SMUG | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

Tax Time and Weekend SMUG Class Readings

One of the nice simplifying factors about running a tuition-free online university is that you don’t need to fill out a request for 501(c)(3) status or other federal tax-related forms. With no revenue, the Internal Revenue Service isn’t interested in us. We can focus on our non-profit educational mission.

Alas, the IRS has not shown the same disinterest in my personal life, so in addition to attending some of my daughter’s basketball and volleyball games this weekend, I’ll also be doing this:

So while I’m meeting my obligations to the U.S. Treasury and the State of Minnesota, it’s a good opportunity for you to catch up on some SMUG homework and extra-credit readings:

First, here are the most recent SMUG class offerings, in the Podcasting track

Podcasting 101/Social Media 106: Introduction to Podcasting
Podcasting 102: Becoming a Podcaster
Podcasting 103: Creating Audio Files Takes Audacity
You also may want to check out the first episode of Chancellor Conversations, which will be one of the official SMUG podcasts.

During the past week your Chancellor was continuing his education (and hopefully helped some others with theirs) at the Bulldog Reporter Media Relations Summit 2008 in San Francisco. Here are some of those highlights, and while they don’t involve direct homework assignments, you will find them helpful for your capstone project:

A couple of posts I did using Utterz (Driving While Blogging and my story of attending the Giants game).
Secrets of increasing web site traffic
How to use blogs to directly engage your customers (a great panel with Paula Berg from Southwest Airlines and Mike Moran from IBM) …and Mike’s keynote
My presentation on Facebook in Media Relations (I didn’t get to live-blog my co-presenters because we were using my laptop to drive the presentations, but Chuck Hester had a good story about using LinkedIn.
Robert Scoble’s keynote was an eye-opener for many members of the audience. (I’m still hoping to get some video clips uploaded after I have met my obligations to the Internal Revenue Service.)
The Blogger Relations panel was good, and it was especially interesting meeting Craig Newmark from Craigslist, whose service and business model has contributed so significantly to the economic disruptions faced by newspapers. (By the way, here’s another post about CBS’ response to challenging times.)
Sally Falkow and Brian Solis led a great discussion of Social Media Strategy, and Dr. Georg Kolb and Frank Shaw’s presentations on PR in Today’s New Marketing Milieu also were helpful.
Katie Paine’s Social Media Measurement presentation was a whirlwind, and I want to go through her slides in more detail.
Duncan Wardle from Disney Parks gave the second keynote, which gave a glimpse of how a big brand is using social media, and the opening keynote from Charlie Rose was presented in an unusual interview-style format.

I’ll also maybe let you know how long TurboTax took. Of course no self-respecting do-it-yourself on-line Chancellor would do anything but electronic filing. I’ve used TurboTax before (though usually not this close to the deadline), and I like how it carries forward my information from year to year. Hopefully its servers won’t be slammed by fellow procrastinators.

Podcasting 103: Creating Audio Files Takes Audacity

This is part of the Podcasting curriculum at Social Media University, Global.

Instead of significant text, I’m doing a show and tell using Slideshare.net. I like how Slideshare let me synchonize slides with an mp3 file.

You can download Audacity here, and this is where you can get the LAME encoder that enables you to export Audacity files as mp3 files.

Homework Assignments:

Download Audacity and the LAME encoder.
Create an audio file using Audacity, in which you talk about your favorite Web site, blog or social networking site.
Edit the file by trimming the beginning and end and any mistakes you’d rather not have published to the world.
Export the recording as an mp3, and save it for future use in the SMUG student podcast.

Social Media Motto

In a discussion yesterday with a couple of colleagues at work, I think I may have stumbled upon (if you’ll pardon the social bookmarking pun) an official motto for SMUG:

It’s not that hard.

I was talking with these co-workers (let’s call them “Karen” and “Cory”… since those are their names) about an exciting new blogging project that’s part of an internal communications program Karen is leading, and as we began the conversation I heard myself saying something I hadn’t planned but that really resonated with Karen. I’m not sure I can reproduce exactly what led to the magic phrase, but it was something like this:

You’ve got just a few weeks to get this blog launched, and that may seem like a short time compared to some of the projects you’ve done, but I just want to you to remember one thing: it’s not that hard. We launched the health policy blog in less than a week, and we also got a tile developed to bring a feed of the latest posts into this static page. That doesn’t mean it’s not work (how’s that for a double negative?); but it does mean you can do this. We’ve got a talented team that has done elements of everything you need to accomplish here, from the web video to customizing the blog’s look and feel to developing the RSS widget for the static page. It’s just a matter of pulling it together. It’s not effortless, but it’s not that hard.

I realized pretty quickly I was on to something with that phrase, when as we were discussing elements that needed to be completed between now and May 1 or so, Karen repeatedly chimed back: “But it’s not that hard, right?” “No, it’s not that hard,” I reassured her. I know we all left that planning meeting feeling that we had developed the start of a good game plan, and now we just needed to execute.

As I reflected on this, I thought those four words accidentally uttered do a great job of encapsulating what Social Media University, Global is all about: It’s not that hard. My mission with SMUG is to encourage people to learn about and experiment with social media tools to improve their lives. Maybe the applications for your are avocational, such as a blog or a Facebook group for a club or amateur sports team. Possibly you’d like to recruit and organize people for your non-profit cause. Perhaps you see social media as a way to engage employees in a large organization. Or you see potential “marketing” benefits, not in the traditional “push” sense of sending our your messages, but providing an opportunity to connect in a meaningful way with current and potential customers or clients.

Whatever your situation, the SMUG motto holds: It’s not that hard. It’s not get-rich-quick internet secrets (like the one I saw on the infomercial at 4:45 this morning.) It’s real work, not auto-pilot. But it’s not that hard.

Social Media 106: Introduction to Podcasting

This post is part of the Core Curriculum for the Social Media University, Global Bachelor of Science degree in social media, otherwise known as the SMUG BS degree.

You’ve probably heard of podcasting, but maybe you don’t know why it’s important or what you can do with it.

From a consumer perspective, podcasts are great because they’re like TiVo for audio (and now video.) They let you set your computer to automatically receive the next installment in an audio or video series, to use when it fits your schedule.

Podcasting has the potential to make “appointment” listening a thing of the past. And if you’re reading this on your own computer, you can subscribe to podcasts.

You have several options for so-called “podcatchers” (including RSS readers like Newsgator, NetNewswire and Google Reader), and there also are numerous directories where you can go to find listings of podcasts. If you’re not one of the 100 million or so people who have an iPod, you might want to try one of those alernate podcatchers.

I say alternate because iTunes is a great all-in-one podcast directory and podcatcher, and if you have an iPod you should use it. Even if you don’t have an iPod, you can still download iTunes and use it to listen to podcasts on your computer instead of using a dedicated mp3 player.

So, feel free to try another podcatcher if you’d like; this site has a whole list of them, and you can use it to compare features. But otherwise, to keep it simple, use iTunes.

Podcasting offers great benefits for consumers, and it can be quite useful for producers of content, too. The best part is it enables you to reach people who are interested in what you have to say. You don’t have to limit yourself to a 15-second sound bite that can get in a news story. You don’t have to follow a 30-second or even 60-second format of radio ads that you have to buy.

Your content can be as long as is interesting to the people you want to engage. Longer may be even better than shorter, because you’re aiming to reach a niche. And what’s even better is you can produce and distribute a podcast for nothing. $0.00. Zip.

The next courses in the Podcasting curriculum will get into the mechanics of producing and distributing your own podcast. For now, though, your homework assignments are on the consumer side.

Homework:

Download and install a podcatcher, either iTunes or one of the alternatives.
If you’re interested in a podcast that is about social media, technology and related topics you read about here, For Immediate Release is a good one. You can get it in iTunes here. Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson, the FIR hosts, also have written a book on the topic, called How to do Everything with Podcasting.
List some of your favorite podcasts in the comments below.

Exploring in DC

What do you do on a Saturday night in Washington, DC? If you’re a geek who happens to also be a basketball fan, maybe you do what I’ve done: watch a couple of NCAA basketball games while checking out some newer social media sites and services.

I’m not quite that pathetic. I did take a ride on the Metro this evening after the conference to go see the cherry blossoms on the Mall. It was beautiful:

But after that, I did come back to the hotel to eat and watch UCLA put away Xavier, and for the last couple of hours I’ve been multitasking, checking out some social media sites, services and applications while watching a closer contest between North Carolina and Louisville.

I may be doing some reviews of these after I get a little more experience with them, but here are some initial impressions.

I like Twhirl, a desktop client for Twitter. I think it can help me have more of the real-time experience of Twitter that would be more helpful. Twittermail looks like a good service, too. Dennis McDonald shared his Twitter rules this week, and I agree with most of them.

One thing I’d like to know is whether I can get Tweets from only selected accounts via SMS. I think I’ve tried this, by signing up for one user’s Tweets. This would be particularly helpful if I could have a high-priority class of Tweets (e.g. family members) that came to me by SMS. Does anyone know whether this works?

I also signed up for Utterz, having seen Chris Heuer use it. My profile name is leeaase. Pretty original, huh? I’ll probably use it to do some blog posts, and then may give it a review.

Probably the coolest thing today is FriendFeed. It pulls in data from 33 other services, including Twitter, YouTube, a blog, Flickr, LinkedIn. Again my account is leeaase. I’ve read a bunch about this and look forward to getting more experience with it.

So what has your experience, if any, been with these services?