with me being asked to participate in the Knowledge Lab.) You can read that version here. I recently got a request to reprint it for an association of veterinarians, too.

These steps will be a good, practical, hands-on way for you to learn about the potential of social media, particularly Facebook, in a low-risk environment. I look forward to continued interaction.Technorati: Facebook, Social media, Association Forum, social ads, groups, pages, Facebook groups, Facebook pages, Scrabulous

Facebook and Associations

I’m at the gate at the Rochester airport waiting for my flight to Chicago for Holiday Showcase 2007, sponsored by the Association Forum of Chicagoland. Apparently Chicago is home to the national headquarters for many national organizations.

I guess it makes sense for organizations like the American Medical Association to locate in Chicago, since you can probably fly nearly anywhere in the lower 48 from there in less than three hours, with no connecting flights. Assuming my flight works out today, I’ll probably get a first-hand experience with the reasons for this. My 5:25 flight to Chicago was canceled and I was rebooked on the 6:55. Now we’re told it will be 7:30 before we leave. Still, I should be in my hotel room by 10 if all goes well.

(My seatmate here at the airport isn’t so lucky; he was going to Buffalo, but has already missed his connecting flight. We’ll both be staying in Chicago tonight.)

I’m glad I don’t have to catch a connecting flight. Traveling to Chicago involves fewer moving parts in our hub-and-spoke airline world, so locating there means fewer meetings foiled by travel SNAFUs. Probably a big selling point for the Association Forum.

I’m looking forward to participating in the Forum’s Knowledge Lab tomorrow morning. I’ve been asked to be the resource presenting on the implications of Facebook for organizations and associations. I understand this will be something like a science fair, with some brief presentations of core material punctuated by a highly interactive Q&A environment. I expect I will meet a lot of interesting people from diverse organizations, and that’s part of the fun.

If Necessity is Invention’s mom, free tools like Facebook may claim its paternity.

Facebook is so versatile, and because its platform offers opportunities for programming and customization, organizations may find it meets their long-term social networking needs.

At a minimum, associations should explore Facebook because they can create pilot social networks quickly and easily. They can experiment and learn what they like about it, and then if they decide to move to a so-called “white label” solution they can apply what they’ve learned through Facebook in their next iteration. And while a social networking site can’t completely replace face-to-face, it can powerfully supplement what organizations do with their conferences, creating stronger and longer-lasting relationships among participants.

I expect the discussion tomorrow to be stimulating as I meet people looking to accomplish various goals through social networking sites.

Technorati: Facebook, Association Forum, Chicago, AMA, social media, social networking