Demystifying Social Media: Tools and Techniques

Demystifying Social Media Tools & Techniques Dawn Foster Sr. Executive & Community Practice Manager at Olliance Group olliancegroup.com @geekygirldawn fastwonderblog.com 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 1

Agenda ● General overview of Social Media Tools & Techniques – Guiding Principles & Strategy for Participation – Social Media Activities / Tools – Twitter – Facebook – LinkedIn – FriendFeed – Blogging – Monitoring ● Breakout Groups – Crystal: Learn more about the tools (Twitter, etc.) – Dawn: Monitoring social media sites 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 2

Social Media Takes Many Forms 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 3

Guiding Principles: It's All About the People ● Focus on the individuals: Participate as a person, not a corporate entity ● Be Sincere: Sincerity = believability & credibility ● Not all about you: Community is about conversation, which is by definition two-way ● Be a Part of the Community: Don't try to control it ● Everyone’s a Peer: You are not the expert; knowledge comes from everywhere 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 7

Building Your Social Media Strategy? Clear Purpose / Goals are Key ● Do you need to build new or can you join an existing site? ● What do you hope to accomplish and what are your goals for social media? ● What is your overall strategy and how do your social media efforts fit within it? ● What are your plans for achieving your goals and how will you measure it? ● Do you have the resources (people & $) to maintain it long-term? Answer these questions before you start 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 8

Play Nice "I'm the Lorax who speaks for the trees which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please. NOW...thanks to your hacking my trees to the ground, there's not enough Truffula Fruit to go 'round. Translation: Play Nice: Be polite and And my poor Bar-bar-loots are all getting the crummies respectful in your because they have gas, and no interactions with other food in their tummies!" members 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 9

Where and How NOT to Participate ● Do not participate on competitor's sites (considered slimy & bad manners) ● Do not participate in communities solely to pimp your efforts. http://www.flickr.com/photos/victoriafee/2740896609 ● Do not mention your initiatives in every post. Talk about the causes first & your efforts second 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 10

How to Participate ... Listen First: Understand the Norms ● Each site has it's own norms – Language and terminology – Acceptable behavior ● Participate gently at first – Pick one site to start – Spend more time listening http://www.flickr.com/photos/niclindh/1389750548 – Take the time to understand how people participate – Participate with an individual account first – Engage in additional sites as you get comfortable – Begin participating for your organization 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 11

People are Watching You “My eyes see. His eyes see. I see him. And he sees me. And so we say, Translation: “Hooray for eyes! People see everything Hooray, hooray, hooray... you do in the community. ... for eyes!” Be a good example of the “right” behavior. 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 12

Twitter ● Short messages (140 characters) – Talk about interesting things, engage in conversations, and interact with others – Be careful how often you promote your work (blog posts, community discussions, etc.) – Not all about you ● Following: – You follow people to receive their messages – People follow you to receive your messages – Only as interesting as the people you follow. 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 13

Twitter Best Practices ● Know what people are saying about you ● Respond frequently and sincerely ● Follow back where appropriate ● Have a personality ● Variety is important What to Avoid ● Don't be a link spam account ● Don't go overboard with messages ● Don't be self-promotional ● Don't use direct messages to promote anything ● Don't proactively follow too many people 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 14

Twitter Language & Terminology ● @reply: Reply to someone publicly on Twitter. – @geekygirldawn thanks for the link ● Direct Message: Reply to someone privately – d geekygirldawn call me at 555-867-5309 ● OH: Overheard & not attributed to a specific person – OH: I took shop & didn't lose fingers. I could use a chainsaw ● RT: Retweet to re-send something from another user with attribution it to the original author. – RT @geekygirldawn: Don't forget to RSVP for BarCamp! ● #: Hastags are used to tag Twitter posts. – The bubble tea has arrived. #barcampportland 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 15

Facebook ● Personal Profiles (private) – For real people – Not for your company ● Pages (public) – Used for products / companies / organizations – Fans, not friends (anyone can view a page) ● Groups – Often used to collaborate or organize – People become members of the group ● Applications 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 16

Facebook: Getting Started – Personal Profile ● Build your personal profile first (people, not brands) ● Add a picture that helps people recognize you ● Spend a few minutes on your information (personal info, education / work, etc.) ● Post status updates and add a few pictures. ● Add a few friends (personal, work, past lives) ● Go easy on your friends – save the poking, zombie requests, etc. for close personal friends. 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 17

LinkedIn Usage and Features ● Not just for job seeking / finding employees ● Get introductions to people thru mutual contacts ● Learn more about your colleagues ● Use groups to discuss topics with peers ● Get answers to questions 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 18

Doing More with LinkedIn ● Start by completing your profile – Picture, jobs, education, websites, interests, summary ● Add applications – Slideshare, blog posts, events, etc. ● Make recommendations – Recommend some past colleagues that you respect ● Add contacts – Take advantage of the 'people you may know' feature – Only add people you know ● Join groups & answer questions 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 19

FriendFeed ● Aggregated life streams – Twitter, blogs, bookmarks, pictures, events, and more. Add anything with an RSS feed. ● Share your info ● Keep up on news ● Search for topics ● Group your friends ● Tools – Get info in different formats 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 20

Should You Have a Blog? ● Can you commit to at least one post per week? ● Do you have people who have interesting things to say and with good writing skills? ● Can someone manage the process and make sure that the blog never gets neglected? ● Tips for making it easier – Group blogs with many authors (not just execs) – Short posts are great – Manage the process and have a content roadmap 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 21

Blogging Best Practices ● Be a thought leader in your area ● Talk about ideas, passions, trends ● Be conversational. Personal posts are interesting ● Manage your content roadmap for variety ● Integral part of social media strategy ● Avoid: – Do not focus on organizational updates – Do not regurgitate press releases – Do not sound like a corporate drone 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 22

Make it Fun Why do you sit there like that? I know it is wet. And the sun is not sunny. But we can have lots of good fun that is funny! I know some good games we could play. I know some new tricks. I will show them to you. Translation: Your mother will not mind at all if I do. Have fun! Lighten it up occasionally! 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 23

Monitoring ● Social media is about conversations – you need to know what people are saying ● Know what people say about you, your industry, your competitors: critical element of community management, blogging, and social media ● Information can be used as ideas for blog posts, marketing messages, competitive analysis, etc. ● Become more responsive to feedback by proactively monitoring conversations 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 24

Q&A Companies and Communities Book ● Available for purchase / signing $15 ● http://fastwonderblog.com/eBook Additional Resources: ● Monitoring with Yahoo Pipes Training About Dawn: ● Online Community Consultant ● http://fastwonderblog.com/consulting ● Dawn@FastWonder.com ● @geekygirldawn on Twitter 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 25

Additional Information Stuff we don't have time to talk about today, but you might want to read it later. 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 26

RSS / News Readers ● RSS: Really Simple Syndication – A way to have information that you want to see pushed to you in a news reader – Subscription service for online content ● Subscribe to blogs in your industry & interest areas ● Subscribe to competing efforts ● Examples: Netvibes, iGoogle, & Google Reader 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 27

Monitoring Twitter ● Don't Underestimate Twitter Search – Complex search operators, shows new results ● My Favorite Twitter Monitoring Tool: TweetDeck – Desktop application – sync across mult computers – Searches with notifications, groups, replies ● Browser-based Twitter Monitoring: Monitter – Dashboard-style monitoring with searches ● My WebWorkerDaily post with more details: – http://bit.ly/jkbkT 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 28

A Few Great Uses for Yahoo Pipes ● Monitoring social media sites with a list of keywords across many sites. ● Combining groups of RSS feeds into a single feed. ● Uber feed of your posts across blogs. ● Filtering feeds to find relevant content. ● More info and how-to videos: – http://fastwonderblog.com/yahoo-pipes-and-rss-hacks/ 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 29

Many Other Social Media Monitoring Tools 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 30

Be Flexible Never budge! That's my rule. Never budge in the least! Not an inch to the west! Not an inch to the east! Translation: I'll stay here, not budging! I can and I will Be flexible. Improvements and ideas If it makes you and me and the come from unexpected whole world stand still. places. 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 31

Incorporate into Existing Efforts ● Look at your overall strategy ● Find where community / social media fits in ● Articulate a clear purpose for the efforts ● Use the right tools and technology to achieve your goals 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 32

Community Managers Help Ensure Success “Jobs of the future, #1: Online What Skills do we need? Community Organizer – Patience ... If you were great at this, I'd imagine you'd never ever have trouble finding good work.” – Networking --Seth Godin – Communication What do we do? – Facilitation – Ongoing Facilitation – Technical Skills – Monitoring Conversations – Marketing – Content Creation / Mgmt – Self-Motivation – Evangelism – Workaholic Tendencies – Strategy – Organization 10/15/09 FastWonderBlog.com 33

Demystifying Social Media: Tools and Techniques

by Dawn Foster

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