Evan Williams Keynote: The Future of Social Media

@ev

@Anywhere allows users to sign into Amazon, eBay, bing, yahoo, digg, and other sites using Twitter.

Reduces friction. Most things built with Twitter are left up to developers and third parties.

Discovery is one of the hardest challenges; @Anywhere will provide other avenues for ppl to find interesting accounts to follow. Will allow for the creation of communiies and subcommunities.

What makes 21st century businesses different? Experimentation. Why is Twitter willing to explore different business model possibilities?

Whatever you assume when you start out, you’re wrong. It will inevitably require experimentation. Google started out selling search services. Basic assumptions are usually wrong. Be open to the fact that you may be wrong.

A window is transparent but a door is open. Users and developers are allowed to come inside and mess with things. Users invented Twitter hashtags, etc.

Remember there are more smart ppl outside your company than inside your company.

50m tweets per day

CCiC09: Empowered Communities: The Art & Science of Building Networks

Rangineh Azimzadeh

World Pulse board member

  • Founded PulseWire (“The Facebook for social change”)
  • Created for the purpose of connecting communities globally
  • Women can sign up, create a profile, and write about ideas and opportunities
  • Women help each other to share resources and solutions, talking about issues that face their communities

Nina Rosete

Executive director of the Dare to Dream Fund

  • Started iConnect, a virtual community built on the idea that there are billions of people in the world, therefore no one should feel sad or lonely
  • A community for high school students built using Ning as a platform
  • One of the profile questions: If anything were possible, what would you want to be?
  • Participants/members are referred to as “dreamers”

Colin Gallagher

Returned Peace Corps Volunteer and civic engagement professional

  • Discovered that people in El Salvador had a lot of different ideas about what was expected of the Peace Corps volunteers
  • “How can we reform a local government?”
  • Started the LinkedIn group: Civic Engagement and Dialogue Practitioners. Several MIIS students are members.
  • Aims to start dialogues that transcend the boundaries of organizations.

Joe Johnston

Founder of Social Hive and Technology Advisor to the Pachamama Alliance

Video: Four Years Go

How can you continue to tap into the and expand the communities you’ve started?

  • The use of technology is a method in which to deliver services efficiently
  • The physical technologies and the platforms can only be used for good if we realize it’s the relationships that matter
  • Many communities allow themselves to become subject to a principle
  • We forget what community used to be because of Facebook, etc.
  • The catalyst or community is context
  • If we want to grow our communities, we need to go hang out with new, developing communities

What about organizations that aren’t interested in connecting using the Internet? How do you strategize around that?

Digital divide vs. digital inclusion

The importance of virtual communities in policy-making

  • All policy change has to start with dialogue – local and national
  • Policy change comes from consensus-building at the organizational level
  • Consensus comes from direct communication actions (The Ask)
  • Twitter and collecting voices is important with regard to policy. Check out http://act.ly

How do you measure the effectiveness of your networks?

  • Whether or not the people you are able to bridge the gap to would otherwise not have connected
  • Remember: the network is but one tool in your overall strategy
  • Metrics are often a red herring; it’s not always easy to measure impact.

Marketing at the Speed of Twitter

Speakers

  • Porter Gale, VP of Marketing, Virgin American (@VirginAmerica)
  • Seth Greenburg, director, Online Advertising & Internet Media, Intuit (@turbotax)
  • Jeramie McPeek, VP of Interactive Services, Phoenix Suns (@PhoenixSuns)
  • Vicky Harres Akers, Director of Audience Development, PR Newswire (@prnewswire)

Use Twitter to put a face on a brand
Brands are on Twitter because their audience is already there
Consider where to find YOUR audience: are they on Facebook? Twitter?
Virgin America now has WiFi onboard, so you can tweet from 35,000 feet!
Cool use of Twitter: Virgin America passenger didn’t get meal, tweeted about it. Virgin saw it, messaged pilot, passenger served.
Guest service expectations are changing because Twitter is real-time (=fast!)
Channels are changing in order to manage these expectations

A Day in the Cloud Challenge

  • Virgin America will team up with Google to run an interactive scavenger hunt
  • June 24
  • For people who want to see how technology is changing their life
  • Can win air travel
  • #dayinthecloud

Takeaways

  • It’s easy to launch a blog or jump on other social media efforts — but WHY are you doing it?
  • Word of mouth marketing is the best kind of marketing you can get; Twitter IS word of mouth marketing>
  • Be authentic and active
  • Find your customers and fish where the fish are; find people interested in your brand and follow them

Building & Sustaining Vibrant Online Communities

Answering foundational questions early in the process will:

  • Set you on the right path
  • Help you sift through technology decisions, especially giant feature lists
  • Support you if a crisis arises

Questions to Answer

If you don’t answer these questions sooner, you will answer them later.
An answer is better than no answer
It’s about process, research, analysis, discussion, alignment.

Who?

Clients? Donors? Advocates? Activists? Volunteers?
Who are they in terms of age, gender, profession, social technographics (how they participate online)?
If your potential community members exist on Facebook, but you have something to offer more than Facebook and you don’t want to be locked into that particular tool, it’s perfectly okay

Where?

Where are they online? Offline?
Who will the community NOT serve?

  • Age
  • Country

It’s about setting expectations. You can still welcome those outside direct service (diversity is good).

Why?

Why are we doing this?

What?

What is our mission, vision, purpose, focus, goals?

What values do we hold? What are your areas of distrust? What does success look like?

How?

How does change happen?

How is our organization limited?

  • Budget
  • Time
  • Development resources
  • IT support

How involved do we want/need to be in the community?
How will we sustain the community?
How will we support diversity/dissent?

When?

When do we expect results? When should be expect results?
Don’t expect any results in first 3–6 months.
1 year = hint of results
2 years = solid results

Strategy:

  • Start with a purpose in mind
  • Slowly build your audience/collaborators
    • the first 10 members set the tone
    • recruit people who set the standards for participation and achievement
  • Experiment and get the tool mix right
  • Understand and nurture your community
  • Segment your community
    • Heavy contributors
    • Intermittent contributors
    • Lurkers

Community management

Empower your super users
Make it easy to find, join, and act: welcome your community members
Engage with your community
Learn from your mistakes

Wrap Up

It’s about people and processes.
Hit as many of the big questions as you can.
Reflect back on your answers while reviewing technology options.
Be flexible — experimentation is okay!
Review your questions and answers and update as necessary.

Session wiki: http://ntc09-communities.wikispaces.com

Generating Buzz

What is Buzz?

  • Word of mouth
  • Tell a friend
  • Viral marketing

The source has to be reliable and authoritative, and the message must be authentic.

Proven fact:
blog posts with lots of comments get more comments. Digg submissions with a high Digg count (combined with a catchy headline and summary) get Dugg before the content is viewed (even if the content is never viewed).

The Cost of Creating Buzz

  • Tools are cheap, but the return on investment requires significant time because of the need to build trust and relationships. An hour per day for at least six months of cultivation is required.
  • Heartfelt and sincere appeals can work just as effectively as the wildly popular humorous ones.
  • Begin by building relationships first before asking or appealing for anything.
  • Be a good member of your community by promoting the work of others as much as you do your own. You don’t want to appear as a spammer who only talks about his/her latest posts or site content.
  • Just like around the water cooler, memes or themes will develop in online communities.

Remember: Being awesome is the best way to SEEM awesome. The cool factor cannot be underestimated when building buzz.

Tools

  • Twitter
  • Digg
  • StumbleUpon
  • FriendFeed

Things to Consider

  • Why are you using it?
  • Who will use it?
  • How will you know you are succeeding?

Set up your accounts to reflect the answers to these questions.

Twitter

Meet people – Have conversations – Make it easy
Listening is a big part of creating buzz.

Twitter Tools

TwitterFeed
Tweetscan
TweetStats

StumbleUpon

Watch me, watch what I like, and recommend new content for me.
Rate your favorite pages, StumbleUpon will recommend similar content it thinks you will like.
Make friends, be consistent, generosity rules.

Digg

News aggregator, much bigger community than StumbleUpon.

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