"Pimp Up Your Stuff!": How To Exploit The Social Web

Using the Social Web to Maximise Access to your Resources: “Pimp Up Your Stuff!”: How To Exploit The Social Web Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath, UK UKOLN is supported by: This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat) Acceptable Use Policy Recording of this talk, taking photos, discussing the content using email, instant messaging, blogs, SMS, etc. is permitted providing distractions to others is minimised. Resources bookmarked using ‘ sca-seo-2009 ' tag http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/sca-seo-20090629/ Email: [email_address] Twitter: http://twitter.com/briankelly/ Blog: http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/

Contents
About Social Web Services
Revisiting Web 2.0
Blogs and Wikis
Social Sharing
Social Networks
Communications and Mobile Devices
How They Can Be Used
Your Ideas
Your Resources
Your Institutional Brand
Your Personal Brand & Reputation
Conclusions

Web 2.0
What Is Web 2.0?
Marketing term (derived from observing 'patterns') rather than technical standards - “an attitude not a technology”
Web2MemeMap, Tim O’Reilly, 2005
Characteristics Of Web 2.0
Network as platform
Always beta
Clean URIs
Remix and mash-ups
Syndication (RSS)
Architecture of participation
Blogs & Wikis
Social networking
Social tagging (folksonomies)
Trust and openness
Web 2.0

What Does Google Find?
Pages in Wikipedia are Google-friendly
First 3 rd party Web site for search for ‘ British Library ’ is from Wikipedia
Wikis
Similar results found for a search for ‘ British Postal Museum ’

Exploiting Wikipedia (1)
Is your organisation listed in Wikipedia?
If not you are missing out on a (free) marketing opportunity.
Wikis

Your entry may have created by someone who doesn’t work for your organisation
Here’s a simple example of a Wikipedia entry.
Conclusions : Doing nothing may not be an option! And would you allow inaccurate information to be published in a popular print publications? Looking at the page history we can see when it was created and by whom. The original page may have been embarrassing. How long might this page have been promoting your museum?

How to proceed:
How to create pages : See Museums and Wikipedia paper, J Bowden from MW 2007.
No Wikipedia reputation : Get ID and be a good Wikipedia citizen first.
Entry flagged as ‘marketing’ : You’ve copied your marking material, haven’t you! Work with your peers to avoid ‘ the best ’, ‘ the leading ’, …
Wikis Note: This is now fixed

Why Blog?
Multiple reasons for blogging (not all to do with maximising access to resources and ideas):
Reflection
Dissemination
Engagement
News and alerts
Note-taking
Experimentation
‘ Think out loud’
Personal development
Syndication
…
Blogs Jo Alcock (librarian at Wolverhampton University) has a blog which allows her to engage with her users on library developments and solicit feedback

Why I Blog
Reasons mentioned previously.
In addition:
Talk about plans for new ‘stuff’ (events, papers, ideas, …)
Talk and ‘stuff’ I’ve delivered (as illustrated)
Use of a blog allows this to be:
Commented on
Syndicated
Repurposed
Blogs

The Paper In The Repository
The paper in the repository can fail to engage with potential interested parties (especially if only the metadata is available)

Best Practices For Bloggers
Examples of best practices:
Have a blog policy (e.g. ‘Don’t be stupid’)
Define the scope and target audience
Link to others
Allow comments
Respond to comments
Decide on team or individual blog
Make use of your blog posts elsewhere
See UKOLN’s Cultural Heritage IntroBytes briefing documents

From A Distance Blog
Chris Sexton, IT Service’s Director at University of Sheffield & current UCISA chair
Her blog:
Outlines senior management strategic thinking
Embed title and link to my most recent blog post
Blogs

Reading, Even If Not Blogging
Negative impact – the bad things they say about your stuff
Can be useful to monitor:
Your brand
Your ideas
Your reputation
Your stuff
… .
Blogs Some minor criticisms from Stephen Downes, a well-read Canadian e=learning guru A speedy reply, and a positive response

What Can Twitter Offer? Twitter

What Can Twitter Offer? Twitter Promoting blog post about possible event. Brief - designed for retweeting (RT) Should you add “Please RT”?

What Can Twitter Offer? Twitter “ OMG they’re criticising us – and this is being retweeted to new groups! ” Note you don’t have to respond (but you may address issues raised)

Quick Surveys
Twitter for rapid surveys & feedback
“ Firefox is crashing frequently. Is this true for others? Respond with #firefoxcrashes or #firefoxisfine. Please RT. ”

Twitter – Delivering a Service
The Historic Royal Palaces use Twitter for Henry VIII’s 500 th anniversary – picked up by the Telegraph

Twitter Writing Style
New blog post published which I hope to gain a wide audience for.
Announcement tweeted.
First draft
“ Respect Copyright (and Subvert It!)" My thoughts on copyright and openness in light of the #digitalbritain report http://bit.ly/4XOMJ”
Second draft:
“ Respect Copyright (and Subvert It!)" Thoughts on copyright & openness in light of #digitalbritain report http://bit.ly/4XOMJ”
Rationale:
Allow retweeting in entirety
Clause which can be removed (“in light of #digitalbritain report”) to allow for commentary (e.g. “great post”)

Twitter – Some Evidence
Personal experience
Most popular post on UKOLN’s Cultural heritage blog in May 2009: “ Explaining the Risks and Opportunities Framework ”
Announced on Twitter at 08.55 on 21 st May:
Blog post explaining the Risks & Opportunities Framework published at http://tinyurl.com/p72kld
Twitter “ I haven’t got the time to use Twitter. And it can’t justify the ROI ” Really?

Twitter – Further Evidence
Where are the visits coming from?
Twitter As the top post has been tweeted, possibly the visits are from a Twitter client (rather than the Twitter Web site)

“ The Power Of Passed Links”
The Value Of Twitter Is In “The Power Of Passed Links”
Wilson predicts that at current growth rates, Twitter “will surpass Google for many websites in the next year.” And that just as nearly every site on the Web has become addicted to Google juice, they will increasingly try to find ways to get more links from Twitter. Because Twitter equals traffic. …
Moreover, he asserts that these Twitter links “convert better” than search links because they are often pre-filtered and come in the form of a recommendation from someone you are following.
TechCrunch, June 2009

Slides To Engage Users
Slides designed to allow users to make use of content and links:
AUP giving permission to reuse content & exploit WiFi network to discuss content
Hyperlinks in slides
Link to master copy provided in title slide and footer in handout
Tag used in del.icio.us to bookmark resources (no need to copy URLs)
Slides The PowerPoint file is a live resource which can be easily accessed, discussed and provide links to relevant resources during a talk and subsequently.

Slideshare To Promote Ideas
I use Slideshare to maximise awareness of ideas in papers I deliver at conferences. Approaches:
Slides uploaded in advance (accessibility benefits)
Allow slides to be embedded in blogs, Web pages, …
Text, tags, links & metadata to support searching & provide context
Slideshare

What About Video?
Increasingly users want video content – and are likely to use Google or YouTube to find videos
Google Video might have been an obvious place to store videos – but it is how being deprecated

YouTube
Want to make your University appealing to potential students?
They’re likely to look at YouTube
What will they find?

YouTube
Want to make your University appealing to potential students?
They’re likely to look at YouTube
What will they find?
Student-published videos may appeal to potential students – but the approaches (drunkenness, copyrighted sound clips, etc.) won’t be used officially

Your Institutional Video
Is it worth trapping your marketing videos in your institutional Web site?
The SEO tips for enhancing the visibility of your videos in YouTube follow well-established guidelines (e.g. title, description, tags, …)
“ Given that YouTube is by far the most popular video website, you should be publishing videos there (even if you are a B2B company like HubSpot ”

What About Facebook? (1)
Should you have a Facebook presence for your organisation?

What About Facebook? (2)
There may already be multiples pages and groups for your organisation
<http://www.facebook.com/pages/Milton-Keynes/The-Open-University/7084005675?>
<http://www.facebook.com/group.php?sid=b8c4e095201c81eb2da026ea04067fb0&gid=2212434521>
< http://www.facebook.com/openuniversity/ >
Social Networks Note vanity URLs made available on 12 June 2009 – if you have > 1,000 fans. Did you miss out?

Risks of Doing Nothing
Webinar held on 16 June 2009
Advice for US Universities on how to exploit social networks
What are the risks of being left behind?
Must a service be 100% ‘pure’ before choosing to use it?

Brooklyn Museum Case Study
Brooklyn Museum blog – with post about their iPhone App. Also note ease of bookmarking, user feedback, …

Note their presence in Facebook …

Brooklyn Museum have also developed a Facebook application (Artshare) which allows their resources to be embedded on other Facebook pages

Flickr used to support Graffiti Exhibition:
Reach large nos.
Allow users to comment
Allow users to upload related photos in group
Supported org’s mission
See “ Building an On-line Community at the Brooklyn Museum: A Timeline ”, MW 2007 and “ Where Do We Go From Here? Continuing with Web 2.0 at the Brooklyn Museum ”, MW 2008

Conclusions
The Social Web:
Can be used to enhance access to digital resources, real world resources and ideas and concepts
Ignoring the potential may mean you lose out to your peers, competitors or rivals
Can form part of your organisation’s mission and not just an added extra for dissemination
But there are risks – to be explored later

"Pimp Up Your Stuff!": How To Exploit The Social Web

by Brian Kelly on Jun 18, 2009

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