When I decided to write this post I actually Google’d: ‘how to start an Army’, and to be honest, was a little scared of some of the things I found.
In America, forming your own army or militia is a constitutional right (2nd amendment), and is also protected by Federal law. Treason, however, is illegal. As I researched this topic, I discovered one of the main characteristics of starting an Army/Militia is to get them vetted, trained, paid and readied for action.
Much like an assembly of troops, loyal followers ‘pledge allegiance’ to you, only they do it by retweeting, reposting, and sending you shoutouts. Having an army of loyalists helps grow your influence over the products, services and activities they chose. Having a strong Social Media optimization plan supersizes that influence, and even carries to the people that your influencees influence.
We all want loyalists, but here’s the harsh truth: Loyalty is difficult to achieve! Many people try to build it with clever marketing campaigns and promotions. The reality is one-hit-marketing-wonders or a free ipad or tablet will create short term relationships. Superficial efforts don’t dig deep enough into their minds to make a difference.
So how do you build your own Social Media Army?
1.) Define Your Cause
Take a minute and really define what you are building. You might have read a book or two, worked with strategists, consultants or managers that helped you define your Marketing goals. Your Social Media goals should mirror and compliment your marketing plan, but they are different. I have yet to meet a client that doesn’t say, I need to be on (whatever platform) and when I say, “why or what are your goals?” I can almost hear the “dear in the headlights look’. It has to be clear in your mind what you are doing, that is how the mystery of Social Media is squashed. In addition, determining goals for any form of marketing and promotions will help you manage your expectations of any medium.
The most prevalent goals I have heard:
-Increase brand awareness using multiple media platforms
-Reputation management
-Improve SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
-Increase relevant visitor traffic to a website
-Improve sales for a product or service (itunes, concert tickets, merch sales)
-Gain personal connections (*hint* this should be everyone’s goal!)Written Goals = Success. Determine key metrics BEFORE you get started. You will want to pick solid metrics to track: Web or Blog Traffic, iTunes sales, creating traditional media awareness , SEO Ranking, mentions or amount of targeted fans/followers in certain time are common.
2.) Know Your Audience
Who are you trying to reach. Pinpoint the characteristics of the perfect listener or fan as it relates to your format or music genre. Understand how your target audience uses Social Media (gender, age, geography, etc.)
-Listen and then listen more.
-Ask yourself the following questions when you are designing Social Media campaigns/conversations:
What’s the point? What type of conversation is this? What’s the purpose? What does your audience know about you right now? When and where is your audience using Social Media?
-Who are you to this audience?
-Elevator pitch or 60 second commercials are obsolete how do you describe who you are or what you do in 140 characters or less?3.) Know Your Battle Field
Before you get started think about the tools last, not first – a solid Media optimization plan and Socialality will translate across any platform. Listen to the conversations people are having about you and your brand. This is where publicists, PR companies and market research come in really handy.
-Set the foundation that takes your cause/brand across all platforms
-Get fans/followers emotional about your brand. (make laugh, cry, angry)
-Connect with them by talking TO them not at them.
-YOU are NOT that important. It is very important in the beginning when you are new to follow people back and respond to them when they talk to you. Not communicating with fans/followers is a spoiled chance to take someone from being engaged to being invested in your brand. I work with a few celebrity/artist/radio station Twitter accounts and never get tired of hearing a fan we follow back spread the word and brag to their Followers that ‘so and so’ is following them. It is a really powerful, and often under used tool of Social Media by brands, but dang does it sure work!
-Create personality behind the story. Show them you are more than a logo or a photo. Help followers find common ground that lets them relate to you, ie your Morning Show host is a Dog person so connect to your Dog Lover followers on Social Media. It only takes a few posts and tweets to identify these people.
-Content is King! Make it matter to your identified target audience.
-ALWAYS make account open to public-It’s ‘Social Networking,’ Not ‘Anti-Social Networking’!
-I will say this one again speak WITH people not AT them, Social Media is a dialogue not a monologue!
-Forget ‘What am I doing?’ and ask your followers, ‘what are they doing?’
I didn’t set out to be a social media rule-breaker. I’ve always been more of a teacher’s pet type, honestly. But the more I get to know what some in the social media industry are pushing as doctrine, the more rebellious I get.
Social media guidelines are nice, but there’s no reason to accept them as gospel. Your brand isn’t average, so the average social media plan isn’t going to cut it. What works for a local brand may not work for an international one. What works for B2C may not work for B2B. You get the idea.
So with that in mind, here are 10 social media rules worth breaking – and what to do instead.1. The best time to post is …
Plenty of studies will give you a “best time to post” figure. The best time to tweet is 5 pm because you’ll get the most retweets. No, it’s noon so you can get a higher click-through rate. And depending on which studies you read, you should either be posting on Facebook every 3 hours or every other day.Instead of running around trying to plan your posts for industry averages, you’re better off determining the right timing for you. Experiment with Facebook posts of similar content at varying times on (try for the same day of the week if you want to be slightly more scientific about it) and then compare your traffic back to site, virality rate and engagement rate. Do similar exercises for frequency. Heck, on Twitter you can even post the same thing twice at different times and see which time sees a higher click-through rate. But now I’m skipping ahead to No. 7.2. Be on every social network
Really? That sounds like a recipe for cross-posting disaster to me. While I’m all for using a service like KnowEm to lock down your brand name on services that matter to you, that doesn’t mean you have to be spending time on all these networks. Instead, get to know your customers and where they’re hanging out and talking. If they’re all on LinkedIn, why are you spending all your time on Pinterest? Good social media monitoring tools will let you find relevant conversations wherever they’re happening so you’re not chasing your tail on the wrong networks.3. Respond to every comment and mention
I’m all for engagement and lively conversation, sometimes it’s important for a brand to know when to keep its virtual mouth shut. In cases where you’re getting abused or berated online, stay out of the fray for your own well-being as well as your brand’s. But the happier flip side of that coin is when you’ve built such a strong community that members are able to answer each other’s questions and drive the conversation on their own. If you’re lucky enough to be in that situation, you may find stepping back sometimes makes your community even stronger.4. Follow everyone who follows you
Some people say this Twitter quid pro quo is just part of being polite online. I say there’s plenty of ways to use Twitter and while I respect anyone’s right to tweet Foursquare checkins all day long, that doesn’t mean I have to sign up to read them all. Social media for business is just that – for business. Follow accounts that provide you useful information and don’t apologize for it. Or if you really feel you must reciprocate, at least make liberal use of Twitter lists (don’t forget private lists, too!)5. Ask for the action
You hear this all the time: If you want people to like the post, ask them. If you want them to share, suggest it. While I’m not opposed to this in moderation – say, asking Facebook fans to share a really important announcement – be careful with how often you’re doing it. Then make sure you balance it out with fun stuff and conversation with no ulterior motive. The same way you’d get fed up with a friend who’s always asking for help without giving you much in return, fans will get fed up with a brand taking lots and giving little. Don’t be that brand.
In the below video, IBM’s Vice President of Social Business, Sandy Carter discusses four barriers that are currently preventing companies from becoming a social business. Sandy references a 2011 IBM Study where 2000 companies globally were asked what their top inhibitors were to adopting social within their organizations. They were:
- Security – the fear of intrusion; and uninvited visitors gaining access into a private community
- Adoption – more than just technology deployment, but if and how employees will use the technology
- Culture – is the business culture ready to listen to employees, partners and customers OR are they a culture that continues to want to do things their way
- Compliance – regulated companies are unsure of what they can share, tweet, and blog about without violating any laws
The biggest hurdle to social business adoption is culture.
RSS – Really Simply Syndication – is taking the web by storm, even more so than blogs, wiki’s or podcasting. And it’s quickly changing the fundamentals of how content is delivered by publishers and consumed by end users. Why? Quite simply, it enables uses to easily subscribe to, and then simultaneously read or track changing content on more sites or blogs than was ever previously possible. Anotherwords, instead of having to check a site or blog to see if there’s anything new posted, RSS notifies you when there’s new content. If you frequent 1 or 2 sites, this isn’t a big deal, but with RSS you can easily subscribe to 10-15 or even 25 sites or blogs and realistically read them all.
Conversely, RSS enables content publishers to distribute their content via infinite channels well beyond the single website or blog in which the content resides. Again, rather than try and get all users to visit your site or blog in order to consume your content, you can get your content infront of many more eyeballs than only those that might visit your site or blog.
So let’s take a look at how this is playing out in the real world.
Just about every website or blog in the internet space (e.g., outside the firewall) is publishing their content using RSS these days (RSS feeds are being used far less on intranets, where changes to corporate IT infrastructure is deployed far slower than that on external customer facing sites).
And to subscribe to all these RSS feeds, there are a plethoia of free RSS readers available. My favorites are http://www.newsgator.com, http://www.pluck.com, and http://www.feedster.com. Google “Free RSS reader” and take your pick.
So let’s take a look at how RSS works within the realm of an intranet or employee portal.
Most obvious, departments publish content using RSS. This enables employees to subscribe to content they are interested in, increasing the likelihood that content will be read when it’s new or has changed (employee’s don’t have time, nor tendency to regularly check multiple intranet site any more so than people check external websites to see if there’s anything new that interests them).
Conversely, organizations that deploy RSS readers for internal content enable employees to create their own personal news or content update site to keep track of changing information that’s relevant or interesting to them. This is the true definition of a “My Site.”
Some basic areas where RSS is perfect include employee communications and internal news, HR communications and benefits updates (helpful for annual enrollment information, year end and new year changes), facilities information (very timely in the NY area with the current transit strike affecting business operating hours), management communications, and sales force related content (product updates, customer data, etc.).
Imagine creating your own personal home page – full of new feeds and applications you want and use – in literally less than 30 seconds. And all without a lick of technical skill. Or using a word processor or spreadsheet over the web, for free, with the same functionality as Microsoft Office. And then being able to share that word “document” via the web to collaborate with others, before publishing it to a shared site or blog. Sure beats emailing around a word document with the annotation feature turned on.
Next, imagine news and data literally streaming through your browser, updating in front of your eyes without the frustrating need for the webpage to refresh.
While AJAX is the term for a relatively new programming language (technically a combination of existing protocols), it’s implications can be enjoyed by everyone who uses a web browser. In short, AJAX enables webpages to change instantly without having the whole page refresh.
This sounds like a small nuance, but in reality, it’s enabling applications to be delivered literally as webpage in a way not possible before. Airline prices change instantly as you choose different routes, maps zoom in or out instantly. Changing text from bold to italic instantly. And that’s just the beginning.
The two areas in which AJAX is making most inroads today is for personal home pages or start pages, and as a web-based alternative to Microsoft Word. Both of these items have sent a chill through the folks in Redmond (see what Bill Gates & Ray Ozzie told MS employees) – as they threaten Microsoft’s grasp on basic Office apps, as well as outlook and the browser.
Why? Because today there are a small number of start up’s offering Word-like functionality, over the web, for free (revenue comes from advertising, not software license sales).
Check out http://www.writely.com/ and you’ll see what I mean.
I’m sure it’s not long before Google buys them, and takes a run at Microsoft. Or MS buys them and moves Word into a free-for-use model.
Then there’s the new phenomenon of personal start pages. There are probably more AJAX ‘start page’ products out there than RSS readers. And of course, all these AJAX start pages function as RSS readers.
I’ve been testing a few of them, including Google and Microsoft’s “live.com,” as well as a cool one called Netvibes.com. Others include:
Eskobo
Favoor
Goowy (Flash, not AJAX)
Pageflakes
Protopage
Zoozio
The differences appear minimal at this point (most of these have been in existence for only a few months), other than the integration with email.
Google seamlessly shows your gmail inbox, and Microsoft’s live.com shows your MSN mail box. They all have ability to load basic content like stock tickers, weather, news and alike. At this point, though, I’m torn between using an AJAX start page, and a stand-alone RSS reader.
While the start page is great for viewing my gmail inbox, stock list, and RSS headlines, I’m finding I like my RSS reader (I use Newsgator) better for RSS feeds, as there is more content scanable without clicking – and simply have my gmail email sent to my outlook client.
With all the buzz about Myspace.com, Facebook.com is the first of the major ‘social media’ sites to move aggressively into the corporate realm.
Facebook is now allowing new users from a select group of corporations to join their social network, including: Accenture, Amazon, Apple, EA, Gap, Intel, Intuit, Microsoft, Pepsi, PWC and Teach for America. And Techcrunch says Facebook may add another 1,000 companies on this week.
Since over 85% of college students have signed up for Facebook, one can only wonder how many corporate user will try out the service.
What does this mean for corporations?
For starters, the ability for employees to share information and best practices quicker and easier than ever. It will also likely spur easier recruiting.
Of course, without policies and guidelines created by ‘member’ companies for their employees, what their employees post on Facebook and how these employees use Facebook are entirely up to each user.
If you’re not familiar with either of these sites, they connect users together in a community who share attributes. Facebook says it’s an “online directory that connects people through social networks.” Myspace says it’s a “private community where [users] can share photos, journals, and interests with a growing network of mutual friends.”
Facebook and Myspace started with the college market – users need an legitimate .edu email to sign up (this supposedly kept the registrations limited to actual college students). They moved to add the high school market and now Facebook is going corporate.
It’s worth noting that Facebook has chosen to seed the corporate market: instead of focusing on one sector or industry they’ve chosen leading companies in several industries that typically hire top-caliber grads (consulting, software development, hardware development, consumer products).
If you’re wondering what’s next for employee portals, the answer is “Mashups”. Mashups are websites, blogs or web applications that seamlessly combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience.
Content used in mashups is typically sourced from a third party via a public interface or API. Other methods of sourcing content for mashups include Web feeds (e.g., RSS) and JavaScript.
In the same way blogs are revolutionizing online publishing, mashups are revolutionizing web development by allowing the ability to combine existing data from disparate sources in innovative ways with far less technology heavy lifting that was the previous case in early portal products.
More than you might think (assuming most readers of this Blog are beyond their teen years and not pilfering their daughter’s copy).
While all daily news organizations have moved fully onto the web while continuing to print, many monthly feature magazine had not enbraced the web until quite recently (The New Yorker didn’t have a website until 2001, and Vanity Fair until 2004, according to Business Week). Even today, Business Week noted, most Time, Inc. magazine websites (Time, People, etc.) have little more than text and pictures (no video, no sound, no interactive games).
And the connection to employee communications? Well, remember the old days of four color employee publications full of well photographed, meticulously edited 3000 word feature stories? OK, it’s been a while. But you know what I’m referring to.
Well, you also know these print publications were replace by content on early Intranets and now on today’s employee portals (Watson Wyatt’s Employee Communications ROI study shows that the use of print media is down 30% and the use of electronic media up 75% in the past two years). And anyone that’s ever written for the electrnoic medium knows the content (mainly on intranets) is most often of the time-sensitive news type.
Here’s where the world of teen magazines and employee communications have something in common: The desire of both publishers (that latter being employee communicators) to keep readers’ attention without fighting it out on the sole issue of raw speed (at some point in the not-to-distant future the speed of employee news will be maxed out at real-time – it’s already happened for external news).
Condé Nast’s has a fancy name for their experiment with Elle Teen – “user-generated content.” Maybe that’s another way of saying, “subscriber blogging.” The plan is for Condé Nast to “let its teen readers create content to a degree previously unseen.”
Could employee communicators take a lead from this by turning over content creation to the employee population? You bet. If you look at what IBM, Intel, Cisco and other high tech companies have done with their massive internal blog network, it sounds quite similar.
And it’s already happening in certain circles (hint: my previous post on social media such as myspace.com and facebook.com)
One explanation for the “user-generated content” approach is the simple fact that users are more engaged when they participate in the creation of the content to which they’re reading.
Of course, the stakes are quite different for Condé Nast. Commercial publishers need eyeballs to drive ad revenues (and they are keenly aware that Google’s revenue, which is almost all ad generated, was up 79% last quarter). Employee communicators measure success far differently. But they, too, know that their readers have shifted dramatically from paper to online and may be less engaged as employees than before.
BTW – retired GE CEO Jack Welch recently wrote that the #1 measure of a companies success is employee engagement! He said, “If you’re running a business, though, whether it’s a corner store or a multi-product multinational, we would say there are three key indicators that really work: employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and cash flow.”
In the end, the common thread for all publishers is attracting and keeping their reader/users base – and their interest in logging on and getting users engaged. The difference going forward may very well be the definition of a publisher – from a content creator to a provider of a framework into which users (aka readers) do more or most of the content creation themselves.
Maybe that’’s a bit of an exaggeration -– some might say satellite radio is really taking over, but it’’s less so than you might think for the podcast.
I was in a local ice cream shop last weekend after my daughter’’s softball game and, low-and-behold, the shop was promoting their podcast series on new ice cream flavors. I kid you not. Take a look, I mean, listen for yourself.
One of the benefits of podcasting is that it’s audio — —and an attribute that’’s shared by no other communication medium is the ability to listen while you’’re doing something else. Unlike video or text, you can listen to podcasts when driving, surfing the web, or working out (I don’’t do the latter as much as I should).
A few interesting stats on podcasting:
- the creation of podcast feeds has averaged 15% growth month over month
- podcast circulation is consistently growing nearly 20% per month
- iTunes is the clear favorite for podcast subscribers, a healthy 43% of the market (even thought an iPod is not required for listening to a Podcast –– any mp3 player will do).
A medium that’’s less than two years has already amassed a lot of media coverage and a listener ship of close to 1 million; Forrester Research expects that number to grow to 12.3 million households by 2010. A year ago Business Week covered Podcasting with equally optimistic estimates.
These estimates may be low, since more and more mainstream media outlets are podcasting their recorded content and will undoubtedly promote its availability.
FeedBurner recently surpassed a major milestone of 50,000 podcast feeds under management which, according to the CIA World Factbook, exceeds the total number of radio stations worldwide.
In briefings and clients meetings of late, most of the discussion about podcasting has focused on what to use it for, who would listen, how long the podcast should be, and how to download a podcast. What most people haven’t asked much about is how to create a podcast in the first place.
So let’’s take a look at some if these issues
While company news or CEO broadcasts are commonly thought to be good candidates for turning into podcasts (they are), there are other uses that will be particularly handy as we move into benefits enrollment season this fall.
HR can use Podcasts to discuss upcoming changes to the benefits programs, and use voice — which his a powerful communication medium — to reinforce messaging around health care “‘consumerismÃ?” issues, escalating costs, and how employees can get the most our of their benefits plans.
Another good use is in the retirement area. Stats show many twenty-somethings don’’t enroll in their company’s 401(k) plan, and miss out not only on the company matching funds, but on starting to build their retirement accounts in their early working years –– ever more important for those without a tradition defined-benefit pension plan. A podcast series is a great way to explain why enrolling in a 401(k) is so important, no matter how young an employee may me.
Unlike broadcast voice mail,– which can do double duty for some of these uses, the podcast can easily be replayed, forward or reversed, and saved far more easily than in a voice mail system. And for those employees who donÃ?’t work at a desk, or may not have voice mail, it’’s one of the only ways to receive verbal communications from the company.
So now you’re geared up and ready to make a podcast about the latest changes to the annual performance review process (how much fun is that!), or that new policy on use of the corporate jet (still paying attention? Good).
Creating a Podcast
Let’s take a look at just how easy it is to create a podcast — with the understanding that the most difficult aspect of podcasting (like blogging) is the content –– the script or plan for what you want to say,– not the technology to record it. Two good podcasting tutorials are How To Podcast or on Feedburner.
If you want to create a podcast for an external website (maybe to go along with your blog, or as companion for all those vacation pictures you just uploaded for your relatives), there are many free services, including Yahoo! and Podcast Alley.
If you want to create a podcast within your company, for posting on your intranet or internal blog, you’’ll want an enterprise version (which isn’’t free, but is amazingly inexpensive). Some options include http://www.podcasting-tools.com/podcasting-software.htm, http://www.podcastingnews.com/topics/Podcasting_Software.htmland http://www.podshowcreator.com/.
Here’’s another novel way to create a podcast — Skype. That’’s right, Skype. The free computer-to-computer (and until year end, free from computer-to-regular telephone) service (which eBay bought last year for $2.6 Billon) has the ability to record conversations (and so does services like WebEx) .
Once recorded, turning the recording into a podcast is as simple as using the aforementioned podcast creators to ‘”convert” the recording into a podcast format.
Now that you know what software to use to record your podcast, all you’’ll need is a microphone for your PC or laptop.
We’ve all heard the stories of executive’s blogging, and the speculation that their speech writers are doing most of the authoring.
Last year a few brave soles started blogs – GM, Boeing, McDonald’s have been widely highlighted as pioneers (for good or bad).
Business Week covers the issue head-on in the “Managing” column (not the technology column!) about what Boeing did, the push back they got, and how it’s helping turn around a secretive, traditional old-line manufacturing company.
If traditional companies like Boeing and GM, both operating in highly competitive and often industries like aerospace and automotive can find value in using blogs for internal and external communication, just about any organization should see the potential for this channel.
I started off with del.icio.us in my top five tools to keep you organized and up to speed. Now for the second…
Del.icio.us is a great place to save things for reference… but how do you find the right stuff to put in there? There are SO many information sources. I have found leveraging either Google’s or Yahoo’s customized home pages give me a one stop shop to refer to a couple timea a day to see what’s up. Both sites offer a huge number of options and I have found them to be a helpful way to scan multiple RSS feeds. I have added feeds from Wired, Reuters, world/national/tech news, urban legends, and TMZ (OK, the last one is useless, but it is a guilty pleasure).
I have been surprized how often I see a theme cross a few of these feeds around the same time. When it does, I know something is cooking. “Second Life” is an example of something I have seen jump lately.
If you have not taken the time to set up a customized page on Google or Yahoo (or one of many other options out there), I’d recommend it.
OR.. if you have a better way, would love to hear more about it.
Broadband internet is now as vital as water and electricity for economic growth, according to the latest technology report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
Seeing broadband join what is more intuitively more essential, at least according to the Information Economy Report, marks a significant inflection point (as the consultants like to say).
Clearly this would add to the gulf between the “haves” and “have nots” and also underlines the importantance for advancing communications and services on the web. A good read on this (and the source of my first paragraph…
So, MySpace beats Yahoo for the first time in monthly traffic… does it matter?
Maybe a little. It is a good indicator that social networking is going to be VERY significant. OK, it actually is VERY significant now, but the data is now showing up to convince the doubters out there.
With all the growth in AJAX and widgets and the like, it is going to be harder to really KNOW who really gets the most traffic, but it will be clear who the top tier is. And the top tier will have social networking sites in it.
Bottom line, any content producer needs to understand that the more you can chop your material into bite-sized socially networkable chunks, the more audience you have a chance to reach.
Assuming your content is of use/interest to someone, a good challenge for all of us to try and meet.
A co-worker shared this amusing and insightful list of communication technology related resolutions for the new year (I need to adopt at LEAST half of these).
One resolution for me…I will try and post weekly to this blog (maybe some of you could resolve to comment 🙂
First week in January, and a post. Off to a good start!
While not exactly aligned with the focus of this blog, I wanted to share a posting on my personal blog that shows how a world where nearly all of us can publish is a good thing.
While I found the text a tad hard on my old eyes, came across a great post on marketing and social media. A sample:
“Blogging is not just another channel for corporate marketing types to push their messages to markets, eyeballs, or audiences. Social media is based on the dynamic of a many-to-many dialogs between people.”
Not sure I share all the angst, but still gave me something to think about. I personally feel that blogs offer companies an opportunity to put a (real!) human face on what is otherwise a big blob of organization/procedure/press 1 to continue.
But the effort and blogger must be sincere and offer some value to the reader.
I added this Web 2.0 video about “Teaching the Machine” to my personal blog. I think it does a great job in pointing out the differences between written word, electronic text, html, xml, and user tagging and the like.
The underlying concept is we (the crowd, the mob, users) are now in charge of much of the creation and organization of content. Clearly Web 2.0 services lower the barriers of entry for anyone to contribute and organize on a global scale.
When we consider using this model for internal communications, things get real interesting. I am sure most of us are ready to sift through user reviews of a product and average out the commentary to come to a point of view. Basically that means we accept there will be junk and gems, and we will work through the diverse quality of content.
Typically, internal business communications have not tolerated a large junk element to be distributed broadly. Will we get more comfy with that? Will we let front line employees “teach the machine”?
Dunno 🙂
On my personal blog, I posted some thoughts on the subpoena Twentieth Century Fox has issued to YouTube in an attempt to find out who uploaded episodes of “The Simpsons” and “24.”
Where blogs market written thoughts, YouTube and the like have created a much different market of video content, mash-ups, and (allegedly) illegal content.
Somehow, someway, this new market is going also include content about your company that will matter to your Marketing, PR, and Reputation Management people.
While I can see companies living successfully in the blogosphere (if they do it right), not sure I see the logical path to a meaningful existence in YouTube-land.
Should be interesting.
The recent editor fraud on Wikipedia make me wonder what the trust level will be of internal wikis. Most of us keep our grains of salt at hand when using the Internet, but the bar is much higher internally.
User generated content bypasses the checks and balances we are used to on intranets. Not saying it is a bad thing, but it is a VERY different thing. Will organizations be able to deal with “close enough” content that gets better over time? Not sure, but I have to think the speed of distribution in the user generated world will make it hard to prevent for long.
More importantly, Alice Cooper’s new album is due out in May!
Plans are for Dem and GOP online debates. Is this the next step in connecting politics to real people? Add this to:
- MySpace is holding a mock election in January
- Obama, Clinton, and Big Brother (the Orwellian one) have surfaced significantly in YouTube,
- Edwards hired bloggers – fired bloggers – did the Second Life thing – experienced the Second Life vandalism thing
- Rudy can be found in drag on several photo sharing sites
- and on and on…
and it sure seems like the trend is towards participation. This was somewhat the theme of my last post about wikis which resulted in a very reasonable comment/question.. “so what”?
The comment correctly points out that bad behavior will have consequences within a business – regardless of technology.
I agree. I still think the is something to think about here. My expectations for Internet content is that I never assume it has been vetted much (or at all). My expectations for internal content is vetting was a core element in its creation. These are different frames of reference… frames inching towards each other. A change that matters.
At least I think so 🙂