“we gave some thought to the key attributes and behaviors of the effective community manager – someone who creates useful, fun and safe brand and communal experiences.”
[Read More] Wide Angle » 7 Habits of Highly Effective Community Managers.
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To say QR Codes are taking off is an understatement despite some calling QR Codes old technology and everyone not seeing the value of using them. But with the growing number of smartphone use and mobile marketing, QR Code campaigns from major brands, movie posters, jewelry companies and consumer products, tons of QR Code case studies are being created.
Have you ever wondered which LinkedIn Groups would be most valuable to your career? Have you explored new groups and wondered, how active is this group, is this the group for me, or what kind of professionals are in this group?
What’s the real cost to a company of keeping these social profiles active? Or more specifically, what’s the cost of allowing them to go dormant? Why you should prevent social media ghost towns…
On the Case: Dell World: Q&A With Dell Social Networking Expert
Rishi Dave explains the crucial roles social networking can play in enterprises, and tells us how Dell gave all employees – even engineers – the permission and the ability to talk directly to customers.
LinkedIn has long let users follow companies, but Thursday the professional networking service is finally allowing the more than two million businesses with company pages to post status updates to their followers.
Company Status Updates will enable assigned administrators of company pages to post updates, up to 500 characters in length, to the “Overview” tab of their pages.
[Read More] LinkedIn Lets Companies Post Status Updates [VIDEO].
One of the most important rules in software is to eat your own dog food. The concept is simple: If you have confidence in your product, you use it.
Perhaps somebody should tell that to Google’s senior management, because the people in it are not eating their own dog food when it comes to Google+.
Facebook unveiled a series of changes to users’ main profile pages with a new view, dubbed “The Timeline.” In addition, Facebook will now let people do actions beyond just “liking” something. Users, as expected, will be able to show they have read a particular book or seen a particular movie.
[Read More] Facebook at f8 Announces Timeline – Ina Fried – Social – AllThingsD.
“Now is the heart of the Facebook experience, completely rethought from the ground up. We’re calling it ‘Timeline.’ Timeline is the story of your life: all your stories, all your apps, and a new way to express who you are.”
[Read More] Liveblogging Facebook f8 Developer Conference 2011 – Liz Gannes – Social – AllThingsD.
“Now, the crux of my presentation– and of all the research that I really do is to take aim at what I call unicorns and rainbows advice. So I to a lot of social media marketing conferences, read a lot of social media marketing books and blogs. And I hear a lot of advice that is, well, for lack of a better word, it’s unicorns and rainbows.
It’s stuff like engage in the conversation, and love your followers, and have a personality. And it’s stuff that’s kind of hard to disagree with. Because I’m not going to get on the webinar and tell you to punch your customers in the face or anything. But it’s generally not based on anything more substantial than what sounds right, what feels right, what’s truthy. And as we know from the history of the medical world, sometimes those things, those superstitions, those myths, like blood-letting or magic tonics actually do more harm than they do good.”
If you have spent time above ground in the past few years, you have heard about the business value of participating in online communities.
The “big three” (LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter) have almost taken over the Internet with their popularity. These sites are so popular that they are considered always ways to communicate versus being just websites. However, their massive popularity hasn’t decreased the value of niche online communities for business. They have in fact promoted sub-cultures and sub-communities within themselves (think public Facebook pages and LinkedIn groups.) If you have focused your energy on getting a social media presence, versus developing your real participation in a community of your real interest, now’s the time to start.
Participating in any online community can be hard to do right. A lot of times, your end goal is selfish: maybe you want to recruit marketing professionals, so you spam the forum of CMO.com, or you want to reach project managers, so you blast ProjectManagers.net. Maybe you want to reach virtualization experts, so you throw a ton of discussions up on a LinkedIn group for virtualization & cloud computing.
Your actions are understandable – you just want to talk to people about your great opportunity. You’re potentially helping someone – and that’s what these online community sites are for, right? Professional networking and all that stuff?
The problem is that it’s easy to not behave in an online community. They aren’t anonymous (usually), but we aren’t confronted with real life people. It’s easy to be self-serving, opinionated, and perceived as shallow. The issue is that these identities that we create for ourselves are permanent. The importance of our online identity is getting more important every day to our professional success. We have to remember to be ourselves, not someone else, in every avenue of life, including online communities.
Every online community has their own cast of characters – some of them good, others… not so much. There is a real pattern to it: communities develop the personalities of their participants, and identities are shaped because of it. Make sure that you use online communities to be yourself and reflect the best parts of yourself.
Don’t become one of these characters!
- The brawler: Takes issue with everybody. Gets personal. Uses real life knowledge about people to attack them online.
- The cop: Thinks they are there to police the community. Reports infractions. Asks for special privileged from the site owner. Calls people out on every infraction of the rules. Brings up real life legal consequences of silly online discussions.
- The snake oil salesman: Sells and promotes themselves online, but in a sneaky way. Answers every question by turning it into a promotional opportunity. Never says anything helpful. Never says anything that isn’t promotional.
- The drunk: Says things that they would never say in real life about themselves and others. Tells long winded stories about themselves. Their trials and problems are aired for the community.
- The gossip: Brings up things said in a personal context in an online community. Talks about what people said and how they said it. Quotes you on social media without asking. Takes what you say about ideas and turns it into statements about individuals.
- The town crier: Ok, this is a stretch, but it’s easy to not only say the wrong things, but to just say too much and annoy people. Did you have to write 9 forum discussions? Did you have to pronounce yourself to be there and open to introduction 6 times? Do you stand in the proverbial street of the web, shouting until no one can hear themselves think?
Successfully working and networking within an online community takes time, patience, and a little bit of elbow grease. But they are a great way to establish yourself in a community that you are essentially not a part of in real life. If you think of yourself as a contributor, versus simply using the site for your own purposes, it’s possible to use these sites to develop stronger business relationships and a better professional reputation.
If you try to just be yourself, as in real life, you’ll win friends, establish your identity, and maybe develop some new business. An online community is, in the end, another vehicle for your personal expression – make sure that it’s what you want other people to see.
I’m not sure whether or not you’ve heard, but Enterprise Efficiency received two awards for Outstanding Achievement in Web Development this week. The Web Marketing Association honored us with the B2B Standard of Excellence and the Technology Standard of Excellence.
Enterprise Efficiency – Sara Peters – E2 Wins Two WebAwards -
