A introduction to network theory and the principles behind developing professional relationships through social media. Includes references to the work of Howard Rheingold and Bonnie Stewart.
1. Building & Leveraging Social Networks
LAURA GOGIA, MD - @GOOGLEGUACAMOLE
VCU ACADEMIC LEARNING TRANSFORMATION LAB
WWW.LAURAGOGIA.COM
@googleguacamole / #VCUSMClass
http://portodiravenna.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/foto-meme_low.jpg
2. @googleguacamole / #VCUSMClass
BEFORE WE GET STARTED:
• Please feel free to have your digital devices in your hands
at all times. The research suggests most of you are using
them for good reasons when you are using them.
• Please feel free to live tweet or take pictures of anything
you see or hear.
• When I ask you what something means, please feel free to
google it for an answer. Please don’t leave me hanging.
Long silences are boring for us all.
3. Slides are available at
www.slideshare.net/LauraGogia
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4. Q: What does it mean to “leverage” something?
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5. Q. What does it mean to “leverage” something?
A: To use something to maximum advantage
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6. Q. How do we define influence in social media?
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7. Q. How do we define influence in social media?
A. Ability to drive action or behaviors in others
What does this look like in professional contexts?
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8. Q. What does this look like outside a celebrity context?
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Business - ZARA NonProfit – British Red Cross
9. Klout defines influence…
Number of people who
will see your message
Number of people who
will relay it to their
networks
Number of times other
people with influence will
relay your message
https://klout.com/home
1. Reach
2. Amplification
3. Impact
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10. Impact is the endgame of influence.
The ability to impact someone’s behavior or opinion; to affect change.
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15. Evidence of Influence
•I had reach.
•900+ people had access to my message.
•I had minimal amplification.
• 1 retweet.
•But I had serious impact.
•People did what I wanted them to do,
which was help me think about this
presentation.
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16. So how do we “get” influence?
R e a c h – A m p l i f i c a t i o n - I m p a c t
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18. To contribute to the conversation
is to participate.
“To contribute and curate resources on an area of interest.” --Bonnie Stewart
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23. Network theory is the study of graphs as
they represent relationships between
people or things.
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24. A Need-To-Know Tutorial in
Social Network Analysis
Who has influence and why?
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http://www.orgnet.com/sna.html
25. Diane is popular.
Diane has degree centrality.
Has highest number of unique contacts.
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http://www.orgnet.com/sna.html
26. Ferdinando & Garth are the first to know.
They have closeness centrality.
Shortest path to the most nodes. Monitor flow.
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http://www.orgnet.com/sna.html
27. Heather is important.
Heather has betweeness centrality.
Connects clusters within a network. Controls the
flow of information through the network.
http://www.orgnet.com/sna.html
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28. Message: Be a Heather.
Know where you are and who you connect.
Who are the key players in your network?
Who is talking with whom?
Who aren’t they talking to but maybe should be?
How might you introduce them to each other?
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29. Aim for betweeness. People who bridge
different groups stand to benefit from:
•Collective IQ
•Seeing more ideas
•Being useful to others
Rheingold, H., & Weeks, A. (2012). Net smart: How to thrive online. MIT Press
Howard Rheingold says…
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31. Stewart, B. (2015). Open to influence: what counts as academic influence in scholarly networked Twitter participation.
Learning, Media and Technology, 1-23.
What online qualities make you
more likely to have influence?
•Individually-centered (not institutionally centered)
•Metrics matter, but not as much as you’d think
•Commonalities of interest are key
•Automated signals = low-influence
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32. @googleguacamole / #VCUSMClass
METRICS SAY I
SPEND TIME ON
TWITTERAVATAR SAYS I’M
SERIOUS ABOUT
DIGITALLY
NETWORKED
PARTICIPATION
PINNED TWEET
SAYS I’M IN FINAL
STAGES OF
DISSERTATION
RESEARCH
HASHTAGS TELL YOU MY
PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS. TEXT
TELLS YOU MY PERSONAL INTERESTS
MY DIGITAL
PORTFOLIO
BACKGROUND:
I LIKE ART
33. Message: Don’t be the egg.
•Be thoughtful about your profile.
•Be aesthetically pleasing.
•Be human.
•Be consistent BUT
•Don’t feel like you can’t experiment or evolve over
time. Humans do that. Resumes do that. You
should too.
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35. Howard Rheingold says...
• Pay it forward.
• Don’t just consume, create.
Rheingold, H., & Weeks, A. (2012). Net smart: How to thrive online. MIT Press
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36. Message:
There are many ways to make yourself
useful. They all start with listening.
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37. Pay it forward.
• Find answers.
• Amplify their message.
• Live tweet conferences.
• Summarize webinars, articles, books on your blog.
• Curate.
38. “To contribute and curate resources on an area of interest.”
Create.
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39. Content Curation
•Transforming the massive amounts of information found on
the web into something organized and useful for a specific
niche.
•Arranging things so it is easy to access and relevant.
http://www.verticalmeasures.com/content-strategy/examples-of-content-curation/
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40. You don’t have to be an established knowledge
expert to help, curate, and become a discussion
leader.
In fact, students excel at these activities.
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41. Take Home Points
• Influence is the capacity to get people to do things.
• Greatly increased by your ability to get the message
out through other influencers.
• Know your network: Trends, key players, their needs
• Know yourself
• Your location and (real and desired) role in the
network
• Your goals, skillsets, and strengths
• Contribute to the conversation
• Invest the time
• Do favors
• Create/Curate
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Editor's Notes
To use (something) to maximum advantage.
To use (something) to maximum advantage.
To use (something) to maximum advantage.
According to the dictionary, leverage means to use something to the maximum advantage. In the context of social media, we tend to move quickly from the idea of leverage to influence – as if the ability to influence others is the ultimate use of social media – this assumption definitely needs to be questioned and discussed (but not in today’s presentation).
These people are considered influential on social media. Why? What is influence?
Influence is the ability to drive behaviors or actions in others.
So in professional contexts that could mean a lot of things – examples? – Example:
What does this look like outside a celebrity context?
What behaviors are these social media influencers trying to drive?
Klout is an online service that measures influence (but not without controversy or questions about it’s accuracy). While I don’t necessarily agree with these “indicators” or their definitions, there is an underlying message here that’s worth thinking about. Social media facilitates exponential rates of transmission. So having large numbers of followers is great, but it’s more important to have large numbers of followers who have large numbers of followers. And what’s even more important is that you have followers who are willing to do something for you and they have followers who are willing to actually do something for them. This is the process by which things go viral and things get done.
So, to put a picture with the words, reach is important, but it’s more important to have followers who will take action when you signal. And, given the actual definition of impact, I think Klout has mislabeled their’s; impact should be considered the ability to affect change, either by affecting a person’s behavior or opinion or change.
I want to offer a “small” example of influence via social media, to demonstrate that you don’t have to be Kim Kardashian to have influence.
This is me on Twitter. As you know, Twitter is place of overlapping communities and interests – I’m a resident of Academic Twitter and I’m signaling that in different ways in this profile and we’ll get to what that means in a little while, but as you can see I have a decent number of followers – not crazy large or anything.
Well, the first time I gave this talk, I was filling in at the last minute for a colleague who’d had emergency surgery. Even though I live this stuff, I’d never thought about what to put into a talk to this sort of class. I needed to come up with something fast, so I pinged my twitter network for help.
Giving a talk tomorrow to undergrads on building social media communities. What should I talk about?
Within minutes, I had responses that go far beyond what is on this slide. Dr. Bonnie Stewart, who researches influence in academic Twitter, offered an organizing framework from Howard Rheingold (and you’ll see that I took her up on the recommendation in a minute). One of the other respondents was a social media project manager at a major nonprofit organization – he and I spent time direct messaging – he confirmed for me that my (education-based) experience and advice was relevant to business/public relations-based social media.
Now how did that happen? Bonnie and I follow each other and have a relationships, but the others weren’t people I’d known previously.
They came from just one retweet – one retweet, but it was from a major player in Academic Twitter – one who could get my message out to people who could help me.
So to put this example through my pyramid of influence. I had reach, I had some amplification, but I had serious impact, because I have relationships with my followers, one of whom retweeted and got me help from her network.
Bonnie Stewart, who as I said, studies influence in academic Twitter, says it boils down to being able to contribute to the conversation?
What she mean by that? What does it mean to contribute to the conversation?
Participation implies a relationship. It’s what I meant when I said I have a relationship with my followers. Participation implies a give-and-take around relevant and valuable ideas and resources.
Ultimately, I believe achieving influence is about knowing your network, knowing yourself and your strengths, and then making yourself useful. We’re going to briefly walk through these three points.
To understand your network, you need to understand networks in general. This is a snapshot of my Twitter network, created through social network analysis.
http://www.connectedaction.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/2009-September-NodeXL-CHI-2010-Tag-Network.pnghttp://www.connectedaction.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/2009-September-NodeXL-CHI-2010-Tag-Network.png
This is social network analysis of your class, still within the first week or so of tweeting. And you can begin to see how social network tells a story. So far, you professor has done most of the tweeting. You guys aren’t really talking to each other with the course hashtag yet.
Hopefully after a while you’ll begin to look like this VCU course.
We aren’t here today to talk about network theory per se, but what you need to understand is that networks – all networks - are about relationships and we can analyze social networks through something called social network analysis
A very common tutorial graph for SNA.
If you are interested in SNA, one of the better places to start is here: http://www.orgnet.com/sna.html
Diane has the most direct connections in the network, making hers the most active node in the network. She knows a large number of people.
Common wisdom in personal networks is "the more connections, the better“ and that’s great, but there are other ways to have influence.
Fernando and Garth have fewer connections than Diane, yet the pattern of their direct and indirect ties allow them to access all the nodes in the network more quickly than anyone else. They have the shortest paths to all others -- they are close to everyone else. They are in an excellent position to monitor the information flow in the network -- they have the best visibility into what is happening in the network.
However, Heather is arguably the MOST IMPORTANT because she lies between two important constituencies. She plays a 'broker' role in the network. The good news is that she plays a powerful role in the network, the bad news is that she is a single point of failure. Without her, Ike and Jane would be cut off from information and knowledge in Diane's cluster.
A node with high betweenness has great influence over what flows -- and does not -- in the network. One could argue that it is more important for you to be a Heather than a Diane.
If you need someone other than me saying this, you can listen to Howard Rheingold.
How many of you are eggs on blue backgrounds?
What online profiles qualities are more likely to evoke influence?
Individually-centered information – what you’ve done, who you are, not necessarily what your institution has done.
Metrics matter – like the number of followers you have or number of tweets, but not as much as you think – people tend to use these as signs of how likely you are to stick around
Commonalities of interest are key – which is why it’s important to have that individually-centered info up there.
Automated signals are a turn off
Know your skills.
Know your skills and use them to pay it forward.
Know your skills.
“transform information overload into useful information.”
Summarize webinairs,