Category: community

Social Media Marketing GSP: A Tweet-book

First Set of TweetsToby Bloomberg is not the type to let the dust gather. She is always looking at things, asking “what can we do with that” and, rather than just asking, she starts trying and doing. She is a force to be reckoned with!

She is at it again with her latest experiment, Social Media Marketing GSP: A Tweet-book. She asked me to be one of her guinea pigs… um… I mean interviewees… for chapter 6 on communities and networks. Of course, I had to say yes. Here is a bit of context. My tweets are embedded. Let’s see if this makes any sense!

So what’s a Twitter-book you may be asking? It’s a book written using Twitter as platform and distribution channel. Social Media Marketing GPS #smgps is the first business book to experiment with this format.

This Twitter-book is structured as a “real” business book and includes: a foreword, introduction and chapters. Each chapter will have a 1 question interview with people knowledgeable about the topic. All posts will be hash-tagged #smgps.

Chapters and interviews will be tweeted Monday – Friday through the end of April. I invite you to join me in this experiment in a new way to write a business book. Please add your insights and learnings to the stream; they’ll be incorporated into the book. My ultimate goal is that this Twitter-book will serve as a resource about social media written by and for marketers. So explore .. have fun .. discover and don’t be afraid to try it out.

second set of tweets Now that Toby is on chapter six, she has sussed out the process a bit and suggested earlier in the week that preparation is worth it, and that trying to not get carried away with too many tweets is also useful. That asks the writer to be both succinct per post (140 characters) and overall. With the size of the question Toby asked me, that was challenging. How to be brief but substantive, eh? It is harder than it looks.

It is also interesting to try and express something that both works read forwards and backwards. Readers reading back on Twitter, get it from tail to head. Those reading the recap on the blog and eventually the “book” (whatever form that might take) get it in order. Tricky. Interesting.

As I tweeted out my 12 140 character or less contributions, a few people wondered if I a) should be writing a blog post instead (they missed the context and Toby’s intro, I suppose) b) had too much nervous energy and c) how they might contribute. I think the burst of volume might not have been appreciated by all those people following me.

Hmmmm… what do you think? final set of tweetsAre we pushing a medium too far or is this a useful, creative application? Or something all together different?

Here are a few other creative writing experiments with Twitter:

The interview for Chapter 6 is also now up here.

Toby, Liz and Nancy on Online Community Relationships

Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing had Liz Strauss and I on Blog Talk Radio today. What a trip! Social Media and Social Networks internet radio show 4/2/2009 | Social Media Communities: Real Relationships or Illusions of Friendships?. Take a listen!

Edit: April 3. I’ve removed the embedded player because it auto plays. Sorry. You can click here to here it!

Travel Budget Slashes, Meeting Crunch and Going Virtual

Flickr Photo by http://farm1.static.flickr.com/199/517610028_956361eb2c.jpg?v=0Throughout the year  I’m involved in quite a few conferences and meetings. This year, the ground is shifting. Travel budgets are being slashed (faster here than in Europe as far as I can tell) and people are starting to think more seriously about the non financial costs such as carbon emissions of the travel and the plain old wear and tear on our bodies traveling across time zones and geography.

Financially, meeting organizers have serious concerns. One US based conference coming up this Fall is seeing a 30% reduction in registrations and they feel LUCKY! One of my core communities of practice, KM4Dev, just had a call to discuss how we could meet, and scuttle our more ambitious S. Africa plan and do something more focused and less expensive because we could not get funding. Ed-Media, a conference I’ve been invited to speak at (in Hawaii – and yes, I feel both thrilled and carbon-guilty, even with offsets), sent email today announcing opening of virtual presentation submissions and participation. I say “good on ya!” Here are a few snippets from their note:

>>  Virtual Presentations included in Final Call  <<
http://www.aace.org/conf/edmedia/VP/
 > Please forward to a colleague <
http://www.aace.org/conf/edmedia/call.htm
_______________________________________________________________
ED-MEDIA 2009

World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications
June 22-26, 2009  *  Honolulu, Hawaii

INVITATION:
ED-MEDIA 2009 serves as a multi-disciplinary forum for the discussion and exchange of information on the research, development, and applications on all topics related to multimedia and telecommunications/distance education.

ED-MEDIA, the premiere international conference in the field, spans all disciplines and levels of education and attracts more than 1,500 attendees from over 60 countries. We invite you to attend ED-MEDIA and submit proposals for presentations.

All presentation proposals are peer-reviewed and selected by three reviewers on the respected Program Committee for inclusion in the conference program, Proceedings (book and CD-ROM formats) and EdITLib (Education and Information Technology Digital Library),   http://www.EdITLib.org

VIRTUAL PRESENTATIONS:
————————————-

In consideration of presenters who may be unable to attend ED-MEDIA in person due to funding or time constraints, Virtual Presentations have been added to the program with the same validity (publication, certification, etc.) as the face-to-face (F2F) conference and with the capability to interact with session participants.

A limited number of presentations in these categories will be accepted:
– Virtual Brief Papers
– Virtual Posters
– Virtual Corporate Showcases

Why a Virtual Presentation?
————————————
* Saves money.  No travel, accommodation, and restaurant costs
* Saves time. No travel or away time required.
* Allows you to participate when you schedule your time to do so.
* Same validity as the face-to-face (F2F) conference (publication, certification, etc.).
* Paper published in CD, book, and Digital Library ( http://www.editlib.org) proceedings.
* Publish and share all supporting media (PPT, video, etc.) in the proceedings.
* Capability to interact with your session

I love meeting face to face. But the reality is those of us who can are priveledged and soon, the ability to travel and gather may be even more restricted. We have to get better at “being together” using technology. That means better tools AND practices. That probably leads me to griping about the web meeting tools I have been using because they are what my clients use.

After criticizing SharePoint last week for it’s silo-creating, I have to ding Microsoft Live Meeting for it’s top down control model. There is no group chat (participants can only chat with the moderator or one other person at a time, thus no horizontal communication nor any easy ability to collectively take notes), there is no visible participant list (thus defeating any community building part of one’s agenda), and there can only be one moderator at a time, reducing the ability to agily collaborate. This is “I deliver content to you” style technology. Yes, it may integrate nicely with Office and Outlook, but what if you are not using or don’t focus on these integration issues?

Not far behind in its clunkiness is WebEx, which makes passing the control baton something of a high wire act. I have enjoyed using Elluninate more. I’ve had the best luck with their integrated VoIP and their breakout rooms, while still a bit tricky, are much easier for me than WebEx.

On the free and lower cost side, Vyew is getting higher marks from me, but I’ve not tested it with a larger group and have not taken a run at the latest version of Dim Dim. Both currently offer 20 person rooms for free!

Skype – audio and chat – is still at the core of my small group meetings, often augmented by a quality phone/Skype bridge when I have larger groups (which costs me $40/month).

However, without clear purpose and useful practices, these tools are useless. We need to make gathering time serve our purposes and to be useful, functional and ENJOYABLE. Not a torture test. Friends and colleagues in my circle have all acknowledged we need to start thinking, working and practicing together to both better understand and manipulate the tools and improve the meeting processes themselves. Clearly, I need to make time for this.

Photo credit (and yes, I’ve used this one twice!) by stephentrepreneur

Leadership in Uncertain Times

It seems every conversation I have with someone here or overseas  starts with some comment about “these times we are in.” Moreso for my US colleagues, but the change in economic times is on everyone’s mind. I’m doing more work online and less on the road. Budgets for current projects are sticking pretty steady, but no one seems to know what tomorrow will bring. For us independents, this uncertainty is nothing new, but clearly the playing field has changed.

However, I am blessed that I don’t have to lay any one off. I read about closures and layoffs and friends are losing their jobs and it breaks my heart. I feel pretty powerless and am doubling my efforts to help others in my network find gigs. Relationships and networks matter now, more than ever.

But what are leaders of organizations to do when their budgets are slashed by 20, 30 and even 50%? I look at my State’s budget shortfall and know there are no easy paths. Difficult times call for leadership in many forms and at every level, both formal and informal.
When I read Dan Oestreich‘s Reflective Leadership in the Age of Layoffs, I said “aha!” I must share this with my husband who, as a middle manager, is fighting the budget and morale battle every day. Dan writes:

Most managers I know do not feel they’ve actually been given much guidance about how to proceed with cost cutting and, particularly, layoffs. As the first line of a recent Harvard Business Review article asks,“Why aren’t layoffs taught as a subject at business school?” I assume the reason is that the subject is both very complex and comes far too close to what it really means to lead, touching that sensitive cross-over point between personal values and professional conduct, a place where theory definitely has its limits.

Dan encourages us to slow down, to reflect, to ask questions that matter. This is good advice for any tough decision regardless of the economic environment.  Dan writes:

…in addition to the fact that the leaders all seemed pretty much adrift and self-enclosed, is their push to simply get together in a room, have some hurried discussion, and then decide what needs to happen. The role of reflection seemed to be bypassed in this rush to create the right strategy — and then, ipso facto, to know what to do. Surely, when the financial heat is turned up, there’s no time to waste, but this is also a time when alignment with real brand values — a topic that requires reflective leadership as a team and as individuals — is likely to be the most reliable long-term guide. Understanding and applying these values demands decisiveness founded on thorough and creative consideration, not some three hour “tall grass” meeting where competing self-interests have a field day, followed up by a briefing and hand-out from Human Resources.

It’s as if no one wants to ask the telling question, “Wait a minute, what was this place supposed to be about, anyway?”

I encourage you to read Dan’s article. It is fabulous from beginning to end and offers some practical advice about how to lead in a time of layoffs.  Then think about your strategy for decision making and leadership in uncertain times.  What are you doing?  What values are driving your decisions? How are you living those values in every step? How can we prepare ourselves to make these hard decisions? How do we account for our responsibility to others in our decisions?

For me, here are some of the things I’m doing with my clients. They are tiny, piddling things when compared to the scale of things in organizations.

  • Do we have to meet face to face at this moment in time, or can we save time, money and carbon into the environment and meet online and on the phone? Doing this with a recent client saved them a $600 ticket and 16 hours of my billable travel time. The final outcome of the work is not visible yet, but I think I delivered quality consulting in a way that was probably more flexible than if we had met face to face. (And I have more time with my family!)
  • Is some  one else doing something similar to what you have to do and can you do it together to share the costs (and benefits!)? Right now I have two pairs of clients who are cross fertilizing their work and sharing some things with each other. This is bliss for me and saves them time, money and they can focus on their own work more closely.
  • What can be deferred? What is most important and valuable now? I think this is the toughest one, because it is easy to become short sighted in tight times. Really asking ourselves the hard question about how we invest our time and resources is critical. We can’t forget about tomorrow as we consider today.
  • How much can I not spend to keep my costs down? Both in terms of my own business and with my clients? I tend to be thrifty (some say ‘cheap’) but it is easy to fritter money away on things that don’t really matter. It helps that I work at home, away from shops and places to eat out. When I do shop and eat out, I am trying to patronize businesses in my local neighborhood.

Related to this is a great piece by Peter and Trudy Johnson Lenz  on Six Habits of Highly Resilient Organizations .Here is a snippet of the habits. Do read the whole article! It makes me reflect on my own little one-person organization!

  1. Resilient organizations actively attend to their environments.
  2. Resilient organizations prepare themselves and their employees for disruptions.
  3. Resilient organizations build in flexibility.
  4. Resilient organizations strengthen and extend their communications networks – internally and externally.
  5. Resilient organizations encourage innovation and experimentation.
  6. Resilient organizations cultivate a culture with clearly shared purpose and values.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I know our family is blessed and recognize so many are struggling. I’d love to hear your advice about how you are leading in difficult times… Again from Dan…

In troubled times, reflective leaders step back to witness…and to learn.

flowers

Chris Corrigan – 3 Lessons on Leadership

spiralsChris Corrigan  shares three lessons he learned about leadership while doing work this week with Aboriginal leaders in Canada. This is good stuff. I rarely quote this much, but I sense this is stuff that has value far and wide for all of us. It resonates with the groundswell I hear, feel and read about concerning our need for each other, for community, in turbulent times. And how we take responsibility matters, regardless of label of “leader.” Thanks, Chris.
 

Teaching one came from Nancy Jones one of the Elders who gave us small blankets with a medicine wheel design based on a vision that she had about unity, leadership and healing.  One of the great teachings in this medicine wheel was about the north, the direction from which winter weather and wind comes.  We laboured here through a blizzard today, waiting for an hour until whoever was coming was going to show up, and working small processes with diminished numbers.  But the Elder gave the teaching that essentially the weather teaches us that “whatever happens is the only thing that could have” and that the chaordic path is an inherent part of leadership: you can never really be in control.

The second teaching was from Ralph Johnson.  I asked him about the Ojibway word “ogiimaw” which is often translated as “chief” or “boss.”  I asked Ralph what he thought the word must have meant before contact, when the concept of “chief” was basically unknown.  He said that word relates to the word ogiimatik which is the poplar tree, the tree that is considered the kindest of trees.  Poplars are gentle, flexible, quiet and kind and are also good medicine.  He said this idea of kindness is what is under the word “ogiimaw” and that influencing people through kindness is the kind of leadership that the word implies.  This is very different from the kinds of leadership implied by the word “chief” which is a  title now won by competition in a band election, a process that seems to engineer kindness right out of the equation.  This is a great legacy of colonization – the lowering of kindness from a high leadership art to a naive sentimentality.

Ralph also gave me one more little teaching that rocked me.  He told me that the word I had always understood as “all my relations” – dineamaaganik – actually means “belonging to everything.”  Seems like a small change in translation, until another Elder, Marie Allen chimed in and said that the problem with leadership these days was the way ideas like “all my relations” activated the ego.  The difference between “all my relations” and “belonging to everything” is the difference between the ego and the egoless I think.  This is what Ralph was trying to tell me.  That the centre of the universe is not me, and things are not all related to me, rather I belong to everything.  Marie and I took a moment to express amazement at the way the earth used us to channel life in a particular shape for a short period of time.  We come from her, we return to her, and in the interim we do our work upon her.