Need feedback? Ask the crowd.

As I was planning the presentation it seemed to grow more daunting every day. I don't know everything about WordPress, I'm constantly learning more, but even so, how could I cover enough in 90 minutes to give these folks a good foundation? What I realized was that I had to do some sort of messaging triage to focus on the most important topics. And I needed to identify which issues would be of the greatest interest to my audience. For the latter I would need to ask for input. So that is what I did.

I began by asking Stuart Smith, the leader of the Web Development SIG for his thoughts. As someone who knows his audience, and who had recently been digging into WordPress himself, he was able to give me some good insights. Next I thought it would be helpful to get opinions from people who already knew WordPress. This is when I turned to the crowd.

Ask your peers on LinkedIn & other social media sites

Answering questions on LinkedIn is a regular part of my personal branding and marketing strategy, so I've learned that the people there can be a great resource. Thus I posed the following question on LinkedIn.

If you were attending a 90 min. presentation on using WordPress as a CMS, what would you want to learn about?

I'm giving a presentation on WordPress to our local Web Developers group in a few weeks. In the past I've given 60 min. talks geared towards users, but this is aimed at a more technical audience. I'd like to cover installation, theme development, plug-ins and other functionality, but I also realize that 90 min. isn't really enough time to cover the breadth and depth of the WordPress Codex. So I want to focus on whatever points would be most useful to a Web developer (someone comfortable with HTML, CSS and a bit of PHP) who is about to do his/her first WordPress site.

If you're thinking about using WP and haven't yet, what would be helpful to you? Or if you're already comfortable with WordPress, what do you wish someone had told you before you did your first WordPress installation? Thanks for your input!

In return I received 13 answers suggesting topics including:

• Security
• Search Engine Optimization
• Parent/Child Themes
• Theme Frameworks
• Spam prevention
• Hosting Requirements
• Theme Customization
• Client Training
• Categories
• Plug-ins

I posed similar, albeit shorter, questions on Twitter and Facebook, and once all was said and done I had a full list of topics to prioritize. Given my limited presentation time, I crossed-off topics that would be too time-intensive, such as theme frameworks, and chose to focus on the basics of getting set-up and developing themes. I also touched on security, SEO, plug-ins and hosting (among other things.)

By now, the list was still too broad, but I felt I had a sense of what developers would want to know.

Presenting the message: so much to say in so little time

Screenshot of page from WordPress Sample Site

Knowing I would be covering a lot of material quickly, I felt I should provide resources that attendees could access later. So instead of using Keynote or PowerPoint, I chose to build a WordPress Sample Site as my presentation vehicle. This would allow me to go page by page, rather than screen by screen, while also leaving examples in place that people could refer to at any time. This also made it easier to demonstrate the features of WordPress as I could also show them things in the WordPress dashboard for the site, or in the php files for the templates.

I used pages on the site to explore key topics, such as the WordPress template hierarchy, and blog posts to share plug-ins and related tidbits. I'll continue to add to that blog as I find new plug-ins worth sharing. So what started out as a presentation has now turned into another site that I can expand and refine over time. If you have suggestions on plug-ins or WordPress topics I should cover, please share them below and I can start adding them to the Sample WordPress Site Blog.

The results

I still get nervous about speaking, and it can be hard to tell how a presentation really went. After all, most people are too polite to tell you that you bombed. But overall the feedback was positive, and the audience asked (and often answered) many good questions. Thinking back on the process, I may have come up with a decent plan on my own, but I think I came up with a better plan because I asked what people wanted. The responses I got really helped me in shaping the nature of the presentation, and gave me the confidence to feel I was on the right track.

When we think about crowdsourcing we think of many different things. We may peruse Digg or StumbleUpon to find the most interesting news or sites. We may ask friends on Twitter for tips on what router to buy. We may even use the crowd for project collaboration. And there will be times when we disagree with the crowd. That's O. K. too, it doesn't have to be a democracy. But if you ask the crowd for their input, it can be a great place to start—whether you're planning a presentation, a marketing campaign or a blog post.

CrowdSourcing Q&A Resources

• LinkedIn Answers
• Quora (Q&A on myriad topics)
• Stack Exchange

Fan Like me on Facebook—Follow me on Twitter

We all know these blog posts don't get written as frequently as I'd like. But that doesn't mean you need to go weeks without hearing me babble. Over on http://www.facebook.com/heidicool, I'm using content curation to share one link per day. At one tip per week day it won't clog your Facebook stream, but hopefully you'll find something useful.

And for more links (and ramblings that may not always be related to the Web) I usually Tweet and reTweet a few (or several) times per day at @hacool.

Curators at the Cleveland Museum of Art took care to select the right pieces, placement and accompanying art when re-doing the museum's Armor Court.

The process of content curation is pretty simple. Basically one reads a variety of blogs, articles and sites on a given topic, then picks out the best ones to share, just as an editor might choose the most appropriate stories for an anthology of fiction, or a museum curator might choose the right combination of paintings for an exhibit.

In the early days of blogging, the process of choosing and sharing links to various noteworthy sites, was one of the most popular ways to blog. People have been curating content for ages, but the phrase "content curation" (in the context of social media) really only began to gain traction in 2009* and has been growing in popularity ever since.

Why curate content?

Some people choose to curate content because it takes less time than writing your own posts, but as you know we shouldn't be building our strategies around "shortcuts." Instead we should tailor any content marketing strategy to our end goals. Ideally you should be using content curation (if appropriate) to augment the self-created content you are using to communicate with your audience. I find content curation compelling because:

I learn in the process.

In order to build useful Web sites, and develop effective social media and marketing strategies, I have to keep up with changes in the field and continue to learn new things each day. I keep up with trends and information by reading blogs, listening to podcasts and conversing with peers on Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media channels. While doing this I also discover links that may be of interest to my own followers.

I can be a more effective resource on a topic if I share more than my own thoughts.

No matter how much time I might spend doing research, I will never have all the answers you may need about Web development, social media, marketing, etc. But if I pick through the noise—to find the best items to share on these topics—then I may become a useful go-to resource on these subjects. This helps my followers find relevant information more easily, and it supports my brand—by positioning me as someone knowledgeable enough to pick out what is useful.

Ways to find content worth sharing

As mentioned above I consume a lot of information in order to keep learning—and I find items to share as a part of that process. Setting up a system to find information on a given topic usually begins with a bit of preliminary research. This could involve setting up keyword searches on specific terms, subscribing to leading blogs, identifying pertinent podcasts, etc. Once you've done that you can then focus on monitoring the resources you've selected. Below are some of the ways I find content.

Blogs, E-zines, Aggregators

"Cats Who Code" offers good how-to tips. Here I may find articles to share with peers on Twitter or to save on Delicious for future reference.

I'm currently subscribed to hundreds of blogs and other online resources in Google Reader. There are so many that it is impossible to read all of the posts, but if I organize them by topics, such as social media or Web/tech, I can skim the headlines to find the posts that pique my interest. As I read through the posts I'll also note which posts seem most likely to resonate with my followers so that I can share those links in the appropriate places.

I subscribe to the obvious leaders in my industry such as A List Apart and Mashable, but I also try to subscribe to smaller niche oriented blogs and those that may only have a passing relation to my field. For example, I'm neither a video producer nor a film-maker, but I often find cool things on Motionographer that I can share on Twitter. Reading about design in other fields also helps me gain new perspectives when thinking about the Web, so blogs such as Lovely Package and Drawn! are also on the reading list.

Once I've identified a few blogs as being leaders in a particular niche these usually lead me to other blogs (that they may mention,) so in time the list just keeps growing.

Search Feeds

News readers aren't just for blogs. If I know I want to monitor a particular topic I can run searches in Google News search, Yahoo News Search, Twitter search, Google Blog search, etc. and subscribe to the resulting feeds. Similarly I can set up search columns in Tweetdeck on phrases like "Web design" or "CSS" to see what people are saying about those topics."

Podcasts

Listening to podcasts like CreativeXpert is a great way to gain knowledge and discover new bloggers worth following.

Podcasts are a great way to learn on the go and discover new blogs to read, articles of note, etc. After subscribing to podcasts in iTunes I can copy them to my iPod so that I can listen to them at any time, without being tied to my computer.

Many of the podcasts I listen to are an hour long and may feature multiple speakers. This allows them to dig deeper into specific topics than one could in a single blog post. Thus when I listen to This Week in Tech I may glean the latest insights on the Facebook privacy issue of the month. On Boagworld I might learn about a new wireframing tool or discover new methods for usability testing. These podcasts may also lead me to particular articles worth sharing, or after listening to a guest speaker I may decide I should also follow his/her blog.

Crowd Sourcing/Bookmarking/Social Media Recommendations

Sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, and Delicious can be great places to find content that other people have liked or found useful in some way. While you can follow specific people on these sites, you can also browse by topics such as tech news or view commonly shared tags such as contentcuration.

People I'm following in social media channels

I've met a lot of great minds on Twitter (and other services.) The people I follow range from designers, developers and marketers to scientists and a sea captain. Many of these Tweeps are also curating content for their niche so I often discover new blogs or posts through the links they share in their Tweets, on Facebook, Buzz, etc. Some of my favorite blogs are those I've discovered via friends on social media.

Ways to share curated content

On my Facebook page I typically write a descriptive blurb about the link being shared. These are geared towards a mixed audience of clients, potential clients and peers.

There are a variety of ways to share the content you find. Some bloggers write link posts in which they share the top links they've found this week. Others might write a short paragraph about a post they've read, then link to the article. One can also share links via social media.

When perusing blogs, I'll share some posts via Google Reader Share. These feed directly to my Facebook and LinkedIn profile pages as well as my What I've Been Reading in the Blogosphere page. I also post links with short descriptive comments on Twitter and share one link per day on my Facebook page along with a paragraph of commentary.

With rare exceptions I do not cross-post the same links to each space. The links I share on Twitter are different than the ones I share on my Facebook page. I do this so that I can choose links specifically for each target audience and to avoid redundancy for those who follow me in multiple places.

Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and numerous other sites are also great places to share content links, with or without your personal commentary.

Just say no to plagiarism: do not republish articles without permission

While there are many ways to share content there are also ways you should not share it. When I was looking for more links to include with this article I found, Why Content Curation is BS, in which BlogBloke rightfully rants that content curation should not be used as an excuse for plagiarism. His post served as a good reminder that we should take care when we share.

There are bloggers who will copy the content they find to their own blog. Sometimes they give attribution to the source, other times they don't. Either way you should never copy someone else's content (or even paraphrase it) without getting their permission to do so. Doing so is a violation of their copyright. Most of you already know this, but it's an issue that is often confusing to new bloggers, so I thought it was worth mentioning.

In most cases it is perfectly acceptable to include one or more quotes from an article as part of your commentary, just as you might include quotes in a research paper, but don't quote a post in its entirety. A good way to share curated content on a blog is to start by explaining what the post is about, and why you feel it is worth sharing, then adding your own opinion about the subject along with a link to the original article. MetaSpring does a nice job of this in their monthly Blog Carnival posts. (They also contact the authors to ask permission and give them information about the upcoming posts, though their usage would be perfectly acceptable even if they didn't ask.)

If you are unsure about what is, and is not, acceptable, I've included links to copyright resources in A writer’s obligations: ethics, law and pragmatism, Part 1: Law. You can also learn more from Plagiarism Today which publishes both a blog and a podcast.

How are you curating content?

What other methods have you used to find content? Where and how are you sharing it? Are you posting article links to the news tab in your LinkedIn discussion groups? Are you sharing links via Tumblr or Posterous? Do you include curated links in your e-mail newsletter? Please share your experiences or suggestions in the comments below.

Content Curation Resources

The links I regularly share here at the bottom of my posts are another example of content curation. I include these to provide additional reading material on the topic. These links were found via Google Reader, Google Search and Delicious.

• Content Is No Longer King: Curation Is King
• Content Marketing: Definitions of Curation & Context
• Curation nation
• The Content Strategist as Digital Curator
• The Seven Needs of Real-Time Curators
• Why Feedback and Filters are Necessary in Social Media

* A Google search on "content curation" turns up only 282 mentions of the phrase in 2007, 568 in 2008, 17,400 in 2009 and 55,000 so far this year.

P.S. As I was going through Google Reader today I realized I'd left out a great example of content curation. Arts & Letters Daily is a service of The Chronicle of Higher Education. It compiles a great collection of intellectual fodder, adding 3 short blurbs with links to full articles each day. It also includes a list of the source publications it uses in the left sidebar. Added June 30, 2010.

Fan me on Facebook—Follow me on Twitter

We all know these blog posts don't get written as frequently as I'd like. But that doesn't mean you need to go weeks without hearing me babble. Over on http://www.facebook.com/heidicool, I'm using content curation to share one link per day. At one tip per week day it won't clog your Facebook stream, but hopefully you'll find something useful.

And for more links (and ramblings that may not always be related to the Web) I usually Tweet and reTweet a few (or several) times per day at @hacool.

What do we do when a resource disappears, or changes in such a way that we need to reconsider our options? That is the question many of us are facing in regard to Ning, the social media service that let's you create your own social network. I'm currently a member of over a dozen Ning Networks, have created 4 and also have admin privileges on 2 created by others. So the Ning question affects me both as a user and as a developer.

Today I'd like to ponder how we prepare for service changes, how much we rely on external systems and related topics. I don't have all the answers, to this so I'll give some examples and pose some questions, but I expect that it will be your feedback that really helps us make decisions about services such as Ning. I'll also be asking these questions tomorrow, May 5, 2010 at 1:00 p.m. (e.d.t.) via #smchat, a weekly Twitter chat on social media. Please feel free to share your comments here or during the live chat.

Q46A*: What should we consider when a service changes or goes away?

First we panic. Then we recall that the Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe says "Don't Panic." So we calm down and think about the issues at hand. If the service is going away we need to examine our goals and determine what features we need in an alternative site. If the service is changing we must still examine our goals and consider whether or not the changed site will be able to accommodate them.

Back in 2008 I learned that one of my favorite social media services, Pownce, was going to shut down on December 15. In the frenzy to stay connected with Pownce friends, we rushed to explore other options, I created Pownce Refugees on Ning, others built their own sites, and soon we each had accounts scattered on services ranging from Soup to Vox. You can read more about this experience in my post, Social Media is People (but more enriching than Soylent Green*).

I'm a Web developer, so I could have built something from scratch, but I chose Ning to host Pownce Refugees because it was something I could do quickly enough to spread the word via Pownce before the shut-down occurred. While it didn't offer the same feature set, it offered enough options that we could continue to have the types of long conversations and media embeds that we'd grown used-to. Within a short period of time we had 100 members, and we were featured in the Ning Blog post, Former Pownce members find a new home. The site served as a useful home base, but over time it became less active. Now most of us communicate (with each other) primarily through Twitter, simply because it was the one service that everyone was already using. We missed the functionality of Pownce, but at least we were all on Twitter.

The heart of a social network lies in it's members. Ning, Vox and the Pownce clone, Schmownce (created by a fellow Pownce user) offered more features than Twitter, but they didn't have the same user base. Everyone (in our circle) was already on Twitter so it won simply because the people were already there. Other sites won as well. In an effort to make sure we wouldn't have to scramble again if Twitter died, many of us also friended each other on Facebook and other services so we'd have redundant connection points in play.

Q46B: The costs of maintaining community: remain on Ning or move.

Ning announced it's pricing plans today. The lowest cost plan is cheap enough that even tiny communities should be able to afford it. But they'll lose features they have now. #smchat could retain most of the features we currently use on the $19.95/year plan. Some of my other networks require more features and the other plans are more expensive. When deciding whether to stay or go we'll have to consider:

How many members will we lose if we move to a new network? Will there be exporting and importing tools available to help us migrate users to a new service with minimal attrition rates? Small networks such as #smchat may find it easier to transition to a new service than would larger networks.

How much content do we have on the site? Does it exist in multiple formats? Is there a way to cleanly export it so that we can also easily import it to another site? Or will we have to download and copy our content manually? Ning plans to provide us with tools for migration in the future, but we don't as yet know how they'll work.

Can we, as site owners, afford the cost of whichever Ning plan offers the services we require? Would our members be interested in contributing to those costs? Can these costs be offset by advertising or sponsorship? As an example, the University Web Developers network is currently sponsored by OmniUpdate. We have 3,225 members, so I would think OmniUpdate would want to keep sponsoring the site under the new plans. (I'm not an administrator for this site, but this would be my guess.)

Can we, as site owners, afford the cost of an alternative plan? Ning's most expensive offering is $49.95/month. Or you can save a bit by paying $499.95 for a full year. While that will seem expensive to many, it's far cheaper than hiring someone like me to build a WordPress/BuddyPress alternative. If you have the skill set to build your own network, that may save you money, but you'll still need to invest your time. Our Lake Erie Moose Society is thinking about WordPress, but we're a blogging group, so we were planning to create such a site for people to experiment with anyway...and we have several members who can contribute to the project of building the site, so I won't have to spend as much time on it as I would if building it by myself.

What other free options are available? Posterous announced that it would work on building an import feature so that Ning users could transition to that service. The features are quite different, but such options might be worth considering. One of the options mentioned for #smchat has been to use a group Wiki. What other options should we consider for #smchat and/or other networks?

Q46C: Knowing that free services may disappear, is it worth it to rely on them?

Or is it safer to stick with sites we build ourselves so that we don't become dependent on others that may not always be available? I think this really depends on the needs of your network. I can build my own sites, but I've still created Ning sites because they save me time. I don't use them for everything but the feature set and ease-of-use has made Ning a useful option. Building custom sites costs time and money, so I think we need to evaluate the risks and rewards of using platforms like Ning on a case-by-case basis.

Building your own site isn't an option for everyone. Those who use online services can mitigate the risks by providing alternative channels. Our Lake Erie Moose Society also has a Facebook page and a LinkedIn Group (we don't use that much). The Ning site is home base, but the others provide back-up communication channels and help us to reach out to people less familiar with Ning. (Some of our members have been following us on Facebook without ever visiting the Ning site.)

Q46D: What opportunities does the elimination of free Ning networks offer to others?

Posterous announced they will be building a Ning importer. WPMU has announced a Ning to BuddyPress importer plugin. I plan to experiment with WordPress and BuddyPress so that I can build networks for those seeking self-hosted alternatives. It's too early to tell how/if Ning's plans will benefit Ning users and the company, but it also creates an opportunity for others to reach out to Ning users with alternatives. Movable Type, for example, could try to gain more customers by offering importing recommendations to Ning users who might want to use Movable Type with Motion as a Ning alternative. Who else can benefit from this change? What should they be offering current Ning users to entice them to user their service instead?

Conclusions

As of now I've not decided what I'll do with each of my Networks, though I expect to keep at least one on the Ning platform. Each has different user needs that may be served with differing alternatives. We'll also be learning about more options in the weeks to come. What about you? What would you plan?

*On #smchat we number the questions by session. Tomorrow's chat will be our 46th, thus I've numbered my questions as 46A-46D.

Ning Resources and Examples

• Introducing Ning Pro, Ning Plus and Ning Mini
• Ning FAQ's on new plans
• Cleveland Social Media Club on Ning
• Lake Erie Moose Society on Ning
• University Web Developers on Ning

#smchat follow-up (added May 5 ~ 11:15 p.m.)

We had great participation during today's #smchat about Ning. I've posted a follow-up to the chat, including a copy of the chat transcript, on the #smchat Ning site under: Q46: What to do about Ning?

Fan me on Facebook—Follow me on Twitter

We all know these blog posts don't get written as frequently as I'd like. But that doesn't mean you need to go weeks without hearing me babble. Over on http://www.facebook.com/heidicool, I'm sharing one tip per day, usually as a short paragraph with a link to something interesting I've found in the blogosphere.

At one tip per week day it won't clog your Facebook stream, but hopefully you'll find something useful. And for more links (and ramblings that may not always be related to the Web) I usually Tweet and reTweet a few (or several) times per day at @hacool. (I also have links to more accounts on My Social Media Profiles page and am now also babbling on Buzz.)

View Listen Now, Talk Later on Slideshare.

Back in high school we took a senior class poll in which we voted on who was "most likely to succeed," "most likely to end up in jail" and so forth. Your school probably did the same thing. The answers were then printed in the yearbook. In our yearbook, Julia Talsma and I were listed as the responses for "talks least, says most." I don't recall who won "talks most, says least," but was glad it wasn't me.

The same idea applies to social media. "Talks most, says least" is not going to make you popular* on Twitter, Facebook or most other social spaces.

*Popularity isn't our goal, but we do want to forge connections with our audience. They are more likely to listen to us if we also listen to them.

Alas, many individuals and businesses see social media as an extra publishing channel. Our species seems drawn to fast easy solutions, and publishing an RSS feed out to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. seems easy. It is. But it's not always productive. The true value is found in two-way communication. If we start our social media efforts with listening activities, we can learn how our audience perceives us (if they do) and what they want to hear. Then, when we're ready to speak, we'll know what to say.

What we listen for varies by our goals. In a recent client training session I focused on how we could use listening for that client's specific niche. But there are some general principles that can be adapted to a wide variety of use scenarios. On January 25th I gave a presentation, Listen Now…Talk Later: Listening as the foundation of your social media strategy, to our "Local Entrepreneur & Social Media Network Meetup Group" (run by another client) in which I discussed listening in this broader context. After reading this you may find it helpful to peruse those slides as they include screenshots and other examples of what I'll discuss here.

Listening for brand, product and service monitoring.

For marketers and public relations professionals, monitoring is nothing new. They've used clipping services to monitor brand and product mentions in mainstream media, conducted focus groups and surveys among customers and target audiences, and otherwise monitored feedback and opinion for years.

Monitoring our brands and products is important for a variety of reasons. Whether you're the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or an individual freelancer, monitoring can give you insights into:

• Brand/Product/Service awareness (name recognition)
• Brand/Product/Service perception (what do people think of who you are and what you offer)
• Customer Satisfaction (how happy are current customers)
• Your Competition
• Your Industry
• Opportunities for product/service/customer service improvements
• Opportunities for sales and lead generation
• Market needs (gaps in the industry which you may be able to fill by providing a new product or service)
• Liabilities (product faults, bad press, potential communications crises...), etc.

Now that we're in an era when customers blog and share opinions via Twitter—and media outlets publish their content online—monitoring is easier than every before. Rather than paying for expensive clipping services, we can search online ourselves. If the budget allows, we can also use commercial monitoring tools that can give us far more data than we've had in the past.

In this video a somewhat unscrupulous boss finds a new opportunity to take advantage of buyers after social media listening uncovers a customer service problem related to cow making equipment.

When you listen to what mainstream media and the public have to say about you, your competition and your industry, you can then apply that knowledge to everything from your marketing strategies to product development. For example, If you manufacture machines that make plastic cows, and your listening habits tell you of a growing need for plastic pigs, you can retool your equipment to produce pig making machines and get a jump on your competition.

Or, if a user has found fault with your plastic cow making equipment, you can fix the problem for that customer and put your engineers to work to make sure that it doesn't happen again. If the customer has complained publicly, you can also publicly share how you solved the problem to your customer's satisfaction—thus resolving the issue before the customer feels compelled to share his complaint so loudly that it becomes the most watched video on YouTube.

Listening is only half the battle. You still have to make plans for what you'll do with what you learn. But if you listen, then you can plan…instead of having to react in an emergency when it may be too late.

Listening for content curation.

Just as we listen to what customers think about our products, we can also listen to learn more about their interests. If we can find out what intrigues them, then we can create content strategies designed to serve their needs as well as our own goals. Listening also helps us select the content we share on our blogs and through our social media channels. Many companies just blog about themselves. Their Facebook status updates all relate to product news, usage tips and announcements. If you're Apple this type of content could be interesting enough to draw in readers. But if you manufacture plastic cow-making equipment it probably isn't.

By listening to your target audience (plastic cow and other novelty toy manufacturers) you can find out what else they want to hear. Perhaps they've shown an interest in toy trends or the development of new polymers that can produce more resilient cows. If you keep listening you can find blog articles, news stories and Web sites that appeal to their interests and share them through your social media channels.

When you become the go-to source for the information they seek, you give them a far better reason to follow you than if you only shared information about you.

Listening to converse

Imagine this conversation on Twitter. Here a dog food manufacturer quickly offends his new follower by talking at him, instead of to him. (No dogs were injured in the making of this video.)

The easiest people to listen to are the ones with whom we already have a connection. These include the people who comment on our blogs, the people we follow on Twitter, the friends we make on Facebook, Ning, etc. If we want to make friends, share information with peers, convert followers to customers, and so forth, we can begin to forge these connections by listening to them.

On Twitter this means reading your stream one or more times per day and responding to Tweets that are relevant to your industry or interest. If you have a Facebook Fan page this means visiting your page daily to respond to comments and posts made by fans. How often you do this depends on your own situation.

To those familiar with social media this seems obvious, but for those more accustomed to traditional publishing channels, this is a new idea.

When I was working at Case Western Reserve University I created the Case News Twitter account to share our latest news and press releases. These were (and still are) automatically posted to Twitter via Twitterfeed. I then started following Tweeps who might be interested in the university and followed back those who followed the account (with the exception of spammers).

Once a day (usually during lunch) I would skim through the stream to see what people had to say. If it was something related to Case or academia I would respond. In doing so I could answer questions, wish students good luck on exams, thank alumni for donating, etc. I also added event and other postings of interest that weren't included in the automated news feed. Doing this helped me connect with followers and gave me a better sense of what they wanted to hear from Case. It also showed readers that someone was listening and would respond if they wrote to us.

Many organizations just post without listening. This works fine for services like Twitter accounts that post weather updates. But for organizations that want to use social media to build business, posting without listening and responding can send a message that you don't really care what customers think. It can also lead to a rather boring Twitter stream that customers don't find interesting enough to read. This isn't unique to Twitter. The same principles apply to Facebook, Ning, YouTube, MySpace and others.

If you follow a large number of people you won't be able to read everything. But if you check in once or more per day, read all replies and skim the rest of the updates you'll easily find opportunities to converse.

How to listen: news, social media and related searches

Tools and services such as Radian 6 and Social Mention are designed to help with monitoring, but you can also learn a lot through targeted searches. By searching on brand and product names, keywords related to your industry, competitor names and related topics you can find news stories, blog posts, social media comments, discussion boards and other online resources related to what you are monitoring. Here are a few (of many) possible sites to use for social media and related searches.

• Addict-o-matic (social media monitoring)
• Board Tracker (discussion board search)
• Delicious (social bookmarks)
• Digg (crowdsourcing)
• Google News
• Google Blog Search
• How Sociable? (brand visibility scores - more useful for comparison w/competition)
• Reddit (crowdsourcing)
• Same Point (social media search)
• Social Mention (social media monitoring)
• StumbleUpon (crowdsourcing)
• Twitter Search
• Whos Talking (social media search)
• Yahoo Advanced News Search

You'll notice that some of these are typical search sites while others may include bookmarking and other services. Which of these is best for you will depend on your goals and your industry. Generally you'll find that you can choose a select combination of tools that suits your particular situation. Subscribing to blogs in your industry is also a useful way to find out what topics are hot in your field and discover articles you may wish to share with your followers.

The link to this Simpsons Coke commercial was the most popular message found when searching Twitter for "coke" today. (The Superbowl was yesterday, so it makes sense that a Coke ad would dominate the search results.)

When searching it is worth noting that it is easy to get false positives. If you are "Coca Cola" then most of your results for that phrase will be appropriate—but a search on "Coke" may also bring up posts that have nothing to do with refreshing fizzy beverages. Key word terms and phrases can be equally vague. A search on recruiting may bring results ranging from employment and military recruiting to student recruitment and recruiting for cults. But if you specify something like "executive recruiting" you can get more focused results. You may need to experiment a bit to find keyword combinations that provide the results you seek. For Twitter searches you can also compare your results for plain keywords and commonly used hashtags. #recruiting, for example, is popularly used as a hashtag for recruiting related to employment.

Subscribing and sharing via RSS Readers

Many of the search tools listed above will provide you with an RSS feed for your search. Feeds allow you to subscribe to your search so you don't have to conduct fresh searches each time you want to listen.

For those unfamiliar with RSS, such feeds function like magazine subscriptions. If you subscribed to the print edition of National Geographic, then a new issue would show up in your mail box each month. When you subscribe to an RSS feed, new articles show up in your feed reading software as they become available.

Google Reader is one of the most popular feed readers. Once you sign up for a Google Reader account you can subscribe to blog posts and search feeds and organize them by topics for easy viewing. To read the articles you just check Google Reader on a regular basis as you would check your e-mail account.

Slides 22-30 in the Listen Now, Talk Later presentation include a video and screen shots that demonstrate how one uses Google Reader. Google Reader is but one of many readers available, but most work in a similar manner. NetVibes is another popular choice. Some users also use e-mail programs such as Outlook to subscribe to feeds.

To listen is to learn

Listening takes time, but with the right tools we can find manageable ways to listen. What we learn will then guide us to better serve our audience. Now it's my turn to listen to you. I've only covered the broad strokes of this topic here. If you have more tips and ideas for social media listening, please share them in the comments below.

Social Media Listening Resources

When I pick the related links to share in my blog entries, I try to choose articles that will expand on what I've written, or offer a different perspective or insight, so that you can delve deeper into the topic. While some are found through Google I also find them using the listening strategies I've discussed in this post. The following were found via blogs I subscribe to, Twitter searches, Delicious and Google searches.

• 5 Simple Twitter Listening Tips Every Marketer Should Know by ReadWriteWeb's Elyssa Pallai
• Framing Your Social Media Efforts by Chris Brogan
• Free Social Media Monitoring Tools
• Listening Literacy For Nonprofits by Beth Kanter
• The Five W's of Social Media Listening by Chuck Hemann
• The Importance of Social Media Audits by Jeremiah Owyang

Fan me on Facebook - Follow me on Twitter

We all know these blog posts don't get written as frequently as I'd like. But that doesn't mean you need to go weeks without hearing me babble. Over on http://www.facebook.com/heidicool, I'm sharing one tip per day, usually as a short paragraph with a link to something interesting I've found in the blogosphere. At one tip per week day it won't clog your Facebook stream, but hopefully you'll find something useful. And for more links (and ramblings that may not always be related to the Web) I usually Tweet and reTweet a few (or several) times per day at @hacool. (I also have links to more accounts on My Social Media Profiles page.)

Note to local northeast Ohio readers: The Lake Erie Moose Society is holding its monthly meeting tonight, February 8, 2009. If you blog, or are thinking about blogging please feel free to join us.

When developing a social media strategy, we start with a measurable goal, such as selling widgets, promoting events, recruiting students, sharing knowledge, collaborating with peers, getting customer feedback, or anything else that furthers our plans. Then we identify our target audience, determine where they are spending time on line, and develop communications tactics meant to reach them—on their terms, in the spaces they use.

This latter step is important because people tend to be more comfortable conversing on their home turf. They may also find it easier to make a comment on the page they're on than to click through to someplace else. But once our audience begins to connect with us, they also need to know where they can go to get more information. Thus we need to provide some sort of home base that centralizes our messages and provides them with a destination where they can learn more about us, buy our widgets, join our project, etc.

Ideally this is a destination worth visiting, a place that gives them useful informative content—not just a sales pitch.

They found you on Facebook, but where are you sending them next?

Pittsfield Charter Township 2010 Master Plan

Your home base could come in a variety of forms. For some it's a standard Web site, for others—like Social Media Chat (#smchat) and the Cleveland Social Media Club—it's a Ning Network.

As I discussed in Goal-driven social media strategies & tactics: how are you interacting with your target audience?, my home base is this blog. My blog is only one section of my overall site, but it's the section I link to most often when Tweeting, answering questions on LinkedIn, etc., because it's the place where I can send people to get specific answers. Once visitors arrive here, they can then easily explore other portions of the site.

Whether a blog is right for you depends on your particular goal and the nature of your audience, yet blogs, by their nature, offer certain features that work very well with other social media tools. Today I'll explore some of those features by walking through a potential use scenario.

Blogging for Government Planning

Social Media Outreach Presentation Slides

This past friday I had the opportunity to meet with government (and other) planners when George Nemeth and I presented Social Media Outreach: Communicating in the Online World to Enhance Planning in the Real World at the APA Cleveland Annual Planning and Zoning Workshop.

Currently planners get a lot of their feedback from community meetings or e-mail. It's sometimes difficult to get community members to come out to an event to discuss the various options for building a new bridge, developing a new park, moving a shipping port, etc. In order to increase community involvement, planners are exploring new ways to share their plans and gather feedback.

As I was researching the ways that planners currently communicate, it occurred to me that blogs would work well for this purpose. They offer an easy way to post news, share documents and gather feedback through online comments.

In speaking with the group I learned that while most planning departments have Web sites, very few are using blogs and social media. This is also true of the general population, but in the past year we've seen Facebook and Twitter become more mainstream. If a planning department starts now, they can get their social media plans in place in order to be ready as more and more of their community members begin to use the tools.

A social media plan for the fictional town of Ohtopia, Ohio

Let's pretend that we're the Planning and Zoning Department for Ohtopia. Our town, somewhere in northeast Ohio, has seen growth as people have been moving out from the city and into our community. As such we're working on a new town plan to enhance the town center, create new public spaces and reduce traffic congestion.

Our goal is to increase community participation in our planning process and gather feedback from as many community members as possible. To accomplish this we've decided to add a blog to our Web site then share news (and drive traffic to the blog) through various social media channels. Here's how that might work.

Ohtopia Blog

We can start the process by reviewing our goals, and assessing the needs of our target audience, to develop an overall content plan and structure for the blog. We can then establish an editorial policy to guide our writers and assign a person (or team) to write and publish the content, respond to reader feedback, and monitor social media mentions of our department and plans.

Using an opensource (free) blogging platform such as Movable Type or WordPress we can install a blog in a subdirectory of our main site, design it to match the look and feel of our main Web site, customize our menus and navigation based on our blog plan, and install Google Analytics to measure results.

Advantages of using blogging software for this project

• Team members can add content without knowing HTML, so the site can be updated in a timely manner.
• Entries are archived by date, so visitors can determine what information is most current and review how the process evolved over time. Such archives also form a historical record which may be useful for legal and other reasons.
• Events can be added to a calendar listing, so they stand out from other posts. Event postings can also link to Facebook event pages, E-vite, or other event sites one may use for attendee registration.
• Documents, forms and posts can be organized by categories and topics to make it easier for users to navigate and browse.
• WordPress and other blogging programs provide on-site search mechanisms to make it easier for visitors to seach for specific topics.
• Blogs produce RSS feeds which can be used to automatically post headlines of recent posts to other parts of the Ohtopia site.
• Community members and local media can subscribe to the blog's RSS feed via e-mail, or by using a feed reader such as Google Reader, so they are kept up-to-date with the latest news.
• Entries can be used to embed photographs, .pdf documents, videos and other materials that augment the text.
• Visitors can leave comments on pages so that their feedback can be documented, archived and viewed by others.
• Readers can share posts of interest to Delicious, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter or other social media services to help spread the news. (Plug-ins such as addtoany provide buttons that make it easy for visitors to share our pages.)
• The site team can share selected posts to other social media services to reach more of their community members.
• Team members can create a commenting policy, then edit/moderate comments as appropriate for foul language or other inappropriate behavior.
• Team members can respond to comments and use them to create an online dialog.
• Blogs enhance search engine optimization (SEO) by letting us easily produce fresh content in an SEO friendly format. By publishing the blog on our own domain we can take advantage of this to gain more traffic for our overall site.

Editorial Policy

Our blog could be used to:

• Announce town planning meetings/forums open to the public.
• Publish summaries of these events including meeting minutes.
• Upload maps, and planning documents.
• Post plan recommendations with requests for community feedback via comments.
• Alert the public to changes in planning and zoning regulations.
• Distribute building, zoning and other forms used by the public.
• Publish social media press releases complete with photos, video's planning documents and other information that will give media more details about our projects.

By using a blog we'll be able to publish our information in a more timely fashion and provide a forum through which our community members can respond to our plans and converse with us about our projects. Their comments and questions will also let us know what other information we should be publishing on the site.

Expanding our reach through social media.

Our blog will serve as our communications hub, but until we tell people about it, they won't know it's there. Through a combination of traditional and social media marketing strategies we can spread the word and reach out to our community.

The main audience for our blog includes local residents, residents of neighboring communities and local media. Secondary audiences include planners from other locales and others, interested in planning, who may learn from our process. To determine what social media tools to use we'll want to research the more popular social media services, and any niche services (such as a regionally based Ning Network), to see which ones our audience uses most regularly.

If our research shows us that our audience is primarily using Facebook and Twitter, then we can focus on those two services.

Facebook

• Create a Facebook fan page.
• Position ourselves as a resource for news of local interest by posting blog entries AND other news of interest to our community—the core focus can be planning but we may gain more readers by also linking to news items related to economic development, sustainability, public art, etc.
• Share photos of completed and in-process projects.
• Make Facebook events for our public meetings.
• Ask community members for feedback.
• Link to main blog.
• Join/fan other Facebook groups and pages that already appeal to our target audience, start conversing with them there (about topics related to those pages, not just about us) to build connections so we may invite them to fan our page.

Twitter

Cayuga County Planning Department on Twitter

• Create a complete profile with photo (or city logo), brief description of the department and a link to the blog. Also consider creating a special welcome page on the blog that is geared specifically to Twitter users and link to that rather than the main blog page.
• Position ourselves as a resource for news of local interest by Tweeting blog posts AND other news of interest to our community, as we do on Facebook. As there may be an overlap between these audiences, try to avoid duplicating links shared via Facebook.
• Use Twellow.com and related sites to find local Twitter users in our target audience.
• After having made 10-20 Tweets, begin following members of our target audience including individuals and local media. Do this in small increments (25 or so) to build the list gradually. If you follow 500 at once and only have 5 followers, users may not follow back.
• Follow back those who both follow us and who seem to have an interest in what we do. (But don't follow back spammers, and those who may be following just to build numbers.)
• Visit the stream daily to respond to followers, reTweet links/posts of interest to our followers, etc.

Blogging and related social media tools work well together.

In our pretend scenario, our blog provides the bulk of our content, but we also use Facebook and Twitter to share additional news and to drive traffic to the blog. This is a fairly simple scenario—a fully developed social media plan might include other elements and details—but it does give us an example of how a planning and zoning department might use a blog as the backbone of their social media plan.

If your organization has different goals, or a different target audience, you may find that something other than a blog is more appropriate for your needs. Blogs are not a one-size-fits-all solution. But, in many cases, a carefully planned blog can provide a good foundation for your social media efforts.

To further explore the pro's and con's of using a blog as the core component of a social media strategy, I'll be a moderating a discussion of the topic on #smchat, a weekly real-time Twitter chat focused on social media. The chat will begin this Wednesday, November 18, 2009, at 1:00 p.m. e.s.t. Please feel free to join the discussion there, or share your thoughts below.

Blogging and Social Media Resources

• Copy Blogger: Copywriting Tips for Online Marketing Success
• Mashable: The Social Media Guide
• The 7 Harsh Realities of Social Media Marketing
• Bookmarks saved for the Planning and Zoning Presentation

Recommended Reading for Bloggers

Jeff Hershberger, who writes the blog, My Future Past, recently lent me Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters by Scott Rosenberg. I'm just about halfway through it now. If you want to learn more about the history and power of blogging, I highly recommend it.

heidicool.com is also on Facebook

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As some of you know, I regularly participate in a variety of real-time chats on Twitter, including #smchat, a weekly discussion of best practices in social media. On Wednesday September 30th at 1:00 p.m. e.d.t. I'll be moderating #smchat as we discuss what social media tactics people have implemented, how they have measured the results and how they have performed.

To prepare participants for the event I thought it might be helpful to give some examples.

Many people are jumping on the social media bandwagon these days just because they feel they should. One hear's people say "Everyone's on Twitter and Facebook, we need to start Tweeting and put up a Facebook page." Needless to say this isn't usually the best approach. Before picking tools and tactics one must assess needs, develop measurable goals and identify a target audience. Once that is done, then one can start developing strategies and tactics to connect with that audience (in their space, on their terms) in a way that will serve one's goals most effectively.

Your goals are set, what's your social media strategy?

To get things started, I'll give you an example of some of the things I've been doing. One of my goals is to get you (or someone you know) to hire me to consult on social media, offer guidance on search engine optimization or design and build a Web site or custom WordPress blog. My audience includes small to medium sized businesses, academic departments at universities, individuals and others who may need such services. My strategy is to position myself as a reliable and knowledgeable resource for information on Internet marketing and related topics.

Tactics to implement this social media strategy include:

• Sharing links to worthwhile articles and videos via Google Reader Share, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, and so forth—and conversing with people in those spaces.
• Blogging in-depth articles on Web related topics here on the Web Development Blog.
• Commenting on other blogs.
• Networking with special interest groups on LinkedIn, Ning and the real world.
• Answering questions on LinkedIn. (You can read more about my LinkedIn Q&A strategy in Maisha Walker's Inc. blog, The Internet Strategist in the article, Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (final/part 3). Read the complete series to learn about the myriad ways you can use LinkedIn for business.)

This blog serves as the foundation for all of these strategies. It provides a destination for traffic from the social media services and offers content for me to share via those services. Since it is built as a part of my overall site, it also gives visitors quick and easy access to other information such as the services I offer, my portfolio and my contact form—and I'm working on some site changes that will make that even easier.

Time is a major cost factor in social media

Measuring marketing results is fairly straightforward. If I want to know which activities are driving the best traffic to my Web site I can look at Google Analytics to see who is visiting from where, how long they stay on site, how many pages they view, etc. This tells me that LinkedIn brings in more new traffic while Facebook brings in the most repeat traffic. Visitors from LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter all also read more pages and spend more time on site than visitors from StumbleUpon.

In terms of leads and sales I can count the requests for proposals that come in via LinkedIn messages, Facebook mail and my contact form. Measuring the ROI comes from comparing my time investment to the results. In direct mail one measures the cost per sale in terms of dollars spent. When implementing my own social media strategies I must measure the cost per sale first in hours worked, then use that to calculate costs.

Social Media goals come in many flavors—not just marketing

Networking with peers, monitoring your products and brand, enhancing customer service, collaborating with colleagues, sharing policies and procedures, listening for ideas, sharing knowledge, and other functions are also popular and practical uses for social media. Here are a few more examples of strategies and tactics one might use for a few of these goals.

Listening for ideas via social media

During last week's meeting of the Cleveland Social Media Club we listened to a panel discussion in which members of the local media discussed how they use social media. Panelists included:

• Kaye Spector - Health and Medical Reporter, The Plain Dealer
• Howard Fencl - Assistant News Director, WKYC-TV
• Joseph Sheppa - Interactive Content Manager, WVIZ/PBS & 90.3 WCPN - ideastream®
• Scott Suttell - Managing Editor, Crain's Cleveland Business
• Denise Polverine - Editor in Chief, Cleveland.com

As one would expect, these media outlets are all using Facebook and Twitter to publish headlines and links to stories or videos on their Web sites. But they're also listening for information. News travels so quickly via social media that it's not unusual for them to first hear something on Facebook that they can later confirm through other channels. They also listen to their followers to gauge interest levels in certain topics and events. If their Twitter followers are all talking about X and not about Y, then the newspapers, magazines and T.V. stations know that their readers and viewers have an interest in hearing more about X.

Others—including bloggers as well as those in mainstream media—use social media to listen for ideas. When I answer questions on LinkedIn, I can see if certain types of questions in my field are trending. This can give me ideas for blog posts I should write. I also read blogs and listen to podcasts to keep up with information and get new ideas.

For instance yesterday, while listening to Diggnation, I discovered that Adam Savage, co-host of Mythbusters reads a wide array of blogs and visits Digg.com daily to get story ideas for the T.V. show. He's using the same technique for mainstream media that I use for my humble blog. By simply following my own listening routine, I discovered what he was doing so that I could use him as another example in this post.

Measuring the results of listening is somewhat murky. If you need to justify this use of time one could create a spreadsheet that would tally how many ideas you find each day then develop a ratio comparing "finds" and usefulness to "time-spent." But if you are also reading and listening to increase knowledge it may be harder to quantify. How does one measure the value of such activities? I know that everything I learn in this field makes me better at what I do, but I've not come up with a calculation to demonstrate how much more effective I may be now than I was 5 years ago when I knew less. What I do know is that I will better serve my readers and clients if I keep striving to learn more.

Social media strategies in local politics

Ari Herzog and Jill Miller Zimon are both long-time bloggers, who I've come to know through their blogging activities. Jill is a writer and political analyst who blogs at Write Likes She Talks. Ari is an online media strategist and community manager for business and government who blogs at AriWriter. Each of them is running for City Council in their respective home towns and each is using social media in their campaigns.

One could argue that political campaigning is similar to mainstream marketing, but I think it also bears a particular connection to brand management. When running for office, candidates need to increase name recognition, build a positive reputation, let voters know about their goals and demonstrate how they would serve their communities if elected.

As writers, Ari and Jill have an advantage in this sphere. Each has produced a wealth of online material that is part of the online historical record. If you read their blogs, you will see that they are both candid and direct. While I eschew the word "transparency" they've both exhibited the real meaning of this in their writing. Neither hides behind jargon or political doubletalk, they speak their minds so that you can tell exactly what their position is.

Their similarities extend to social media. As you can see from the links below, each of them is using an array of social media services, and neither is new to this medium. While their strategies may have some subtle differences, both are using social media to spread their message and to let voters know that they are listening.

Jill Miller Zimon - campaigning for Pepper Pike, OH, City Council

• Friends of Jill Miller Zimon for Pepper Pike Council - Facebook Group
• Friends of Jill Miller Zimon for Pepper Pike Council - Facebook Page
• Jill Miller Zimon for Pepper Pike Council (Main Web site)
• Friends of Jill Miller Zimon Flickr Photos
• Jill Miller Zimon on LinkedIn
• Zimon for Council on Twitter
• Jill Miller Zimon You Tube Videos

Ari Herzog - campaigning for Newburyport, MA, City Council

• Ari Herzog for Newburyport City Council - Facebook Page
• Ari Herzog (Main Web site)
• Ari Herzog for Newburyport City Council Campaign Blog
• Ari Herzog on LinkedIn
• Ari 4 Newburyport on Twitter

Measuring the success of their campaigns will be relatively easy. They'll either win or lose. But measuring the impact of social media on the campaigns may be trickier. Will having more Facebook fans make a difference? Does it help to drive Twitter traffic to your site? How does one measure voter engagement? Blog comments? Online donations? Volunteers? How would you measure the results?

What strategies are you using for social media?

Frank Eliason has had great success using http://twitter.com/comcastcares to provide proactive customer service to Comcast customers. The Cleveland Social Media Club used it's Ning Network in conjunction with Google docs to collaborate on our Welcome to Social Media eBook. Companies and universities alike subscribe to Twitter searches to monitor brand and product mentions. What other ways would you use social media tools to serve your specific goals? How do you know if your strategies are working? Do you have measurement techniques in place to gauge success?

Please feel free to share your ideas and experiences in the comments below and/or during next Wednesday's live #smchat. If you've not previously participated in a Twitter chat, you can learn more in my article, Twitter chats: if you can’t meet in real space, meet in real time. I look forward to reading your ideas and suggestions.

Social Media Measurement & Chat Resources

• #smchat Schedule
• #smchat Network on Ning (for ongoing discussion)
• Tweeting With Your Twitter Community: How To Participate In A Twitter Chat
• Introduction to Measuring Social Media for PR/Marketing
• Measuring Social Media ROI: Does size matter?

heidicool.com is also on Facebook

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United Airlines received a ton of bad publicity after their baggage handlers broke Dave Carroll's guitar. According to Carroll, United did later offer to pay for the repair. He asked them to make a charitable donation instead, which they did.

But imagine the other possible responses they could have made. What if they made a video explaining how they are going to correct the problem to prevent future mishaps? Or a video about the charitable cause that will benefit from their donation?

If they did this the bloggers and media outlets who post Carroll's United Breaks Guitars video could also post United's response and the world would see that they took the problem seriously—all for much less than the cost of a television ad.

Today I had lunch with John Heaney, a local Cleveland entrepreneur, marketer and social media advocate who also blogs about marketing at Orange Envelopes. One of the topics we discussed was the hesitancy some organizations have about implementing social media strategies.

Issues about controlling the message, intellectual property, firewalls, time commitment, return on investment (ROI), measuring results and goal setting are all common concerns, but in particular John raised a point that I've been hearing a lot about lately: negativity.

Specifically we've both heard from individuals and companies who worry that if you're participating in social media, you run the risk that people will say something bad about you. This is true, but the risk is there whether you are online or not. No matter how ethical or clever you may be, someone, somewhere, will be ready to disagree. There's no getting around that. None of us is capable of pleasing everyone all the time. But if we're participating ourselves, we can:

Listen:

People will talk about you or your organization whether or not you can hear them. Ignoring them won't keep the criticism at bay, so you might as well pay attention. If you set up Google alerts on your name or brand, subscribe to Yahoo and Google news search feeds, Twitter searches, etc. you can find out what they're saying about you—be it good or bad—immediately. If we know what others are saying about us on their blogs, our blogs, Twitter, Facebook, online media, discussion forums and elsewhere, we have the opportunity to take advantage of that knowledge and use it productively.

Learn:

Criticism comes in many forms. Some people (trolls) like to leave rude blog comments or make nasty remarks about your brand just because they're angry or they like to stir up a bit of controversy. But other comments can be more constructive. If someone complains about your customer service or your product, this points out a potential problem. You can now determine if this is something you need to fix or if it was just a one-time issue. Someone's product problem could also give you a great idea for a new product or a new version of an existing one. If someone's critique can lead you to build a better mousetrap, then it's worth a listen.

Evaluate:

What was the context of the criticism? Does it have a bearing on your reputation? Your customer service? Your product design? Should this information be passed onto others in your organization, or can it be safely ignored?

Rebecca Kelley, Director of Social Media for 10e20, recently wrote a critical blog post about a panel discussion she attended, Black Hat vs. White Hat Social Media and the Battle for Common Sense. In the original post she had made some negative remarks about Beth Harte who is the Community Manager at MarketingProfs and very well regarded for her knowledge of social media marketing. (I read her blog, The Harte of Marketing and follow Beth Harte on Twitter.) Beth evaluated the situation and chose not to respond. As it happened, other people reacted for her. Readers responded in ardent support of Beth. Rebecca read their comments. She then toned down her blog entry, documented the change and contacted Beth directly to arrange to discuss the panel more thoroughly. Beth and Rebecca each listened and evaluated the situation so that the matter could be peacefully resolved.

You don't need to act on every mention that is made of you, but if you listen regularly you can develop a system of triage in which you determine which mentions deserve which reactions. If you do this regularly and establish a policy, you'll be prepared for the big nasty—that seemingly harmless negative reaction that will get you bad international press if you don't respond in the right manner.

Act:

Once you've evaluated a comment—and deemed it worthy of a reaction—it's time to use that knowledge productively. Can the comment help you improve your widget design? Send it to your product development team. Has it shown a weakness in your customer service department? How can you fix it? Frank Eliason of Comcast became the international poster boy—for using social media to enhance customer service—when he start solving people's problems on his Twitter account, Comcastcares.

Respond:

Let the person who made the comment know what you intend to do. As I recently wrote in Here’s how one web designer deals with negative comments, I like to take a deep breath and step back a bit before responding. If during your evaluation you decide that a response isn't necessary, then you can get back to other matters. But if a response is warranted, then one wants to react clearly and tactfully. Did the person point out a problem that you are going to solve? Explain how you will solve it. Was the comment the result of a misunderstanding? See what you can do to clarify the confusion—while allowing the commenter to save face. If you take the diplomatic route then you both have a better chance of coming out with your reputation in tact. If you respond in anger you'll just make the problem worse.

If you can't solve the problem, do your best to explain why in a manner that will let the commenter know you really did your best. Share the situation with higher-ups in your organization, find out if there is a way to turn the problem into an opportunity, and keep listening.

Establish a baseline reputation via social media NOW.

I've been telling people for years that they need to establish their online presence before someone else does it for them. It behooves us all to take control of our own message. If I'm a small business without a Web site or other online presence, then the only things people will find when Googling my business will be reviews from others, media mentions, social media comments and other opinions written from an external perspective. If I build a site (or hire Heidi to build it for me), start a blog, create a Facebook page, share tips on Twitter, etc. then I can share my expertise and let people know what my business stands for.

What John cleverly pointed out, during our lunch, was that this social media presence also serves to establish your baseline reputation for providing good customer service, offering educational content or whatever else you might be communicating through social media. If you've been doing this regularly, then next year, when customer X blogs about your lousy information resources, he won't have as much clout. Other readers will see that most customers love your blog, enjoy using your customer discussion forum, follow your Tweets, etc. Customer X isn't speaking for the masses, but is instead in the minority.

And, since you are already listening, you will now be ready to respond to customer X in a timely and appropriate manner. If all goes well X can join the majority of your other happy customers. This is a far better outcome than you'll have if X writes a song—extolling your failures—that just happens to go viral on YouTube.

Related Social Media Resources

• A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media
• Biggest Mistakes Made by Social Media Gurus
• Chicago Domino’s Gets Social Media Right!
• My biggest social media mistakes by Mack Collier
• Top 10 Twitter marketing blunders in photos
• United Airlines Online Public Response to Dave Carroll YouTube Video: 9 Tweets

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July meeting of the Cleveland Webbloggers

Social media is a great way to make face-to-face connections. I started going to our Cleveland Webbloggers meet-up group last summer. These real-life meetings have given me a chance to get to know the personalities behind the usernames. When we gather together, be it in a small group like last week or a larger assembly of 20 or more, we'll talk about anything from writing and blogging platforms to Cleveland politics and philosophy. The mood of the group sets the topic and the tone. But at it's core, the Cleveland Webbloggers group gives us a chance to share ideas and best practices with our peers, whether they blog professionally or just for fun.

Of course, as you know, one can only cover so much material in one monthly meeting. And not all of our peers are local. To reach others in our topical niche, particularly those who may come from other industries or backgrounds, we reach out through the Web. Each week via social media services such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, StumbleUpon, blogs, etc., I connect with people all over the world, from Syracuse to Singapore.

Most of this is done via time shifting. If I'm still up and Tweeting, when my friend Wayne gets to work in England, it means I've stayed up well past my bedtime. While that is not unusual, it is more often the case that Wayne will share a link via Twitter or save a bookmark on Delicious while I'm off dreaming about vampire sea turtles discovering underwater time portals—or whatever other nonsense floats through my mind. After I wake up I'll see what he and the other Europeans have shared so that I can respond, share my own links, and so forth. Generally speaking this works quite well.

Time-shifting is incredibly useful, but sometimes it's just more efficient to meet in real-time. Skype calls and chat rooms are quite handy when you know the participants in advance. But for larger topical meetings—open to a wide audience—real-time chats via Twitter are a popular alternative.

Last night I spent 2 hours chatting with 100+ fellow bloggers on my couch.

100 people would be a tight fit even on a giant couch like this.

As you may have guessed, my couch doesn't have enough room to accommodate 100 people. But it does have plenty of room for me and my laptop—through which I can login to Twitter and start chatting with bloggers, social media advocates or any other group that meets regularly online.

What are real-time Twitter chats and how do they work?

Real-time Twitter chats are typically held on a weekly basis, though scheduling may vary. Each topic-based chat picks a recurring day and time to meet, then assigns a unique hashtag for users to add to their Tweets. The hashtags mark the Tweets as belonging to the chat so that users can easily follow the discussion through a variety of online tools.

At the start of a chat, a moderator/host will typically ask people to introduce themselves, then ask questions or suggest specific topics for discussion. Some chats may follow a rigid format such as devoting 15 minutes to each question, while other chats evolve more organically. I participate regularly in two chats:

• #blogchat, hosted by @MackCollier is a forum for people to discuss issues related to blogging, including writing, marketing, blog platforms, RSS feeds, design, etc. Meetings are held Sunday nights at 9:00 p.m. U.S. eastern time.
• #smchat, hosted by @SourcePOV (Chris Jones) "explores Social Media best practices, and new ways to drive value in this space, with thought to collaborative innovation and viable knowledge networks." Meetings are held Wednesdays at 1:00 p.m. U.S. eastern time.

Other popular chats include #journchat ( journalists, bloggers and public relations—one of the oldest and most popular chats), #litchat (for booklovers) and #eventprofs (for event planning professionals). Meryl K. Evans assembled a very useful list of Twitter chats on her blog. New chats are constantly being added, so the list is now maintained as an interactive spreadsheet. Whether you are interested in agriculture, design, or food, there's probably a chat available to suit your needs. If not, check the schedule, choose a time, pick a hashtag and start one yourself!

Tools for following Twitter hashtags

If you're following more than a dozen people on Twitter, you've probably noticed that it gets a bit noisy. Trying to follow a hashtag in the middle of your normal Twitter stream can be even more difficult. Thankfully there are a variety of Twitter services and tools that can help. Here are a few of the more popular ones.

Tweetchat

Twitter Search

If you search on a particular hashtag, such as #smchat, Twitter search will pull up a list of all the most recent Tweets including that hashtag. If you see a Tweet to which you would like to respond, you can just click the reply button, write your message and type #smchat at the end of your Tweet. Then return to the search page to continue reading.

TweetChat

Sign into Tweetchat using your existing Twitter ID and password. Then type in the hashtag you would like to follow, such as #blogchat, and TweetChat will present you with a page listing all of the current #blogchat Tweets. Tweetchat features a box where you can type your Tweets and also includes buttons that make it easy to reply or retweet messages.

Tweetgrid

Tweetgrid works similarly to Tweetchat and is the service I use most often. Simply search on the hashtag you wish to follow and you will be brought to a page listing the recent Tweets with a feature enabling you to reply, reTweet, etc. If you select the "party" option instead of the "search" option you can also designate your username and the username(s) of the chat's host. This will bring up a page showing separate columns for the main stream, your own Tweets, and those of the moderator. This can make things a bit easier to follow.

What the hashtag?!

This user-editable hashtag encyclopedia let's users follow a chat as they would in other tools, but also let's moderators add descriptive information about the hashtag to the page. Users may also create transcripts of chat sessions based on date-ranges. These can be printed to .pdf files to be saved for archival purposes. As an example you can read the .pdf transcript from this week's #blogchat.

Monitter

Monitter is a tool to let you monitor keywords used on Twitter in real-time. When you enter the site you are presented with 3 columns listing various searches. Replace the search in any column with a hashtag, @username or plain word to follow it's mentions. You can respond to conversations by clicking a reply or retweet button appearing under each Tweet.

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is an Adobe Air application that you can use instead of the Twitter Web page for all of your Twitter activities. I use it because I can create columns multiple columns on topics such as Cleveland, marketing and higher education to which I can assign the users I follow most frequently. Tweetdeck also lets you filter columns by keywords, follow Facebook status updates and create search columns. The latter is another popular way to follow a hashtag or chat.

While these tools are helpful for following Twitter chats, they're also handy for following hashtags for other reasons. People use hashtags for topical searches such as tracking #recipes people post on Twitter, following Tweets related to conferences/events and to keep track of trending topics such as the Iran Election or Spymaster.

Twitter real-time chats offer access to new insights and opinions

As I hinted in the beginning, real-time chats give us the opportunity to connect with people we might never have the chance to meet locally. They give us access to people from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. I find this useful because it gives me insights into different perspectives.

For instance, recently on #smchat a lot of discussion has been focused on the topics of intellectual property and knowledge management. This is a concern for many companies exploring social media. They want to share information with customers that will help sell products and they want to share knowledge with other business and government collaborators as part of product development. But they also need to safeguard trade secrets and other confidential information. So the question for us is, how do they manage both? Should companies restrict access to technologies that make sharing easier? Should they open up technologies but educate users about policies regarding what should and shouldn't be shared? If we as social media advocates come up with solutions, how do we educate the corporate leaders who would implement such policies? How does the model change based on the industry in question or the communications goal? These are hard questions, so naturally we could spend months or years trying to sort this all out.

What's intriguing about this discussion is the variety of minds adding input. When I worked for a university I pondered communications concerns with colleagues in my department, the attorneys' office, ITS or with clients in other campus departments. I might also ponder such ideas with others in higher education or Web development. But I rarely had the chance to hold such discussions with attorneys, engineers, marketers, accountants, etc., working in industries ranging from consultants and government contractors to advertising agencies, restaurant managers and manufacturers—all at the same time.

I find this useful because people in industry X may be facing challenges that those of us in industry Y never encounter. By bringing everyone together we have a unique opportunity to learn how these questions impact others and we can take away knowledge that we can put to use in our own fields. This strikes me a an incredibly valuable way to collaborate.

Twitter chats are a great way to find cool Tweeps

Of course, useful insights tend to be shared by smart minds. The people who provide the ideas are people worth following. I often follow (and am followed back by) dozens of new contacts after a good chat session. While many Twitter users are overly concerned with gaining a large quantity of followers, my focus is on quality. It's hard enough to follow 1,000+ people, so if I'm going to do it they better have something useful to say. The people I meet during Twitter chats do.

This sounds great, but seriously, how could you possibly have a worthwhile discussion in 140 character Tweets?

Before I started attending chats I wondered the same thing. It's challenging to make a point in 140 characters, especially when those characters must also include the hashtag. But in a way it's easier in real-time. If you make point A, and I respond with point B, you'll see it right away. Then you can respond back and things start flowing like a normal conversation. You may have to break up an idea into a few separate Tweets, but somehow it all comes together.

Conversations begun during Twitter chat can also continue later in other venues. For instance #smchat has a sister site on Ning through which users can post discussions, questions, videos and other documents. Mack Collier, posts a recap of the #blogchat on his blog to which users can add additional comments. With all of the social media tools available, there's always some way to continue the conversation.

If there's a Twitter chat related to your field of interest, I highly recommend giving it a try.

Twitter chat and hashtag resources

• Fast & Furious - Twitter Chat (reactions from a guest chat host)
• #hashtags directory
• List of Twitter Chats
• Tweet Your Message to a Larger Audience with Hashtags
• Tweeting With Your Twitter Community: How To Participate In A Twitter Chat

I wasn't there, but back in September (on my birthday of all days) members of the Cleveland Social Media Club gathered together to discuss ways to educate people on the use of social media. At that time they proposed producing an e-book on the topic "Advice that you would give someone on how to get started with social media." Later that day, Nader Ali-Hassan posted a message on the Cleveland SMC forum asking people to submit articles on the subject.

Always willing to share my two cents, I wrote an article for submission. As time went by others did the same, we formed an eBook committee, and by February we had almost 20 chapters. Soon after I joined the editorial team to help edit the chapters and get the book ready for completion. As we worked on the project, the team decided that we needed to produce something more than the usual downloadable .pdf file for the book. We also wanted a Web site where we could publish an HTML version of the book and provide a place to share other educational resources related to social media.

Cover art and layout of the .pdf version
of Welcome to Social Media was done
by Tony Ramos

Tasked with the creation of the Web site, I built Welcome to Social Media, which launches officially tonight at the Cleveland Social Media Club meeting (members of the public are welcome to attend). This new site features an online version of the Welcome to Social Media eBook, a social media blog and related resources. Over time we'll add additional materials to help educate the world about social media and related topics. If you have ideas on things we might include, please submit them via our contact form or here in my blog comments.

Welcome to Social Media excerpt: Setting Goals to Plan Your Social Media Strategy

As many of you know, I have a tendency to prattle on about goal setting in regards to Web development. The same as true for social media, and thus that was the theme of my chapter. Here is an excerpt:

If you don't control your online presence, someone else will.

When embarking on any new project or adventure, it helps to set some goals. What do you want to get out of the project? When it comes to social media I think we all share a primary goal, that of controlling our online presence.

Many people are hesitant to jump into the world of social media. Some are shy while others simply don't know what they'll do once they join the fray.

The advice I give to each is to consider what may happen if they don't get involved. In a day when employers Google job applicants and the charming lass you met at that party last week is searching the Web to make sure you're not a psychopath, you want to be in control of what they'll find.

The fact that you aren't posting about yourself doesn't mean others aren't. Perhaps your name and your clever ideas about composting were posted in the meeting minutes of your neighborhood gardening club. Perhaps your last promotion was mentioned in the online version of your local paper. Then again what if the first thing that comes up in a Google search is your wedding announcement…from five years ago…to the fellow you divorced when you discovered he was pawning your jewelry to invest in a pyramid scheme? Is that what you want to the world to see? Probably not. Read the article in its entirety on the Welcome to Social Media site.

A Cleveland Social Media Club team effort

Kudos to Jim England, Jeff Hershberger, George Nemeth, Stephanie Jansky, Tony Ramos and the many other authors and Cleveland Social Media club members who worked together on this project. On behalf of them all, I hope you will find Welcome to Social Media to be a useful resource for your social media explorations.

Welcome to Social Media Links

• Welcome to Social Media
• Welcome to Social Media, Volume 1, eBook (HTML)
• Welcome to Social Media, Volume 1, eBook (.pdf)
• Cleveland Social Media Club

Coming soon

Flash and usability—the controversy continues, WordPress as a CMS, and more…

Everyone these days has been offering advice on how to use Twitter. Sometimes that advice is judgmental. But Twitter is a tool than can be wielded in many different ways. There's no one size fits all solution that works for everyone. Last year most of the Twitter advice I saw was focused on practicalities. Instructions were shared on how to use #hashtags to indicate a topic, using RT to ReTweet, when to DM (direct message), where to find people worth following, etc. There was also plenty of advice on Twitter etiquette, but now that seems to have gone past the Emily Post phase.

Now there seems to be more of an inclination to suggest that Twittering "this way" instead of "that way" is the preferred way to behave in the Twitter social sphere. While there are many rules that polite Tweeters should follow, such as not being insulting, others are more subjective and depend on each user's situation. Who we follow and what we Tweet are two subjects that seem to get people worked up. Today I'd like to focus on the "who to follow" debate and whether or not this is an issue of etiquette.

First a few thoughts on manners

Manners allow us to put others at ease. These "polite" rules are designed to smooth interactions between individuals. They provide us with a framework so that we can behave in a manner that makes people comfortable and doesn't cause embarrassment or discord.

If we follow the rules of manner—within our particularly society—then we can all play nicely in the same sandbox without squabbling over each other's toys or making someone cry. In most circumstances, we can follow the same general rules on Twitter that we would in regular society. We just need to think of parallels found in the outside world and keep in mind that Twitter is global.

The international nature of Twitter means we should be considerate of differing social mores. For example, those of us used to an American confrontational style should keep in mind that this style may be discomfiting to our friends in Asia and the Middle East—where the practice of allowing others to "save face" is more common. Those of us tweeting in English should also consider the differences in American and British variants of the language. Avoiding words that have different meanings across the pond can will help us communicate more clearly and in a manner that won't offend.

Must we follow back?

Assuming we've all agreed to play nicely in the Twitter sandbox, what are the rules when it comes to following? I've had people tell me, "I'm not going to follow X. He doesn't follow back his followers, he just wants to build numbers so I'm not going to follow him." Personally if X provides useful information I don't care if he follows me back or not. If X posts self-indulgent marketing garbage, that's a different story, but I don't think we can judge a Tweeter's value by their following policy alone.

What do you think? Is a user's following policy a question of etiquette or personal preference? Must we follow back everyone who follows us? Should we automatically rebuff those who don't?

Some say following back one's followers is the correct and polite thing to do. They accuse the twitterati who follow few, but are followed by many, of being anti-social Twitter snobs who don't want to engage the community but just want the attention. But is that a fair accusation? Does it apply to everyone?

What would Emily Post say?

To get a better sense of whether this is an issue of etiquette, I'd like to compare following habits to two real world situations.

1. Do you send holiday cards to everyone who sends one to you? I don't, but I've never made it a practice to send cards. If I did, I'd draw up a list based on my friends and family. I wouldn't include the paint contractors, real estate agents, printers and others who are hoping to do business with me. Nor would I send one to every person with whom I've made an acquaintance. I'd probably have a set budget for cards and a certain allotment of time to spend on them. Thus I'd focus my finite resources on the people I think would be most happy to hear from me during the holidays.

2. Are we expected to attend every event to which we're invited? Must we invite everyone (who invites us) to all of our own events? No. I'm sure most people would like it if we could attend all of their events. But they also understand that our time is limited, we may have conflicting obligations. Similarly they know that we can't invite them to all of our own parties due to costs, space limitations, different interest groups, etc.

There are many reasons we may choose not to accept an invitation, and it is perfectly acceptable to RSVP in the negative without explaining our reasons. Twitter should be no different.

Twitter Snobs: define them by intentional actions rather than follower ratios

Given that I see no moral or societal obligation for users to follow back their followers, that doesn't mean that we don't see bad follower habits on Twitter. But instead of judging a Tweeter as a snob based on his/her follower/followee ratio, what if we thought instead about intentions.

Good Twitter Intentions

Many popular Tweeters, be they actors or tech celebrities follow few but are followed by many. While some have campaigned on podcasts and T. V. to get more followers, many others have not. These people are followed by many simply because many people like the content they produce.

Such Tweeters follow few others for their own reasons. Often they just want to manage their lists so they can focus on the people who produce the content that is of most interest to them. This could mean that they are only following friends, family, peers in their field or anyone else that seems appropriate.

I have no problem with this. The primary value I get from Twitter is the information shared by my fellow Tweeters. Many of these people feel the same way. If we somehow forced these folks to follow us all back in return, then they'd be stuck sifting through over-crowded Twitter streams wasting time trying to find the information they really want. I see no reason to make their lives more difficult just to appease my ego.

Bad Twitter Intentions

Yes there are Twitter snobs. Some people are online to gain followers rather than to gain information. We see these people following hundreds at a time—with a motive of gaining followers—then quickly unfollowing them all to boost their ratio and seem cool. I would consider this to be bad behavior because they initiated the action—to make people follow them—yet had no intention of continuing the relationship or engaging in conversation.

Such people often provide other clues that can help distinguish them as snobs or spammers. They may have an annoyingly polished profile picture, tweet about their follower count repeatedly, identify themselves as some sort of expert (though you are in their field and have never heard of them) and tweet about themselves or their projects without engaging in conversations or retweeting links from regular people.

Collectively their Twitter usage habits show that their goals are not to engage with the community but instead to promote their product, service or ego.

Let's give the popular tweeps a break.

There's nothing wrong with wanting more followers. For those of us who have something to market, it's helpful to build our follower lists. My Tweeting patterns are mostly about sharing ideas and conversations, but if Tweeting can bring more readers to my blog, or help me find clients in need of my Web services, then a larger following will help. That said, I still prefer to use a targeted approach. I seek out people who share interesting insights and ideas and may also find value in what I share. Conversation comes first, marketing second.

I'm not one of the "popular tweeps" but I think many of them share a similar attitude. Instead of judging them on their followee/follower ratios, let's judge them on how they play in our Twitter sandbox overall. I'm not saying you have to start following these people if it doesn't suit your strategy. But if you're snubbing Tweeters because you think they have snubbed you, you may be missing out on people who really aren't as evil or rude as you think.

Heidi's following policy

I follow back most of the people who follow me, but not all. I get 5-25 requests a day, so I visit each, skim their profile and Tweets, then follow back if they don't seem to be spam, aren't on some popularity quest and share a sufficient variety of Tweets to seem interesting. That said, as my numbers build I am becoming a bit more finicky. I'm beginning to look more closely and not follow people whose Tweets are so narrow in focus or so out of my topic range that we're not likely to converse.

More on Twitter following attitudes

• Ari Herzog: Can You Help My Twitter Growing Pains?*
• Ari Herzog: Why My Twitter Train is Stopping*
• Inside the Minds of Twitter Users
• To Follow or Not to Follow; that is the Question
• Twitter Follow Rules - Who To Follow

* My friend Ari recently experimented with different Twitter following strategies. He'd been following few, then tried following all. That became overwhelming so he went back to following fewer than he had originally. These articles walk us through the process and the issues he considered in making his decision.

Genesis: Follow You Follow Me

Somehow I don't think Twitter was what Phil Collins had in mind.