Tag: socialmedia

Charlene Li Forrester Web 2.0 Presentation

I had the pleasure yesterday of presenting at a Web 2.0 Summit sponsored by Kaiser Permanente. Our panel was moderated by Ted Eytan, M.D., who also presented on his blogging experience from the last four years as part of Kaiser’s sister (or cousin, or some other relation I don’t completely understand) organization, Group Health. He’s an interesting guy who also has a passion for LEAN in Health Care, which is the topic of the other blog on which he is a collaborator. I also got to meet and hear Tim Collins from Wells Fargo, whose company has official blogs that include Guided by History, The Student LoanDown and one that supports Stagecoach Island, its virtual world. TIm says Wells Fargo was the first big brand in Second Life, but that they got out just as many others were starting to get in. Now they have a world of their own.

Charlene Li from Forrester Research opened the Summit with an overview of Web 2.0. She’s also the co-author of Groundswell, a book I just bought at Audible.com (It’s also here on Amazon, and I’ll be reviewing it after I listen to it over the next few days). Before her presentation, we got to talk about our experience with audio books, and I recommended some from Patrick Lencioni that I think most people in business would find extremely helpful (and which I have reviewed on this blog): The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and Silos, Politics and Turf Wars. (I thought I had reviewed Death by Meeting, too…but I guess that’s on my to-do list.)

I’ll have my full review of Groundswell, but meanwhile here are some of the high points and recommendations from Charlene’s presentation:

Focus on the relationships, not the technologies. At Forrester, they have developed a four-step process using the acronym POST. You should consider:

  • People – for those you want to reach and with whom you want to interact, consider their characteristics and what kinds of social media involvement they have already. Getting seniors into a 3D virtual world may be a mismatch, unless the group you’re targeting is retired Microsoft or IBM engineers.
  • Objectives – Decide what you want to accomplish
  • Strategy – Plan for how relationships with customers will change
  • Technology – Decide which social technologies to use

Charlene’s blog has a fuller discussion of POST, and I’m sure Groundswell will be even more detailed.

Part of analyzing People is determining where they are on the Ladder of Participation.

Charlene had a lot of other great material in her presentation, but she closed with some Keys to Success:

  1. Start with Your Customers.
  2. Choose Objectives You Can Measure
  3. LIne Up Executive Backing
  4. Romance the Naysayers
  5. Start Small, but Think Big

I particularly like that last point, because it fits with the SMUG (It’s all Free) philosophy. It’s possible to start small because the barriers to entry are practically non-existent, but you should plan for success to that you can scale up as necessary.

For example, you can start a blog hosted on WordPress.com and map to a domain or subdomain of your choosing for $10-$20 (and can extensively customize your look and feel for another $15). Later, if your blog is successful and you decide you want to host it elsewhere to allow more use of Flash and embedded widgets, you can just download and install WordPress from WordPress.org and re-map the domain, and you won’t lose any of your links. I’ll have more on that as I build out the Blogging curriculum.

ALI Social Media Summit Discounts

I will be presenting at the “Social Media Summit: How To Use Blogging, Podcasting & the Latest Web 2.0 Technologies To Engage Your Employees, Reach Your Customers & Build Your Brand,” June 9-12, 2008 in Chicago, IL. My session topic will be: “Integrating New Media With Traditional Media To Multiply Results.”

This looks like it will be another strong event. I’m part of Day 1, just after Michael Rudnick’s address. Andy Sernovitz of GasPedal will deliver the afternoon keynote, and Duncan Wardle from Disney Parks will keynote Day 2 (here are some highlights of a presentation I heard him give earlier this month.) I know you’ll enjoy Chris Heuer from the Social Media Club, Paula Berg from Southwest Airlines and the Best Buy guys. The other case studies should be interesting, too.

Here are two ways you can save on registration:

  1. If you register by May 1, you save $400.
  2. Since I am one of the speakers, you can save another $200 by using the code “SPK” when registering.

Advanced Learning Institute is sponsoring the event. I’ve attended and presented (and blogged) at several of their previous conferences. Knowing or having heard several of the speakers, I’m confident you will find it worthwhile. I hope to see you there!

Facebook Chat Will Enhance Business Utility

Now that Facebook‘s Chat function seems to be officially out of Beta and is deployed everywhere (if it’s on my network, it must be everywhere), I got a chance to try it today.

I haven’t been a big user of IM (Check that: at all.) This is completely new to me.

But I can see how Chat will be a strong addition that will make Facebook even more valuable for business networking, as Adam indicates. I think of it particularly in a PR/Journalist relationship. If you can see whether your journalist friends are on-line and can send them a quick message, that will be less interruptive than a phone call. If you continually send them worthwhile news tips or ideas, you can solidify the relationship. If you start abusing them with off-target pitches, they can un-friend you…or block you. It’s one more way Facebook can put the “relations” back in media relations.

I think this also has obvious applications for workplace collaborations…the ability to have conversations that are much more informal, back and forth, without the ponderous formality of e-mail.

“Can’t you just pick up the phone instead?” Of course. But just as my middle daughter (in particular) uses SMS text messaging to connect with her friends (and don’t get me started on how far she went over her monthly allotment of 300 in March) instead of getting into a long conversation, sometimes a more terse interaction is appropriate in the business world, too. And Facebook Chat could be a great way to do this.

In fact, I had a nice conversation with my son-in-law, Kyle, via Facebook Chat this morning (see above); I saw he was on Facebook and had the pleasure of introducing him to this new feature. Would I have thought to pick up my cell phone and call him? Highly unlikely. But when I saw he was on-line, we were able to have a chat that didn’t take a lot of time, but let us touch base.

I think Chat will likely cause me to keep my Facebook status more regularly updated, too. And I like how well Chat and Messaging are integrated. I was called from my desk during my chat with Kyle, and by the time I returned he had signed off. So instead of continuing the chat, I was given an option to send him a message in Facebook. This is a great way of blending the rapid interactivity of Chat with the asynchronous tools already built into Facebook.

Here’s a good Facebook Chat FAQ that outlines some of the current features for those of you who, like me, haven’t been IMers.

I hope you’ll try out Facebook Chat, and if you see I’m on-line, start a conversation. If you’re not my friend yet, you can add me here, and I’ll make you part of my Blog Friends list.

Which leads me to a set of feature requests and enhancements that would make Facebook Chat a really strong business networking tool. That will be the subject of my next post.

Podcasting 104: Adding ID3 Tags to Your Audio Files

Note: This course is part of the Podcasting curriculum for Social Media University, Global (SMUG). By completing this course of study you will learn how to produce a podcast of your own without any technical assistance, and without any out-of-pocket expense.


Assignments:

  1. Download iTunes if you don’t already have it
  2. Import the audio file you created in Podcasting 103
  3. Modify the ID3 tags to fit your podcast description

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

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:

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.