Chipolte Reaches out to Customers Through Blogs

Recently, in a San Diego Chipotle, there was an outbreak of Hepatitis A. The restaurant in La Mesa, California has seen 18 cases, according to this article here at InjuryBoard.com.

Mitch Wagner, a blogger at Business Week, took to his personal blog and explained the situation. So, when he received a reply to his post about this hepatitis A breakout from a Chipotle employee, he began to enquire as to their social media approach to winning back the faith of the fans. The Business Week blog article can be found here.

Joe Stupp, a manager in Customer Services, started finding blogs of those people who had written about their perceptions on the Hepatitis A cases. He responded to them individually through the comments. His care for his company came out in this particular email:

But in this particular instance, we were concerned about local perceptions, and we wanted to try to disseminate as much of the information we know that we can to hopefully help folks feel a little safer about visiting our restaurant.

As Joe has taken the time to reach out to the community of Chipotle customers at that location, he reached out to them through a means that they affiliated with. It’s another case of a company taking the time to communicate with the customer on their level. This is a great example of a company using social media.

Social Media Spending is on the Rise!

When marketers were surveyed in this latest eMarketer article, over 78% said that they would increase spending during the next three years on social media tactics. More marketers are planning to increase social media budgets than direct e-mail and mobile texting, which were the other two mobile marketing tactics included in the survey.

As social ad spending is expected to grow from $1.4 billion this year to an estimated $2.4 billion in 2011, the focus will ultimately shift away from direct e-mail. Even though e-mail will not go away anytime soon, it only offers a 2-way communication. Social media is a breeding ground for recommendations to products, referrals to services, and it allows marketers to truly target niche groups. Businesses are beginning to truly embrace the power of communities.

Citizens Lives Change as Online Participation Grow

In a recent post at Criss Crossed, Christian Kreutz, identifies the ways that citizens have become more involved in the world due to the fact that the internet is everywhere.

First off, people are always online. With the blackberry constantly connecting to the internet, you’re always connected to somebody through social networking sites, there’s a feeling of protection.

Second, interaction can come from everywhere, whether it’s next door or in China. This can facilitate interaction, coordination and organization throughout the world, whether its through businesses or friends making connections. This has the most impact, according to Kreutz, in Africa and Asia where mobile phones are the primary tool used to conduct business in Africa and Asia.

Lastly, anyone can broadcast from anywhere. Citizens can pick up a video camera and tell their point of view from any computer terminal in the world. These real life portrails can often have more impact than the nightly news or reading about it on the New York Times.

As the Internet continues to grow, more and more ways to facilitate communication will come about. Whether it’s broadcasting the latest news from You Tube, or constantly Twittering about happenings in your daily life, these new ways to broadcast information to the world will continue to shape our future.

Foreign Policy Embraces Social Networking

Recently in Social Media Today, Angelo Fernando pointed out how the State Department is reaching out to the world through the means of social media. The US Department of State has created a blog, and they are constantly describing what they’re doing in the world. Most importantly, it’s written so that everyone can understand what’s going on with the State Department and they’re a human side to the government. You can find the blog, Dipnote, here.

Angelo also pointed out that a recent speech given by Condaleeza Rice was posted on the site via a You Tube video:

Reaching Out to Your Customers

In a recent post at The Social Organization Rachel Happe discusses how to influence social media in an organization.

The most important part of social media is creating better relationships. However, with this new speed that social media brings to organizations, we can build better relationships faster and start doing business faster.

Rachel Happe believes that the best way to bring this into the organization is through a small, enthusiastic group of people. And then focus on creating the important relationships with those who share interests. Are you going to focus your networking with other businesses or are you reaching out to your customers and inviting them to take part in your product line?

What Happens in Vegas... C20 Wrap Up

Welcome to Hell Week

I've been a road warrior during the last few months and I can tell you, there is nothing sexy about it. Don't get me wrong, I've stayed in nice hotels, eaten decent meals, met with interesting (and sometimes famous) people. But it gets tired fast. Anyone that travels a lot knows what I'm talking about. You miss your family. You find yourself completely in reactive mode when it comes to work. Meetings get pushed off, and then pushed off again. Your sleep suffers.

Last week was worth it though. We had what we affectionately call "Hell Week" out in Las Vegas. Four conferences (Community 2.0, Warrillow Summit, ACORD/LOMA, Sirius Decisions) in five days including three keynotes from our chairman, two panels that I participated in, dozens of podcasts, video interviews and sponsorships at each event. It was exhausting but really ended up being a "tour de force" for both Mzinga, and We Are Smarter.

To hear some of the podcasts that Jim, Bryan Person (our client and podcast producer) and myself did while we were at Community 2.0, head over to Jim's blog. You can also see a complete list of the podcasts here on the C20 blog. The videos will be coming soon.

My colleague, Shannon took a number of pictures that are up on Flickr (I have a bunch I need to post too - also coming soon).

Here are some high level observations from the Community 2.0 Conference:

• Great collection of smart community people. I knew a number of the speakers/attendees already because of last year's event, my We Are Smarter podcasts or Bill Johnston's ForumOne events. I did meet a few new peeps which is always fun.
• One of the highlights of the trip was picking up Charlene Li of Forrester at the airport at 12:30 AM on Tuesday so that we could podcast with her. I think she thought my colleague, Jim Storer, and I were slightly crazy but she was a good sport about it.
• We held a disco/bowling party Tuesday night for clients and friends of Mzinga. It was really quite amusing and we bowled our ASSES off. By the end of the night, I wasn't half bad. I will say this much though, real bowling and bowling on the Wii are not even in the same universe from a skill set perspective.
• David Weinberger is an incredibly brilliant but shy person. He's much more self aware than people give him credit for and his keynote was brilliant. I had the pleasure of podcasting with him and talking with him for about 45 minutes at the Community 2.0 kickoff party Monday night. At one point in the conversation, he said "STOP INTERVIEWING ME!" I laughed and told him it was hard - my job is to ask people questions. He and I joked about it his brutal honesty for the rest of the conference - he apologized - I told him he was just keeping me honest.
• Tony Hsieh of Zappos is an incredibly cool dude. He is one of the most social media-savvy CEO's I know (Jason Calacanis excepted). We podcasted with him as well and got to ask him questions my wife wanted answers to. One such question was "why does your UI kind of suck?" I didn't put it quite that bluntly but his answer was, "we're fixing it and tell your wife to go to http://zeta.zapos.com" (beta version of the site).
• I also had some great conversations with KD Paine - the queen of social media measurement (we did a video interview), Rachel Makool of eBay, Peter Friedman of Liveworld, Mike Walsh of Leverage Software, Shel Israel, and many many more smart social media peeps.

I didn't take a ton of notes but here are some take aways I jotted down during Charlene Li and David Weinberger's sessions:


Charlene Li's Keynote: May 13 (Community 2.0 Conference)

Reviewed Groundswell and why it matters:

Case studies:

• Del Monte - Market research for their dogfoo (pdf) - people give great, immediate, feedback
• Tivo Community (didn't own it - but they participate)
• BlendTec - Will it Blend videos were a great way to
• P&G's Beinggirl.com - great way to get research on teen girls use of tampons (it's a site focused on teenage girl things, not feminine products) - math in the book shows lifetime profit/girl that buys is $480 (girls tend to stick w/ brand they started with)
• E&Y - doing a great job with their Facebook presence - great at having conversations with recruits
• Fiskars - Scissors used in scrapbooking - went out and asked "what question do you think of when you hear 'Fiskars'" - response was "beige" - Fiskars didn't like this so worked with "Fiskateers" (WOM advocates) - saw a correlation between activity and in local forums and local store sales
• Dell - support forums - "Predator" spends 40 hours/week answering questions about optical drives for Dell customers (is not an employee) - asked him why and he said "I really enjoy helping people.
• Blueshirt Nation - (great podcast) employee communities - great for internal innovation, information sharing.
• Starbucks innovation - currently soliciting feedback via idea catcher - they respond!

- Talked about ROI of executive blogging - for $285K spent (estimates) by GM on Fastlane blogs, ROI was $353K.

- Dell - talked about Jeff Jarvis' "Dell Hell"/flaming laptop precipitating a blogging team (lead by Lionel Menchaca) - in spite of tons of negative intitial feedback, Dell stuck with it (Mike Dell e-mailed Lionel in the thick of things at 1:00 AM to tell him that he was doing a great job!)

- Charlene asked how many of us know how many customer touch points we have? We should be asking ourselves this question.




David Weinberger's Keynote: May 13 (Community 2.0 Conference)

• A real community is a group of people that care about each more than they really need to
• Real conversations are voluntary, open-ended, in your own voice
• Imagagine the worst boss (show's Dick Cheney)
• Showed laughing baby from Youtube - convserations are facilitated by passing around consumer generated content
• Everything we do is social (60K comments on the laughing baby video on Youtube)
• Web/conversations online are important during the "age of conversation" in the "age of information" - we can now go to the end user to ask them questions like, "how's the Mini in the winter in Boston?"
• Informationalization - "Statement - DNA is not information" (we show ourselves views of DNA over and over again as information) but it really isn't what DNA looks like. It's not information (the world is made out of "stuff")
• Ray Kurzweil - wrote The Age of Spirtual Machines - when will computers be powerful enough so that we can create a perfect model of the brain (by 2029). Ray believes that if he can model the brain, when he dies, he will live on forever. Key is that the model of something "isn't" something. It's just a representation.
• Databases are great, but...
• LOC receives 7,000 new books/day - they have a system for this but this isn't scalable. There are tens of millions or hundreds of millions of items updated to the Web every day.
• Control doesn't scale (at least not well - China is finding this out now). You need to spend all your time trying to "control" - the Web was built so that it didn't require centralized control - this allowed it to grow, scale and ultimately succeed (we didn't need to figure out a way to manage 60K comments on a laughing baby video)
• Too much abundance (good and bad) on Web - we manage e-mail in spite of the spam.
• First order: Filling cabinet (one person's filing system)
  
• Second order: file card library (group organization analog style) - ensures that we must throw out most of the content in order to keep things organized
• Third order: Amazon is able to do this with data using tag clouds, taxonomies, links, and all sorts of other types of meta data (basically) - user reviews

- KEY: Users are now in charge of the organizing of information - (We companies let customers organize - ME companies still insist they control and that they are in charge)

- Library of Congress put up 3,000 pictures on Flickr that they weren't able to categorize - end-users added dozens of tags and comments to these pictures (Flickr, only allows for 75 tags - people "hacked" comments to add additional tags)

- With newspapers, only one front page is possible. In digital world, blogs, forums, Twitter, digg and many other social media activities are all new front pages!

- Talked a bit about the importance of Twitter.

- Britannica works but doesn't scale. Couldn't get to Wikipedia's scalle (millions of posts/entries in just five years)


Some Twitter/blog coverage and from the event:

• Tweets from the event tagged with #c20
  
• Francois Gossieaux's blog
• Rachel Happe's blog
• John Bell's "Digital Influence Mapping" Blog
• The Virtual Gardener Blog
• Kathleen Gilroy's Blog

If you know of other stuff I'm missing (I'm sure there's plenty) please let me know via comments or DM me on Twitter.

Best,
Aaron

Podcast conversation with Rachel Happe, IDC

Rachel sat for me early in the conference to share her thoughts on what we'd learned so far from the presentations, how "getting to the Aha! moment" is important in every community initiative and how companies can get started in social media. She's also doing some interesting research and developing models to help determine the key levers of successful community. Read more about this on her blog. Download this podcast or stream it below.

* Recorded at the 2008 Community 2.0 Conference and cross-posted on Jim Storer's Mzinga blog.

Podcast conversation with Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh

In speaking with people after Tony's keynote, it became clear they found his message inspirational, but not necessarily helpful in their journey with community. I didn't have a great response to this until I saw slide in Patti Anklam's presentation the next day. She talked about the roles of an old ceo vs new ceo." specifically, the old CEO leads the company vs. the new CEO, who helps to create a sharing culture. That's when it clicked for me. Tony's a great example of what it means to be a CEO in the current business climate. This article (shared by Tony via Twitter this morning) is another example of that process in action. Download this podcast or stream it below.

* Recorded at the 2008 Community 2.0 Conference and cross-posted on Jim Storer's Mzinga blog.

Podcast conversation with Rachel Makool and Matt Warburton

By Jim Storer

Both Rachel Makool (eBay) and Matt Warburton (Yahoo) have extensive experience in building/managing community and it shows in this hallway conversation. They confirm how important it is the connect with other community managers to benchmark your efforts and learn from their mistakes. Rachel also suggests how important it is to understand the precedents you set with your community - they'll expect you to follow through. Matt talks about how valuable community is as a feedback mechanism for Yahoo. Download this podcast or stream it below.

* Recorded at the 2008 Community 2.0 Conference and cross-posted on Jim Storer's Mzinga blog.

How to Set Goals for Your Community

In a recent post at the Communiteer, they post about the essential task of setting goals in order to grow your community.

1. Choose one or two areas to focus on -- Communiteer focuses on setting goals that are narrow. With a slim focus, the amount of work is not overwhelming.

2. Write effective goals – Make sure your goals have the ability to be measured and that they can be judged in a certain time frame. Not how to reach your goal, but when you’re going to reach it.

3. Plan how to reach your goals -- How will you achieve your end result in a given time period? It’s about how you get there, not the result in the end.

4. Check progress regularly but not too regularly – See how you’re doing from time to time, but not too regularly. Remember that as you check your results, they’re from week to week, but you’re looking at the overall picture.

Community 2.0: Share Your Thoughts

Thanks to all that attended the c2.0 conference this past week. Kristin Paulick, conference producer for the Community 2.0 event recently created this survey to collect your thoughts and opinions. Take the time out to let us know your overall impressions of the event, and what you would like to see next year.

Also, don’t forget to upload any photos you might have taken at c2.0 to our Flickr pool that we’ve created. Make sure to tag them community 2.0.

As always, check back regularly for updates on the Community 2.0 Event and insights on how communities can affect your business bottom line.

Community 2.0 Wants Your Photos!

We want to see your photos you took while attending Community 2.0! We’ve already set up a group here at Flickr. So upload your photos and tag them community2.0. Kristin Paulick, the conference producer, has already added her photos, so check those out. We’re excited to see Community 2.0 through your eyes!

Podcast conversation with Dawn Lacallade

By Jim Storer

We were fortunate to meet and have a conversation with Dell's lead blogger Lionel Manchaca at SXSW earlier this year. He spoke briefly about their Ideastorm, but really focused on sharing best practices around corporate blogging. When I noticed Dawn on the agenda at the Community 2.0 Conference, I knew we had to do a follow up conversation with her. Dawn leads the Ideastorm initiative and the insights she shares in this podcast are essential for anyone considering engaging customers (or employees) in co-creation or idea management. Download this podcast or stream it below.

* Recorded at the 2008 Community 2.0 Conference and cross-posted on Jim Storer's Mzinga blog.

Podcast conversation with David Weinberger

By Jim Storer

It seems to me that David is reluctant legend. His suggestion that "markets are conversations" has become the mantra for the future of the web, yet David prefers not to spend much time talking about it. We arranged a podcast with David following his keyonte at the Community 2.0 Conference, where he shared his thoughts on a variety of topics, including why control doesn't scale, the Library of Congress, The Cluetrain Manifesto back story and the cultural challenges facing companies when they join the conversation. Download this podcast or stream it below.

* Recorded at the 2008 Community 2.0 Conference and cross-posted on Jim Storer's Mzinga blog.

* Flickr photo by Bryan Person.

Podcast conversation with Charlene Li

By Jim Storer

Booking (and connecting for) podcasts can be hit or miss and creativity in scheduling is often rewarded. My colleague Aaron connected with Charlene on the phone several days before the Community 2.0 conference and found out she would only be in Las Vegas for 12 hours. She planned to arrive at midnight on Monday and would leave immediately following her keynote the next morning. Thinking on his feet, Aaron suggested we could pick her up at the airport and have a conversation on the ride to the hotel. Charlene agreed and what follows is the transcript of that conversation, including the sound of a laboring limo, a courteous driver stopping to try to buy a bottle opener (unsuccessful) and terrific insights from the co-author of Groundswell (along with colleague Josh Bernoff). Download this podcast or stream it below.

* Recorded at the 2008 Community 2.0 Conference and cross-posted on Jim Storer's Mzinga blog.

* Flickr photo by Brian Solis.

Social Network Sites Hits Down, MySpace Rules

While social networking sites hits are down 16% from one year ago, the overall majority of traffic still navigates to MySpace. This information was detailed in an article at Read Write Web. MySpace received 73.82% of all social media traffic in April. Facebook was the next most visited site at 14.8%, followed by MyYearbook at 1.33%. MySpace also won the competition of length of time on site, with users increasing their time spent on my space 73% in April.

Podcast conversation with Bill Johnston

Bill Johnston is the chief community officer at Forum One Communications and was a panelist on the Day One session, What Do These Points Really Mean? The Pros and Cons of Community Reputation Systems.

In this podcast discussion recorded on Day Two, Bill talks about the evolution of the Community 2.0 Conference from 2007 to 2008, as well as the state of employment in the online community industry.

Download this podcast, or stream it below.

Building on Community 2.0

These past few days we have delivered a day-by-day playbook on Community 2.0, gathering insights from the event and around the web. Now that the Community 2.0 Conference has come to an end, here are a couple of more resources and post/pre reactions from the c2.0 event that you might find valuable even if you weren’t able to attend the event.

Francois Gossieaux has this post on the Beeline Labs blog on his observations of the event from his opening workshop on Monday.

Dawn Foster from the Fast Wonder Blog, shares her notes on the conference on these posts:

Chris Messina on DiSo at Community 2.0

Jeska Dzwigalski on Second Life at Community 2.0

Shel Israel at Community 2.0

KD Paine’s post on the KDPaine’s PR Measurement Blog:

What a difference a year makes in social media

Janet Lee Johnson’s post:

Blown Away by ChocoNancy (@NancyWhite)

This post on Joho the Blog!

Conversational business

The Otter Group’s post:

Community 2.0 Boot Camp: Social Media Playbook

Kevin O’ Keefe’s post on Lexblog: Real Lawyers Have Blogs:

Presenting at Community 2.0 in Las Vegas on Wednesday

This article on the Online Community Report:

OpenID: What will it take to make it mainstream?

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, has uploaded this presentation from the conference on Slideshare.net on the importance of “building a brand”.

| View | Upload your own

As always we’ll be posting regular updates as we come across them, but feel free to share any observations/thoughts that might have struck you on the c2.0 event.

Podcast conversation with Betty Sanchez

Betty Sanchez is a Bay Area-based interactive marketing consultant.

In this podcast discussion, Betty offers advice for professionals who are just getting started in online communities.

Download the podcast, or click to stream below.

Podcast conversation with Dan Neely

Dan Neely is the CEO of Networked Insights who led a conference session on Day Two called Customer Engagement: The New Metric and What it Means to Your Business.

In this podcast conversation, Dan explains why companies using social media and building online communities should focus on "passion and pain points."

Download the podcast, or click to stream below.

Podcast conversation with Melany Gallant

Melany Gallant is the director of marketing for Ottawa-based Ramius Corporation.

I spoke with Melany about her impressions of the conference.

Download the podcast, or click to stream below.

Community: 'It’s nothing to do with technology'

Shel Israel has the floor at the start of Day Two of the Community 2.0 Conference, and he has plenty of stories to tell.



Shel has traveled to five continents and 32 countries over the last year, talking with people who are passionate about social media as part of a global survey for SAP. His interviewees have included a blogger, Laurel Papworth, who watches how Saudi women on social networks; an Egyptian human rights activist, Wael Abbas, who risks his life to chronicle police brutality in his country; and a Chinese entrepreneur, Isaac Mao (pictured above), whose every online moved is monitored by the authorities.

And what have those conversations taught Shel? That community has "nothing to do with technology. We're hot-wired ... We are community-oriented people."

Link: Shel's SAP Global Survey interviews.

(Flickr photo by Joi)

Community 2.0 Live and On the Air

Quickly scanning the tweets and blog posts of attendees at our Community 2.0 event, there's quite a bit out there and on our own blog from yesterday.

Some posts across the web:

Cine+octo=boo has this great post:
re-hashing communities 2.0 — day 1

And this from Dawn Foster on her Fast Wonder Blog:
Kellie Parker at Community 2.0
David Weinberger on Community

And Joe Cothrel, Vice President of Community Management Services at Lithium Technologies has added his presentation from the conference up on Slideshare on key success factors in creating an online community for your company:

View Upload your own

Stay tuned as our guest bloggers continue to update us from the conference and we’ll continue to search across the web for other insights as well.

Connecting to community with simple explanations

I'm sitting in on a great session with Lee LeFever from Common Craft and Kevin Flaherty from Wetpaint.

The two are talking about the explanation problem, where companies stumble in trying to explain what a new website/tool/product is and how it works. The solution? Focus on the question "Why should I care?" instead, and address the "real-world pain" facing the community members.

We'll be posting a separate interview with Lee LeFever here on the blog either later or tomorrow.

From information to conversation

Here are just some of the gems from David Weinberger's keynote, The Information Revolution that Wasn't and the One that Will Be: How the New Dimensions of Information are Transforming Business ... and Life (yes, that's the actual title!):

• Community is a group of people “listening more than they have to.”
  
  
• “We don’t often get to invent new ways of talking to each other,” as we’ve being doing the past 10 years.
  
  
• “Don’t underestimate the subversive power of conversation.”
  
  
• We are coming out of the Age of Information and coming into Age of Conversation.
  
  
• The system that works well in the physical world doesn’t work in the online world.
  
  
• "Of course we’d rather talk to each other than listen to a bunch of blowhards up on the stage.”
  
  
• “Control doesn’t scale very well”
  
  
• Thanks to tagging, “users are in control of the organization of stuff.”
  
  
• "We will fill every space with conversation … We are an insanely social species."
  
  
• "Conversations are smarter than the individual people having them."
  
  
• "Knowledge is not in our heads … it is between us."

'Let's talk about tampons'

Catchy title, eh?

Well, that was name of one of the slides used by Charlene Li in her Community 2.0 keynote, Tapping into the Groundswell, How to Create Your Community Strategy.

Charlene was talking about BeingGirl.com, an online community created "for girls, by girls" by Tampax, a company in the business of selling tampons.

Tampax used what Charlene called "POST" method in building its community:

• People – Assess your customers’ social activities
• Objectives – Decide what you want to accomplish
• Strategy – Plan for how relationships with customers will change
• Technology – Decide which social technologies to use

Good listening required

Charlene says that when she's asked, "So how do we get started?" it's usually a sign that companies haven't been paying attention, haven't been listening.

"How dare [they]!" Charlene said. "What kind of company wouldn't want to listen to its customers?"

David Weinberger is speaking next.

Community 2.0 Conference is underway

Mzinga CEO Chairman Barry Libert just left the stage here at the Red Rock Casino, Resort & Spa, having officially kicked off Day One of the Community 2.0 Conference.

Barry set the tone for the event by reminding the crowd that community really isn't new; rather, it's been around since the age of the Bible (user-generated content) and Jesus Christ (social networker).

And today? Community affords companies a world of opportunity for companies to connect with their customers.

"Profound communities, pervasive communities … is what every business is about," Barry said.

Charlene Li is up next.

MTV Reaches Out through New Community

In a recent article at CNet, they discuss the launch of MTV Networks’ newest community launch for Logo, the gay, lesbian, and transgender niche channel owned by Viacom. MTV has been known to build many communities soley around its content that airs on television, making this community that launched May 7 no exception.

Reaching out to this extremely niche market, Logo’s new community is starting by providing 3,000 ad-supported clips for the gay and lesbian community. This is the largest community with this content on the web.

Plenty of podcasting and Twittering ahead

I'm packing my bags and flying out to Las Vegas early tomorrow morning. And much like Aaron and Jim, I'll also be conducting plenty of podcast interviews throughout the Community 2.0 Conference.

In addition to speaking with the presenters and panelists, I'd also like to record the impressions and reactions of the conference attendees. If you're one of them and you see me roaming the halls of the Red Rock Casino, Resort & Spa with a microphone in hand, come up and say hello. I'm this guy:



You can also contact me on my cell phone at (781) 413-5846.

Conference Twitterings

You can follow my -- and everyone's -- conference-related Twitter posts at Hashtags.org and Twemes.com. These links will compile all Twitter messages marked with the #C20 hashtag.

Talk to you tomorrow from Las Vegas!

Podcasts Galore

I'm ramping up for the Community 2.0 Conference (version 2.0) and I'm starting to line up some podcasts. I've already e-mailed a number of folks about scheduling some time. These podcasts will go up on the C20/Swift sight and Mzinga.com. If you're interested in doing a podcast with my colleague, Jim Storer, and me, shoot me an e-mail or ping me on Twitter (@astrout).

Look forward to seeing you there! It's going to be a blast.

Best,
Aaron

Declining Interest in Facebook

Businesses trying to reach consumers on the popular social networking site Facebook might come across a few problems. The results from a recent poll posted on Mashable show us that many users are “fed up” with Facebook. Only an astonishing 13% claimed that they were not “fed up”. The rest of people polled were either totally fed up, slightly fed up, or never really active.

According to Mashable, what’s turning people away from the popular social networking site are the infectious applications. Spamming is consistent, and there is too much clutter going on any given page. Most users want to be able to quickly scan updates, check friends, and emails.

If Facebook wants to stop being compared to MySpace and it’s annoying features, well then they have some work cut out for them over the next couple months!

Couldn’t hear those tornado sirens? Social Networks may work better for spreading news

In a recent news article at ReadWrite Web, they report on the new study that is being released by the New Scientist. This study indicates that when life threatening situations are occurring, social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs and IM, get the news out faster than traditional news sources. We’ve heard of several examples having to do with the California Wildfires, as well as the Facebook group that was started (I’m OK at VT) to show who had survived the incident.

Here’s an example of Twittering taking tornado warnings into account even though the sirens weren’t working in Edmond, Oklahoma. Social media has proven to help people avoid dangerous situations, as well as spread need to know news.

Your Community’s Primal Code

At Wendistry, Wendi Mc Gowan sheds light on the “Primal Code.” The Primal Code is made up of seven elements, that when introduced and fully embraced used by you and your community, the success of your social community won’t falter.

Creed – Within the first few seconds of someone acquainting themselves with your community, they should know exactly what you stand for.

Icons – What’s special to your community? Just like the Eiffel Tower represents Paris and the Swoosh gives away Nike, you must have a tag that your community can embrace and identify as their own.

Ritual – Communities do things together. Even though you’re online, create something that brings your readers together, give them a pattern to look foreword to.

Sacred Words – This is those key words that are representative of your community. There is a secret code flowing between your community members, and make sure your members can identify their use in your community.

Non Believers – Always know who does not believe in your purpose. Strive to bring them to the community, you can adapt to their needs and bring them into the community.

Leader – There is always someone at the head of the community. A clear set leader who can be easily recognized.

With these seven parts intact in your community, it should grow. A unique bond will be created among your members.

Best Times for Your Blog Post

According to a recent article at Read Write Web, if you’re looking for readers and traffic to your blog, it’s best to post 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM Pacific Standard Time (4:00 to 6:00 EDT). Most traffic also tends to occur when the post is published on Thursdays. The absolute worst time is from 5:00 to 7:00 PDT on Fridays. No one will be around to read your blog by this time.

The measurements and information was gathered in correspondence as to when the most number of comments, diggs, saves to del.icio.us, and number of inbound links were measured coming back to blog posts. The measurements were taken as to when the different links were posted coming back to original posts. AideRSS was responsible for

The Role of a Social Media Manager

In a recent post at Social Media Today, Jeff Nolan described what he thought was the role of an ideal new social media manager, having recently hired a person for this role at NewsGator.

Many companies think hiring someone to write a blog will open the flood gates of the new media world. However, this effort is no guarantee of success; it requires the company to create content that is important to their user, constantly pursuing the topics they express interest in.

But blogging is one of many things a social media manager should be responsible for. After the blogs are written, it’s important to build interaction, and show how the company is newly adapting to the tools of the blog. Then other social media tools must be brought on, for example, LinkedIn, Twitter, or YouTube. Each must fulfill the direct interest of your audience, showing them that you are truly listening to what they have to say.

The role of the social media manager is to create rich interaction between the company and the customers. Whether it’s bringing in industry insiders to write on blogs or creating content on various social networking sites across the web, the key role of a social media manager is to understand what your audience desires and supply the content across these particular tools.

Twitter still not yet in Social Elite

According to a recent post at EWeek, Twitter has not reached the elite status of other social networking sites. It has, however, doubled the amount of visits it receives over the past three months. Out of all the social networking sites, it ranked 439, and 4,309 out of all sites overall. Some figures that could alter these statistics are the many different access points other than just the typical computer.

Here at HitWise, Heather Hopkins notes that the majority of Twitter’s users return over and over again, giving the site a very loyal fan base. But ever over the past few months, with Twitter being in the news, such as breaking news about an earthquake in the UK, and freeing a UC Berkley student from an Egyptian jail, this very niche site is receiving lots of air time, and will continue to grow at such fast speed.

Giving Back Through Social Networks

Social networks like Facebook and MySpace have made billions throughout the years from advertisements and separate ventures, but when have you ever heard the phrase “Facebook has donated” or “MySpace has given back to the community” ever within the past couple of years?

There is a growing trend of non-profit social media organizations that are combining doing good with a good business sense. This post on VentureBeat shares an example of how Kiva has embraced the power of communities to help fund business projects for underprivileged entrepreneurs in developing countries. Entrepreneurs have long been using the internet for years, but with the rise of Web 2.0 technologies, social networking can serve as a community where improvements and positive changes begin.

Kiva though is not the only company taking advantage of harnessing the power of social media to make a positive impact. Kenneth Cole launched his AWEARNESS blog where he addresses major social issues like social rights, hard times, well-being, and political landscapes. Ethos Water has also used social media to help empower the global community to alleviate the world water crisis in developing countries in Africa. .

Businesses are finally seeing the amount of good that can be done through the power of collaborative communities. Social networks can provide a backbone for a multitude of individuals to come across each other and address various social issues affecting the world today. What are some other examples of organizations that have used social networks to create positive change? When will other businesses join in?