Hello Everyone,
So I’ve now made the step and migrated to my own hosted blog. Please make sure you update your RSS feeds and continue to read my blog posts. I thank everyone for contributing to my blog and taking the time to read it.
New blog: http://ebiz-tomorrow.com/blog/
New RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/EbizByChrisSalazar
WILL SEE YOU SOON!
I’ve previously talked about the basics for building an online community starting with corporate blogs. This is great for building a foundation, but each online community must have an underlying strategy to keep it living. Strategic planning is vital in ensuring online community goals are met and evolving.
Here’s my list of milestones and goals for all online community blogs (within the first few months):
This is a great list to start off with. It’s general, yet each corporation can prone it to their own liking. Additionally, here are some other thought-provoking posts that can help with your planning:
Jeremiah posted his eight things, so I’ll post mine here too!
Please, let’s keep this going. Let me know what your eight things are.
Everywhere around me, people talk about being an online community manager and being a community evangelist and how to deploy a successful online community. But, I think they’re (and me too) are getting ahead of themselves. There are some important Project Management skills and knowledge that you must have to be a successful manager.
The 4 Phases for any project/product launch are: Define, Design, Develop, and Deploy. These are critical milestones in every project that must be accounted for and documented in the critical path.
Define
Design
Develop
Deploy
Some like to not only create a critical path, but an “Adjusted Critical Path” which incorporates a contingency plan as well. This is a great way to help foresee any problems that could arise and allow time for damage control.
These are rules and tips that have helped me, but I’m sure you have other tips as well. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me!
For the next few months, I will be putting on the hat of an Online Community Marketing Manager and pretending as if I’m starting my own from scratch. For simplicity reasons, let’s assume I’ve already got all the back-end server stuff taken care of.
Some questions to ponder about building an online community are:
Some corporations have only a few bloggers, usually expert thought-leaders, and others have a wide range of employee bloggers (like Sun and IBM). Figuring out what best fits the company’s culture is very important. Either way, here’s a good blog policy to follow (created by sun).
The next important question to ask is why you are blogging. How can you align the blog with the online community and most importantly, the overall messaging of the company. Here’s a few steps to do this:
It’s one thing to create tools and push them out there, but its another to have a strategy and a goal for them. They must be part of the value chain that ultimately leads to the corporate message. The blog should spark conversation within the industry, somehow promote the company’s image, and be used as a knowledge base for all.
There are a few important aspects of blogging that serve beneficial and could help jump start other community marketing tools as well:
These are all things a Community Manager must take into account and be ready for. Just the first step in creating a blog, but there’s more. What about other help docs? If I were to create help docs (as few as possible), they’d have the following titles (in no particular order):
Last, but not least, the role of a Community Marketing Manager is important. This person must possess certain characteristics in order to successfully evangelize the importance of such tools and to keep a program growing. Jeremiah has the 4 Tenets of a Community Manager, which are very difficult to uphold.
This should be enough for now. Please let me know how you’re doing…what roadblocks are you facing? Maybe we can help each other!
I’ve got and I’ve found it…rather I’ve found the person who have surpassed me by a great deal! Someone who is my age and has already done so much with social media in both his personal and professional life…Dan Schawbel. His main focus is BRAND…and he recently gave his predictions for Personal Branding in 2008
In the light of the new year coming and my attempt to add value to Dan’s contributions, here are my own predictions for 2008’s world of Social Media:
What are your predictions for 2008? Am I on the right track or do you have some objection?
Web Analytics, SEO, and SEM have increasingly become MUST KNOW TOPICS for all web professionals. Yet, quite a few out there still do not understand the importance nor the benefits of analytic tools such as Google Analytics, WebTrends, Omniture, etc. The following is taken from my own knowledge and research of Web Analytics…as I provide a basic overview of Web Analytics and insight on key strategies moving forward.
Web Analytics has evolved and matured within the past 10-15 years and there’s every reason to think the new year will bring several new and important revelations. Starting from the basics, we have two different types of analysis (Logfile Analysis and Page Tagging)
Highlights of Logfile Analysis
Highlights of Page Tagging
Companies must decide which type of analysis they want for their site (if not a combination of the two); it depends on the company’s goals, what they offer, what they are trying to accomplish, company’s level of technical expertise, and the number of site they are managing.
These are all basic, but key, stats you should be aware of in order to see trends, analyze “peak” days, figure out how many returning visitors you have, and how sticky your site is. Using these keys measures, you must figure out how to improve traffic and user retention rates.
These statistics can be measured using analyzers like Google Analytics to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of your site. As changes are made, success can be measured using statistics like unique visitors, bounce rates, etc.
Example of a Google Analytics Dashboard below:
Stay tuned for more in-depth posts that explore more into trends, SEO, traffic, and the “basic statistics.”
Many of us understand and realize that social media is powerful for individuals and businesses. However, there’s a vast majority out there who either disagree or are too old fashioned. Unless you work for a young company, those people are probably your boss.So, I want to start my own community marketing program at my company…how do I do it? Fortunately, I was privileged to follow under the footsteps of Jeremiah, who introduced social media to HDS; we have forums, a wiki, and a few bloggers. Yet, it was far from easy…but I learned from him.
Still its very hard work, so I look up to experts for advice and I came across an interesting article that really sums up how to start one. Only one catch, this article tells how to start one if others in your industry are catching on too…nonetheless, i cant argue with his findings.
I started off this blog with the intention to summarize someone’s thoughts, but instead I’m pushing myself…I’ll give you my advice from what Ive learned.
Here goes…
“In order to sell social media to your boss you must…”
Bosses are busy people…in and out of meetings and/or working on bigger/better things; which is they have no time to waste on worthless projects. So…make social media a NEED, not a want. Make him/her say “We need to have blogs.” Social media is a utility that every company should and needs to somehow get their hands on.
Sounds easy right? But, how do you create this need? Here’s a few ways:
“Our product has XXX and it can be integrated with XXX solution, which is why we are the leaders in our industry. For more info, you can see XXX blog post on this…”
This list will continue to grow as I learn more about these new mediums.
Also, I’ve left out some important parts…but now its your turn!
The Washington Post reported that the Defense Department has blocked soldiers’ internet access to a total of 13 sites, including MySpace and YouTube. Why? Fear that these sites will take up too much bandwidth.
Let’s look at these implications for a moment. By blocking access to MySpace/YouTube, they are pushed away even more from the rest of the world. They are out there fighting for their country, why not give them some free time?
Let’s examine more closely what MySpace brings to the table, that no other site does:
MySpace Benefactors:
Why keep soldiers away? It’s shocking to see this.
It’s amazing, how MySpace has managed to reach several different audiences. Although, what’s Facebook’s response? Why doesn’t facebook create a section for those in war?
Today’s life of constant give and take redefines the “user/consumer” role in business. Think about how business in general has evolved–several hundreds of years ago, it was the job of the engineers/managers to decide what is made. Slowly, the “market” decided how businesses work. But that’s not enough. Within every market, there’s individual micro-communities with very unique needs.
Fast forward to the “user-generated media” era of today. The keyword word here is “user” …we’re users create media. This means we’re in charge of what we see, do, and have. In a way, the market is for the people and run by the people; which is the beauty of social media.
However, we’re moving past this idea quickly. B/c not only are we just created or generating media, but we are consuming it at an increasing rate. From blogs to podcasts to vlogs we are consuming tons of content each day. No longer do we just use data, we consume, learn, store, and express ideas. It’s important how the roles are shifting here and businesses must take note of this.
The life of a consumer:
There are several other components that drive the lives of consumers and as technology moves forward so will the tools. For now, its important to understand why this is so important.
Consumers are engaging with their peers, neighborhoods, and the world. Before social media, we only had school, work, and clubs to engage with others locally. But, the conversation has moved globally now.
Although, how can we measure the effectiveness of these tools? Here’s what I think:
I’m positive measuring the effectiveness of a community marketing program will always be difficult. But, hey, at least it gives us something to talk about. I’m curious as to what other strategies are for measuring if your community program is engaging enough?
Just recently, I talked about a social networking site that is used to remember those who have passed away. And today, I stumbled upon another similar site used to archive MySpace profiles of individuals who have died. MyDeathSpace “is an archival site, containing news articles, online obituaries, and other publicly available information…[and] to pay your respects and tributes to the recently deceased MySpace.com members via [their] comment system.”
Is it just me or has social networking taken a sudden turn to the dark side? Sure does look like it!
For some reason this site gives me 404 messages, but its a good idea to keep a lookout…who knows what it will become! I can see it now: business advertising funeral services, online flower companies getting involved, and even churches offering their services too!
Lots of potential!
Let’s face it, the crazy years of going to house parties and dancing until I drop to overly loud music are over. Now, I find myself in more mellow, business-like situations–drinking some iced tea with some appetizers and talking about business and world news.
My generation does not like newspapers nor do we really like to watch the boring news. Not because they’re boring, but its just old. Old people do that. Us “young” kids rely heavily on today’s tech, namely the internet and cell phones. This is what we want:
Which is how my cell phone saved me at a get together this weekend…
More often than not, I find myself waiting for someone or just checking the latest news on my cell. Verizon’s unlimited internet access has really benefited me…I know find myself up to date with what’s going on in the world, not just in tech, but in all sorts of things.
Now that I’ve started to spend more time with professionals, I found that I needed to stay up to date with current news so I can connect with them in conversations. Otherwise, I just get pushed aside. My cell phone has made it so much easier and fun!
Ive discovered a fun, fast, and easy way for me to stay up to date. I can do this whenever I want and practically anywhere. It practically saved me at my recent get-together and I know ill refer to it often. Better yet, it’s made me become a more well-rounded professional.
Fast, accessible, and relevant information is all I want…it’s not that hard, but companies still fail–Facebook hasn’t though.
Jason Calacanis has a lot of harsh feelings towards Facebook! He’s really missed the point of Facebook, its about online communication, aggregating widgets that mean something to you, poking each other, and writing on 10 million walls a day. If you’re not up for this, then Facebook is NOT for you.
He almost seems anti-social! He doesn’t want to see what movies I like and recommend, he doesn’t care about comments/messages you send him, and he doesn’t care about joining groups (even if they are for good causes). He argues that we aren’t going to save anything with creating a group…which is wrong! That’s only the first step and social networking is making it easier to get people around the world involved with the same mission.
Most likely, he’s just fed up with social networking in general…since there’s so much news out there, especially on techmeme. But, that’s what feed readers are for…filter out all the redundant stuff.
All of the reasons Jason hates facebook are all of the reasons why I like it! Why is this? Is it a generation gap? What’s going on here?
Time will answer these questions, but here’s my prediction:
Facebook will change how we receive news (especially on mobile devices). Facebook will become the next feedreader…it will become a one-stop shop for everyone! Finally, it will surpass MySpace as the most valuable social networking site in the WWW.
WORD OF ADVICE: Jason, you can remove those widgets from your facebook so you don’t see what movies they recommend…it might help!
UNRELATED NOTE: He is also a 5th degree black belt in TKD…Jason I do TKD as well. Let’s chat sometime!
Others who are joining the conversation:
Disclaimer: My good friend Michael Sykora sent me the link to this article. Ironically, we are part of the younger generation, but he sent it through Yahoo Mail. But, I’ll tell you why later…keep reading.
Yes, email is for old people! Why though? Not because its prehistoric (laugh), but rather times have changed. The new (younger) generations revert to other forms of communication in place of the rather old email apps. Some say the future of email can be found in MySpace and Facebook, while others say its text message, but truth is it will always be changing. Today its text, tomorrow its MySpace, next month its Virtual IM. It’s difficult to keep up…but it shouldn’t be.
Stop trying to catch up and instead figure out why things are changing so fast. I admit, I use email just for work too, and revert to text messaging instead. 1000 text messages isn’t enough for me, I need unlimited texts. Why though? It’s because things today are FAST paced, I can’t take the time to open up my computer and send an email asking “what are we doing tonight?” A simple text is easier, faster, quicker, and more efficient.
MySpace and Facebook take time too, but everyone is on it! Which means, I constantly get emails/messages from each and a reply is just a click away. Plus they both have handy mobile alerts letting me know when someone has messaged me…does Yahoo? Not sure, if they do, they haven’t done a good job marketing it. Cell phones and social networking are key to today’s lifestyle, which brings me to my next point: stop creating one-offs, instead create something that links everything together!
Here’s how you can keep up with us:
Here’s what I only use email for:
I’m excited to be part of this time when things are changing so fast. The way we receive information is different from how it was 20 years ago, and it will continue to change. I love it!
For some reason I never thought I would hear the words “passed away” or “death” and social media in the same sentence. Ha, I was wrong! It turns out, social media is not just for the living, but also for those who have died.
Respectance, a social networking site that keeps the memories alive, has found a way to help loved ones who have lost someone. What’s the most difficult thing about losing someone? Is remembering all the GREAT things you did together. Here’s your chance to keep the memories alive!
You can explore tributes, photos, members, videos…all kinds of stuff…
According to Venture Beat, they just received$1.5 million in funding! I’m completely down for using this as a way to keep photos and tributes, but to browse other people who have died…I’m not too sure. Although some have said it might make it easier to heal…it might be a little freaky at the same time!
Other interesting opinions about Respectance:
A good idea? YES, definitely. But, how will it withstand? Who knows. But, what do you think?
