SocialFishing - Feed

Good Tweet <<>> Bad Tweet

2009-04-12T10:10:00.001-04:00

Good Tweet Vs Bad Tweet: A Guide To Being Not Boring On Twitter

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Feed Hell

2009-04-12T09:22:00.004-04:00

OMG. What a complete nightmare. To anyone who experienced craziness from my new Feedblitz feed, I am so sorry. I have completely shut it down now, so hopefully that should stop soon, if not immediately (which is what I'm hoping).

I have reverted to my boring old Blogger feed with no bells and whistles. Everyone breathe a sigh of relief. And whatever you do, DO NOT switch your own feeds to Feedblitz!! I suspect they got a massive influx of new feeds after the widely discussed Feedburner problems and they didn't plan for it so their servers have completely lost the plot.

If you don't hate me, please resubscribe here. (Copy link and paste to your reader subscription field.)

Thank you so much, and again I really am so sorry for the hassle and the feed spam.

The Leadership Meme

2009-04-11T18:05:00.003-04:00

So Jamie started what is turning out to be a really interesting meme asking three qualities a leader should have. His three? "Know yourself", "Understand systems", "Learn communication". Read his post for his analysis.

Jeff then posted his: "Take responsibility", "Be courageous", "Embrace learning"...

...and Deirde added hers: "Have a spine", "Have a heart", "Have open ears and eyes". Their posts have wonderful further descriptions of what they mean by their choices.

So here are mine, which actually relate to a lot the others have already said.

1. Combine big picture thinking with practical knowledge.

Know how things work on the ground, even when you see the future in the blue sky. Engage team members at all levels. Provide future direction that has a roadmap for getting there.

2. Give ownership of the system to each player.

Help everyone have a part to play in the strategic direction of an organization. Encourage ideas from all sources. Remind each team member how important they are. Break down silos. Level the playing field. Encourage individuals to shine. Give kudos when deserved.

3. Be real.

Be accessible. Talk to people. Don't be afraid to be wrong - but figure that out early. Don't be afraid to argue. Don't be afraid to laugh or cry. Ask questions. Mentor. Share yourself.

That's it from me. Can't wait to read more. Next!

10 Ways Associations Can Be More Like Twitter

2009-04-10T08:54:00.000-04:00

I attended a wonderful session by innovation guru Jeff De Cagna yesterday - Strategies for Association Success in the Era of Social Business.

Jeff and his two co-hosts Chris Hopkinson of DubMeNow and Chris Bucchere of the Social Collective, were gleefully surprised when Jeff asked, "Who here is on Twitter?" and just about every single person raised their hand. It was a fantastic chance to get deeper into the concept of social business and what it might mean for associations.

We did one exercise at our tables that I found awesomely fun and interesting. I don't want to scoop Jeff, as I know he's planning on posting all of the attendees' answers and he'll surely give us some great further analysis, but I just thought I'd share the ideas we came up with at our table.

The question posed was, "How Could Associations Be More Like Twitter?"

Here were our answers:

1. anyone can join the conversation

2. quick response/reaction times

3. keep conversations short

4. searchable!

5. focus on individual members' networks, not the org's network

6. have unconferences and association tweetups

7. survey and listen - easily and often

8. no hierarchy, or hierarchy based on social capital

9. ideas and innovation coming from any individual

10. allow for creativity in terms of adding "applications", without taking away from the core simple platform - platform allows for an organic ecosystem to be built on it.

This was only a small slice of all the answers, we'll wait for Jeff to post the rest - but what do you think? Awesome, or what? What do you think of the metaphor?

We had our weekly Water Cooler chat later that day and told our chat room peeps all about it - and the best conversation we've had yet ensued. I'll try and summarize it for next week's chat post if not before. In the meantime, what could you add to this list? If you come up with more ideas, perhaps we can ask Jeff to add them to the summary!

NTEN Water Cooler Chat 4/9

2009-04-09T13:27:00.002-04:00

Your friendly neighborhood Socialfish will be "IN" the NTEN Office Hours Communications Chat Room every Thursday (that's today!!) at 3 pm EST. Got burning questions about social media strategy? Or just want to hang out and shoot the breeze and get a break from work? Now's your chance!

Last week, we had a fairly intense conversation about setting up a blog for your association: whether it's a good idea to ask publications staff to switch to blogging (no!), whether controversy helps (yes!), and how blogging (specifically, maintaining momentum) is actually quite difficult and you absolutely have to find people who will do it for the love, whether staff or members, or it will fail.

Then, true to form, we cheered ourselves up with these addictive sources of non-work-related amusement: Unnecessary Quotes, Twitfave, #oneliner, and of course, Beer Haiku Daily.

Whether the conversation is deep or just a nice break from the dullness of your daily routine, though, we're all about sharing. Pick our brains, we'll tell you our take on things.

Click HERE for the chat room if it's not working well embedded below.

[chat room removed after chat]

Reader Help Requested: An Association Blog Dilemma

2009-04-09T08:52:00.003-04:00

Image by bitzcelt via Flickr

Lindy and I were recently approached by a colleague in the association world who told us about a dilemma they were having with their newly launched blog. They asked if I would post their dilemma here and ask my readers to comment.

This is an interesting one! We gave her our take, but we're all curious to know what you would do, what your thought are about it.

Here's the pickle:

Our association blog is multi-author representing various industry topics from multiple perspectives. In our initial weeks, things are going very well. Lots of traffic on the site, etc. Two other industry blogs launched during the same month we did. The dilemma is that we all have the same authors who are supplying us with the same (or recycled) content. We are all participating on the same social networking groups, posting the same articles with links to our blogs. I’m trying to embrace the cooperative spirit of the blogger world. However, this just isn’t helpful to our readers. If they can read the same article on 3 different blog sites, we, of course, want our blog to win this competitive game. We want to be the best industry blog, with the best authors, with the best content. We have the same small audience subscribing to our blogs and participating on our social sites. You may recall, we developed a blogger application with a list of rules and guidelines, and a release form. We ask our volunteer authors for “original” content, but not “exclusive” content. The other two blogs are managed by supplier companies for the industry our association represents, however, neither are member companies. One of the managers of the competing blog has reached out to us to “partner” and cross-promote. We would approach this “frienemy” thing different if they were a sponsor, exhibitor, or advertiser with the association, however, we’re really not interested in “partnering” with a non-member company.

1) Are we turning off our readers by posting recycled content?

2) Do we go back to our blog authors to ask them to only submit to us “exclusive” content for our blog?

3) Am I silly to be worrying about sharing content with competing blogs?

4) Is this situation likely to resolve itself as we all gain wider readership and more folks in the industry begin to blog?

What do you think? Please post in the comments. Thanks!

What's YOUR story?

2009-04-08T10:27:00.001-04:00

Do you know who's part of your community?

Who are your people?
Why are they here?
How have they changed?
What's important to them?

Have you asked recently? And while we're at it.. what's YOUR story?

Want to Swim like a SocialFish?

2009-04-07T10:35:00.001-04:00

Lindy and I currently working on our Spring schedule of School of SocialFish workshops. Full information is here. Our workshops are small (4-8 people), intensive (3 hours), hands-on (bring a laptop) and tailored to the people in the room. We do workshops specific to an organization (we come to you) or we group individuals who have specific interests together.

We do practical workshops on blogging (introductory and advanced, individual and organizational), on specific outpost strategies for social spaces like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, as well as thematic workshops on listening and brand monitoring, nurturing your homebase community, engaging young professionals, building buzz around your conference, and lots more.

If you are interested, as an individual or organization, in any of our workshops please let us know as soon as possible as space is limited. Dates are not yet set and will depend on each group members' availability.

Please also forward to any colleagues or friends who might be interested. Thank you in advance for sharing some SocialFish love!

New RSS feed for SocialFishing...

2009-04-06T13:22:00.007-04:00

If you subscribe to this blog in a reader, please note I have changed my RSS service to Feedblitz, due to ongoing crapness from Feedburner.

[UPDATE OMG did this not work at all. Reverted to Blogger feed with no bells and whistles.]

Thanks!

Yummy Shrimp with Chili and Basil Recipe

2009-04-05T11:14:00.001-04:00

Oh, plus my interview at Social Gumbo, which I thought you might like to have a look at. (The recipe is included at the bottom of the post, just fyi!)

George "Loki" Williams is a New Orleans based, music industry blogger whose first blog, HumidCity, became notable when he podcasted evacuee interviews during the Katrina disaster and subsequently used viral methods to help find musicians and industry people in the aftermath. He's also worked with community radio and continues to work with the Human Digital Memory Bank which records Katrina and Rita survivor stories - read all about his story here. Thank you, Loki, for the interview!

Just riding the coattails...

2009-04-03T10:42:00.001-04:00

Just wanted to let you know that my lovely biz partner Lindy's now on the advisory board for Smart Brief on Social Media. Totally awesome - and check out the illustrious company she's keeping. Holy sh- I mean, Wow!

Here's the press release with more on Smart Brief. Their goal with the (free) SBOSM newsletter and blog is to "enlighten business leaders and marketers about ways to use social media to their advantage."

This is great for her, and great for SocialFish, but far more importantly, it's great for you. Lindy will be able to bring the association perspective to the table, ask questions on your behalf or bring up those all-important issues about community building and engagement as well as social media marketing and technology. Let's all keep her well stocked with all those burning questions we like to think about. As a matter of fact, she's already got two questions for you. Please give some good stuff!

Yay Lindy!

Nice SocMed Slideshow from the National Wildlife Federation

2009-04-03T10:33:00.003-04:00

NWF Staff: Intro to Social Media

View more presentations from Danielle Brigida.

Got this via Beth Kanter. It's by Danielle Brigida of NWF, who I had the pleasure of meeting at the DC Twestival and who created this for NWF staff. See what you think!

NTEN Water Cooler Chat 4/2

2009-04-02T13:00:00.001-04:00

Your friendly neighborhood Socialfish will be "IN" the NTEN Office Hours Communications Chat Room every Thursday (that's today!!) at 3 pm EST. Got burning questions about social media strategy? Or just want to hang out and shoot the breeze and get a break from work? Now's your chance!

Here's a bunch of links from things we talked about last week!

- Toni Rae's new blog
- Deirdre Reid's new blog
- Go2Web20 - great apps database for everything
- Mini Maddie doll on flickr (what I would look like if I was skinnier and um, other things)
- How to set up an organizational Twitter account
- Association social media breakfast (Alexandria, April 9) with Chris Bucchere and friends (we're going!)

Whether the conversation is deep or just a nice break from the dullness of your daily routine, though, we're all about sharing. Pick our brains, we'll tell you our take on things.

Click HERE for the chat room if it's not working well embedded below.

[chat room removed after chat]

Quote of the Week : On Community

2009-04-01T10:42:00.000-04:00

"The key to creating or transforming community is to see the power in the small but important elements of being with others. The shift we seek needs to be embodied in each invitation we make, each relationship we encounter, and each meeting we attend. For at the most operational and practical level, after all the thinking about policy, strategy, mission, and milestones, it gets down to this: How are we going to be when we gather together?

- Peter Block, Community: The Structure of Belonging

Lil' Pile O' Links - Toolbox

2009-03-31T10:35:00.002-04:00

Here are a few links to tools I have been looking at recently, as well as some interesting posts about other stuff.

On Social Media Monitoring tools (thanks to social media explorer who explains what these do.)

FREE
101 level monitoring
Filtrbox - brand tracking
IceRocket Blog Trends (the best blog search service I've found so far)
Nielsen's Blogpulse
SM2 by Techrigy
There are tons more search and brand tracking tools, these are just a couple worth looking at.

NOT FREE
Scout Labs
Radian6
Cymfony
Scout Labs, in particular, looks really promising and Lindy and I will do a full post on these once we've had a chance to really dig into them.

Monitoring Tools on Twitter
There are more new tools every day, here's just one good post which mentions 8 Twitter analytics tools.

More Twitter stuff
Twibes - now you are a seasoned Twitterer, use this to recommend some of your fave people to follow.
Mailana - very cool visualization of your network. Click to go deeper.
FriendFiltr - a way to really get the scoop on who's following you.
Tagalus - the user-powered hashtag dictionary.
WeFollow - add yourself to this directory.

On Social Media Marketing
Great white paper - The social media marketing industry report - here's the download link.

On PR 2.0
Brian Solis' new book with Deirdre Breakenridge, Putting the Public back in Public Relations is now out. I can't wait for mine to arrive.

On Facebook for Professional Use:
Ten Facebook Tips for Power Users
How to Use the New Business Page Layout
5 Tips for Marketing on Facebook's New Pages
Facebook's redesign - good concept, but not there yet (good summary of the changes and what everyone's pissed about)
And this is not about tools, but Joshua Porter predicts Facebook will go asymmetrical - I totally agree, read the post to find out what we're on about...

On Communities
Online community examples from lots of industries; here are the examples for the nonprofit sector.

And finally, a really nice little post on Ethics by Dave Fleet.

Phew! Thinking this might keep y'all busy for a little while. :)

New blogs of note

2009-03-30T10:30:00.001-04:00

Just wanted to let you know about four new bloggers I have had the distinct pleasure of getting to know recently.

Pat Jones is the Executive Director of the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association. He blogs at Tolling Points.

Deirdre Reid is an association pro, and was until recently Director of Member Services at the California Building Industry Association; before that, she was at the National Association of Home Builders. She's currently making a move to Raleigh, NC and her personal blog is at Reid All About It.

Toni Rae is a performing artist and Association Director of Education - she blogs at Toni Rae's Version of Life.

Art Hsieh is CEO of the San Francisco Paramedic Association. He writes at EMTeacher.

All four, despite being relatively new at blogging as far as I know, have that special voice I love, where they write in an open, inviting way that shares part of themselves, that lets their personalities shine through, regardless of whether their posts are specifically personal or more professional in tone.

I hope you'll welcome them and I'm so glad they are part of our ever-expanding association blogosphere.

Twitter is not about what we had for lunch. Get over it.

2009-03-27T12:40:00.007-04:00

Here's a little bit of a rant, for which I apologize in advance.

I find the theme about Twitter being all about what people eat for lunch totally irritating at this point. Yes, maybe two years ago people would write about every little thing they did, including eating lunch. But Twitter has evolved far beyond that now - and if some of us by some bizarre twist of fate are still only reading those kinds of tweets, then clearly we are not following the right people.

My response to the listserve discussion about Twitter referenced by Jamie's post above was this:

This is an interesting conversation. Part of my work as a social media strategist is to help associations figure out how to use Twitter, but I decided long ago that it was not part of that job to convince anyone to use it. So my take would simply be that with 6 million people on Twitter in the US alone (see http://www.quantcast.com/twitter.com), and with Twitter's demographics showing 79% of users are between the ages of 18 and 49 and 63% college-educated, (http://www.quantcast.com/twitter.com#demographics), the chances are at just about 100% that some of your association's members are on Twitter.

It is a communications channel which enables word of mouth about your organization, but only you can decide if you have 1) something to talk about and 2) enough of your stakeholders there to do the talking.

Here's a starter list of association professionals on Twitter - (If you use Twitter and aren't here, add yourself and your association.) You can always contact anyone on this list and see how they use it for their organization.

Here's a screenshot of my Twitter screen right at this moment. (I only have a mini-laptop, so I'll just show you the number of tweets that I'm seeing on screen right now, lest you think I am craftily hiding all the lunch posts. And yes, I follow people all over the world, so just because it's late afternoon here does not mean it's not lunchtime somewhere else right now).

So lookee here. We have:

- a message from Pepco, reminding people they don't tweet over the weekend and how to reach them. That's pretty cool I think.

- someone speaking at a conference and inviting us to have a look

- someone giving kudos to someone else who apparently helped them via Twitter (reading between the lines)

- someone giving info about weekend activities

- someone tweeting the Government 2.0 conference

- someone discussing marketing and inviting us to check it out.

Obviously this is only one snapshot - I could very easily bore you with a whole bunch more, but I'll refrain. But what do you notice? 0 for 6 on what anyone had for lunch. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm not saying people don't tweet mundane things about their lives. I personally just tweeted that I had a splitting headache - not particularly useful info for anyone. But perhaps that explains why I feel like ranting about something right about now.

Here's how I experience Twitter - Twitip summed it up perfectly as the 90-10 rule for successful Twitter networking.

"90% of what you share on Twitter should be made up of personal insights and thoughts along with a heavy dose of helpful links, while 10% should be made up of messages that more directly benefit you."

This is advice, but it's not a hard and fast rule. It's also, in my opinion, a naturally developing parameter for how most of us actually do use Twitter, even if we've never heard of this rule. Of course there are days when the percentages won't be 90-10. Of course there are people who consciously don't follow this at all. But generally speaking, as professionals who use Twitter for work and play, this rule does work. And so what does that mean? It means for every "I have a headache" or "Chicken KaPow for lunch at Thai Tanic" or "Must go to bed now", there are many, many more useful tweets, with links to interesting sites, or links to blog posts, or general discussion about specific issues, or conference tweets, or news, or citizen journalism, or whatever.

Do or do not, says Yoda - just quit bitching about it.

That's all, I feel better now, thanks! Have a great weekend! :)

On aggregators and change: I haz a conundrum

2009-03-27T10:55:00.004-04:00

In this post on the SmartBrief Blog, Merrit Colaizzi talked to Guy Kawasaki about his popular blog aggregator site, Alltop.

This question caught my eye.

With the demise of newspapers-as-we-knew-them, what role do you think news aggregators like Alltop and SmartBrief will play in the future of media (and social media)?

[Kawasaki] This is a complex question. Are we hurting these publications because people come to our sites and find the nuggets that they want without having to page through entire papers or sites? That is, are we hurting their page views?

Or are we helping them by sending them more traffic as our readers discover articles they never would have seen before? Clearly we both need these publications to survive because an aggregator needs something to aggregate.

I don't have an answer to this chicken-and-egg question, but it seemed funny that I saw this just after this blog post from Ben about unsubscribing from all his blog feeds. In the comments to Ben's post, I had a bit of a stress attack about the fact that I had culled a bunch of individual association blogs from my Reader and just subscribed to the A-List Bloggers aggregator instead. After having done this, I realized I had just lowered everyone's subscriber number by one - which doesn't seem like a big deal, but philosophically, to me, it was a big deal. It's like by subscribing to a blog I'm showing my support more than just by reading random posts. (I suppose retweeting and/or linking are levels of "sharing the love" which goes one step further too, but that's probably for another post).

It just seems like as soon as you get comfortable with something (e.g. subscribing to blogs in a Reader), the quantity of content becomes overwhelming so you try something else to control it (eg blog/news aggregators) but then soon it becomes time to move on to something else (e.g. using Twitter as a Reader and not subscribing to individual blogs any more) - which normally doesn't bother me at all, it's kind of a natural process, but it seems like every once in a while (like in this instance) I need to stop and think about it and wonder if I'm doing "the right thing". I'm not saying there is a right thing, there is certainly not just one way to do anything in social media, but it's a little conumdrum I thought might be interesting to leave hanging here on a Friday for you. :)

NTEN Water Cooler Chat 3/26

2009-03-26T13:38:00.001-04:00

Your friendly neighborhood Socialfish will be "IN" the NTEN Office Hours Communications Chat Room every Thursday (that's today!!) at 3 pm EST. Got burning questions about social media strategy? Or just want to hang out and shoot the breeze and get a break from work? Now's your chance!

Last week, we discussed Smart Brief on Social Media and how you can send them a tweet (marked #sbosm) with a good blog post of yours and they may include it in their e-newsletter. We also talked about how crowdsourcing your blogroll actually renders it meaningless. We sighed about Facebook, concluded we'd wait and see (I stayed out of that one - but just FYI, Lindy likes the new FB!) and we talked a bit about Friendfeed and how we have not quite figured it out yet (but I'm working on it!)

Whether the conversation is deep or just a nice break from the dullness of your daily routine, though, we're all about sharing. Pick our brains, we'll tell you our take on things.

Click HERE for the chat room if it's not working well embedded below.

[chat room removed after chat]

Who does socmed at your association?

2009-03-26T09:30:00.003-04:00

Check out this great discussion on YAP.

What do you think? Are you seeing associations hiring younger people specifically to have social media as part of their roles, or do you seem them hiring with more of a management-level strategic focus?

Crowdsourcing the world: Dopplr's Social Atlas

2009-03-21T11:29:00.001-04:00

Dopplr is basically a travel site where you can share your trips with your friends. Here's my public page.

More on Dopplr from Blonde 2.0:

"...Two trends converge around Dopplr to make it unique. The first trend is that of user presence and declarative living. Like Twitter or the status function in Facebook, Dopplr gives users the opportunity to declare where they will be traveling to in the future and share this information with their connections. This is a great way for users to find out if any of their friends will be traveling to the same places that they will be traveling to.

Another feature that makes Dopplr different from other travel services is that it takes all of your travel data, quantifies it and then sends it back to you. Marko [Marko Ahtisaari, Dopplr's CEO] tells me that they just sent out an annual report to all of their 2008 travelers with pictures of all the cities they traveled to, data about where they spent their time, who they coincided with during their travels, and for opt-in users, carbon footprint data about the environmental impact of their travels.

Marko says that its users are composed of a group of people who travel most all around the world. They create “the social atlas of the world, built by smart travelers.”

Since the social web is all about fostering relationships in real life, a site like Dopplr can help you find people to get together with when you are traveling. Social media mavens and association people are similar (when not one and the same) in that you can build fantastic relationships with them online but not get to meet or see them in person very often, as they're all spread out all over the place.

Anyway I got this email last week from Dopplr, which I thought I'd share because it's just SO COOL.

Dear Maddie,

We're launching an important new set of features on Dopplr that we're calling the Social Atlas.

The first part of it lets you build a record of places you've been in your home city and cities around the world, like quality restaurants and hotels - as well as other things you've explored.

The idea is that our collective travel knowledge will inform and improve the travel experience of all. Any places you've marked will be visible to the people that can see your travels on Dopplr.

In addition, your choices will be aggregated, anonymised and visualised into part of a unique overall picture of a city visible to all Dopplr users.

How can I help?

We've tried to make the process of marking places as easy as possible. Wherever you see a place you can click on the green "+" next to it to say you've been there. Click a second time to say you've been there and liked it. If you want to undo all of this, just click a third time.

Eventually the Social Atlas will be on mobile devices, part of a Dopplr mobile application which we'll be launching very soon. [...]

Check it out - here's the overview page for DC.

Here's the page for Toronto, where we'll be for ASAE's annual meeting in August.

Click on the "Eat", "Stay", "Explore", "Q&A" tabs for more specifics for each place.

So you might say, well how is this different to any ratings site for hotels, or restaurants, or travel sites in general? First of all, have you tried any of those sites lately? I've had a nightmare several times trying to find good places to eat via Google search on my phone, where all the search results I get are old or bad. This happened in Miami, until Twitter came to the rescue. Secondly, I think the fact that there's a "friend" recommendation layer beyond just the aggregated recommendations is huge. Of course, it's all only as good as the participation on there, so go check it out.

[Aside - I bet national organizations could find lots of good uses for this too as one way to get people thinking about their conferences and connecting beforehand.]

Fun times!

NTEN Water Cooler Chat 3/19

2009-03-19T13:22:00.002-04:00

Your friendly neighborhood Socialfish will be "IN" the NTEN Office Hours Communications Chat Room every Thursday (that's today!!) at 3 pm EST. Got burning questions about social media strategy? Or just want to hang out and shoot the breeze and get a break from work? Now's your chance!

Last week, Chris Bucchere and Dave Sabol very kindly hosted for us. They report back that the following supercool things were discussed:
- SxSW and my.SxSW,
- Building in-house social networks (some of the tools and platforms that are commercially available - HigherLogic, Sharepoint, Jive, Ning, etc.),
- Twitter etiquette (what does it mean when a "brand follows you" and what are good strategies for associations that want to have an Association twitter account),
- this great interview of Marc Andreessen by Charlie Rose
- and a bit about the AFP Association for Fundraising Professionals.

W00t! Thanks guys!

Whether the conversation is deep or just a nice break from the dullness of your daily routine, though, we're all about sharing. Pick our brains, we'll tell you our take on things.

Click HERE for the chat room if it's not working well embedded below.

[chat room removed after chat]

Technology Enables Community

2009-03-19T09:23:00.000-04:00

I really really love this beautiful post by Brian Solis, which he just wrote upon his return from SxSW this week.

The lessons learned here are prevalent to all who use the social tools to facilitate interaction with friends, associates, influencers, tastemakers, brand ambassadors, and your community.

The real story is the human network and the Social Economy that fosters the conversations that serve as its currency - on and offline.

But it’s not just about the tools...it’s about the emotional and psychological connection between people and our investment in the personal traits that others find irresistible.

Relationships….RELATIONSHIPS…count for everything here, and they’re measured by the mutually beneficial rewards that all parties experience over time. We invest in each other and harvest the fruits of our collaboration and interconnection.

I follow you on Twitter!

We’re Facebook friends!

I “like” you all the time on FriendFeed!

I subscribe to your RSS feed!

It may seem surreal, but it’s fascinatingly real and momentous.

We’re forging new and relevant links online. It’s the metamorphosis from online to offline that validates and certifies connections and symbolizes true opportunity to develop genuine relationships.

We’re putting faces to avatars while in person exchanges of emotions and sincerity replace emoticons.

Read the whole thing. I wasn't at SxSW, of course, but that's not the point. The point, which I totally "get", deep down in my bone marrow, is that all of these online social interactions are about getting to know real people, making real friendships, real connections. Face to face and in real life. Especially for those who are naturally shy, who might find it hard to just start talking to a stranger at some networking event. Which is actually most of us, I think. Social media tools and social networks and social spaces enable us to get to know each other, over time, in a very real way which is only enhanced and makes for true happiness when it culminates in meeting someone face to face for the first time.

Technology enables community. I say it a lot. A good friend told me that a hundred years ago when I first started this blog, and it's been my mantra ever since. Posts like Brian's serve as a good reminder that (even while we bitch about Facebook, and moan about the time suck, and stress about monetizing, and pull our hair out trying to figure out the ROI...) this is what it's all about. I don't want to ever forget that. Thank you, Brian.

Awesome use of Twitter: The American Evaluation Association

2009-03-17T12:39:00.003-04:00

Check this out.

I got permission to reprint this email from an ASAE Technology listserve discussion:

Twitter does have some uses that might be seen as slightly unconventional.

We use it basically as a very easy content management system for bulletin items - but most people never realize that the content is fed through twitter.

To explain more, we have installed twitterbar [a Firefox Add-on] on key staff computers. That allows them to send twitter updates at will with almost no interruption in their workflow (it integrates with the URL window in their firefox browser). Then, staff can send an item to twitter when they come across a resource or new member content, etc. We call it Esoterica for Evaluators.

This serves two purposes - it is a useful tool for sharing information about resources and what our members are doing/producing. An unexpected - and extremely useful - side effect has been that it gives staff a concrete action, that is well perceived by members, when someone requests that we share something (including things that we didn't use to have a place to post). We get intermittent requests, from members with valid content to share, asking if we can help to spread the word (new forum on linkedin, new online evaluation guide available, extended blog content). Staff can now respond with a concrete immediate action rather than waiting for the monthly newsletter (and some items don't rise to the level of a newsletter article).

Yes, we do have a very active listserv, and many members post there, but the value of this approach is twofold: 1. The association is perceived as taking an action in support of the member, and 2. It is saved for posterity, and less buried, than listserv content.

You can actually access the twitter-fed content in four ways:

1. On our webpage at http://eval.org/aeaweb.asp: If you looked on this webpage the user would never know that the content was driven by twitter - other than that we do include "Follow Updates on Twitter" at the bottom for those who wish to do so (this could be removed).

2. One can subscribe to the RSS feed (see the link at the top of the page).

3. One can actually see it on the twitter page for that content http://twitter.com/aeaweb

4. One can follow it on Twitter.

I also want to thank colleagues at ASHA for their assistance as we were conceiving this project.

Susan

Susan Kistler
Executive Director, American Evaluation Association

In short, they have a few staffers using the Twitterbar for content in, and they just use the Twitter RSS feed for content out. They will archive for their own purposes.

Additional awesomeness - check out their page explaining what RSS is and why you might want to subscribe to their feeds.

Nicely done!

4 Steps for Setting Up an Organizational Twitter Account

2009-03-17T08:50:00.004-04:00

We're often asked about how to set up a Twitter account for an organization, when it's likely that more than one staffer will be tweeting.

Here's a quick four-step rundown of what we would do. This isn't the only way, of course. But if you are starting from scratch, this is what we would suggest. We'll use YAP as an example.

1. Set up a main "umbrella" account - e.g. YAPtweets.

Why? So people can find you easily. In the description, put in a nutshell what the organization does. A mission statement in under 140 characters, for example. (Be pithy - people like that. There's lots of other places you can be boring). For the website link field of the profile, create a Twitter landing page which says, "Welcome to the Twitter page for YAP! We're glad you're here. Here's what we're all about. Here's what we tweet about. And here are our team members, should you be interested in following them too." Then list the team as per #2.

2. Give your staff their own individual accounts - e.g. YAP_Bob, Maggie@YAP, etc.

Why? because people want to see individual people representing their organizations. There can be backlash when that doesn't happen. Presumably each staffer will have their own personality, their own things they like to tweet about personally and professionally, and they will also have their own content that they are responsible for - namely marketing, or advocacy, or publications, or events. Each person will grow their own followers independently - and can share them under the umbrella account as they go along (see #4.)

3. Use a multiple account Twitter client to manage your accounts.

Why? Because it's MUCH easier than signing in and out of accounts all day. SplitTweet works great, and we're checking out CoTweet (currently in private beta). SplitTweet has a cool "track your brand mentions" feature; CoTweet allows you to tag your replies as being from a particular person, and allows you to assign responses to team members. Both services allow you to monitor multiple accounts at the same time - so you can choose to tweet something to your individual account and the umbrella account, or just to one at a time. [Update - HootSuite is another good one.]

4. Under the umbrella account, periodically retweet items from team members as well as from their followers/friends.

Why? To show a coherent stream of content where visitors can immediately see what you're about and that different people speak for you in different ways. If managed well, you can follow relevant public conversations between team members under the umbrella too - conversations that might draw people in to whatever topic you are discussing.

That's it! Start tweeting!

Oh - hold up.

You might be wondering, but what about tweeting around a conference? Should we set up a specific conference-related Twitter account?

I say no. If you set up a new account for each conference, you are basically starting from zero friends and followers each time - and it takes time to build that community. However, make sure your team all use a specific designated hashtag for a particular conference. That means people finding you on Twitter via the conference promotion will be able to find all the tweets from you and your attendees about the conference, but also it allows you to differentiate between annual conferences from year to year - eg #Tech09 versus #Tech10 - but the staff members who have built a following on Twitter will stay visible and won't be hidden under some conference account. They will each also be enabled to add their own personal takes on the conference, by talking about the particular sessions they are attending and the things they care about from their individual (professional) viewpoints.

Want more? Here are some good introductory tips from TwitTip, a fantastic 101 blog from Problogger Darren Rowse all about Twitter:

- Building an Effective Business Profile on Twitter

- Tips for Brands and Nonprofits

- How to Handle Multiple Users Within Your Company

Let me know how you get on with this, or if you tried it a different way with success.