kenekaplan Community, Jeremiah Owyang, Marketing, Social Media, Web 2.0

Riffin’ on Storytelling @ Community Roundtable

Picture 224, originally uploaded by jeremiah_owyang.

This is a photo by Jeremiah Owyang, who invited me to the Online Community Roundtable gathering he hosted at Forrester. Bill Johnson put on this wonderful event with very engaged people who were sharing their wisdom and online audience building experiences. Jeremiah made sure I got up and spoke. Nothing prepared, I started with my favorite topic of storytelling and tried to connect with what everyone in the room was talking about. The audience pulled me in and along we went, having fun playing with the role of storytelling in social media, social networks, online communities…and our personal lives.

A presentation highlight for me was Forrester’s Charlene Li’s “I am social when I…” Use IM, email, social network, bookmark…   More of us are getting more social every day.

Here’s Bill’s even summary and a post with photos and a video by Jeremiah.

This would be a great event for a few pals who are helping grow the Intel’s  Open Port online community for IT pros. This is a creative, open model that could replace regular weekly meetings at work.  Just get three people to share what they’re working on and get the live feedback from a concentrated, open-minded group.  Who would you invite?

Person Bill Johnson
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kenekaplan Books, Marketing, Photos, Social Media

My BookStack February 2008

BookStack_Feb2008, originally uploaded by KenEKaplan.

This is a follow up to my first “BookStack” post, which was inspired by a social media wiseman, Douglas Pollei.

After I finish Seth Godin’s new book “Meatball Sundae,” I’m movin’ ahead to my next stack of books for the year.

Some of these I already finished:

* “Let Your Life Speak,” a book about listening for the voice of vocation by Parker J. Palmer.
* “Who Moved My Cheese,” which is about how we can get unstuck when we need to change by Spencer Johnson, M.D. (a quick read on a plane ride).

But I’d like to mix in some more mind exercises with storytelling, marketing and communications. Some of these are a few years old, but here they are:

* “Mashup Corporation,” about the culture of communications change in the corporate world by Andy Mulholland, Chris S. Thomas, Paul Kurchina and Dan Woods.
* Seth Godin’s legendary “Permission Marketing,” which I believe is inside me already, but I want to get it in Seth’s words.
* “A Whole New Mind,” is about why right-brainers will rule the future by Daniel Pink. Not so sure I believe that yet, so it’ll be cool to feel my reaction.
* “The Springboard” is a book by Stephen Denning, who outlines how storytelling ignites action in knowledge-era organization. I’m a big fan of storytelling!

kenekaplan Marketing, Research, Social Media, Web 2.0

Catchin’ Up with Social Computing Tenents

Encapsulating the essence of why social media tools are evermore meaningful to more people — young and old — these are some highlights from Forrester Research’s April 2007 report on social computing trends by Charlene Li:
clipped from www.forrester.com
Individuals increasingly take cues from one another rather than from institutional sources like corporations, media outlets, religions, and political bodies. To thrive in an era of Social Computing, companies must abandon top-down management and communication tactics, weave communities into their products and services, use employees and partners as marketers, and become part of a living fabric of brand loyalists.
The exponential growth of processing power and storage capacity puts unprecedented computing power into the hands of users.
The social impact: The mainstream populace, not just the wealthy or educated, can tap into technology’s power to change social mores
Social Computing: 1) innovation will shift from top-down to bottom-up; 2) value will shift from ownership to experience; and 3) power will shift from institutions to communities
multiple email addresses, and thousand-member networks will be the norm — even as these youth settle down, have families, and pursue careers.
  blog it
kenekaplan Blogs, Marketing, Media, Research, Social Media, Web 2.0

Blog, Feed & Socialize

I just read a nifty report released on February 6 by Forrester’s social computing wise Charlene Li — “How Consumers Find Web Sites: Social Tools Play A Significant Role For Youth.”
Often we “know” what we ought to do today to build for tomorrow, but seeing results of surveys and hearing recommendations based on those findings gives us fodder we need to influence people and convince them to support our efforts.
Here are some things from Charlene’s report that I’m seeing happen already inside Intel…things that we are working to refine and disperse as best practices to other groups as they become more active with their online audiences/communities.
clipped from www.forrester.com
Blogs help with search rankings in several ways: Comments on blogs provide more content to index; frequent updates mean that the search engine’s Web crawlers come more often; and inbound links from other blogs and sites mean higher relevancy scores in algorithms.
Services like FeedBurners’ FeedFlare and Bazaarvoice’s ShareThis automatically insert links into blog posts, content pages, and product pages, making it simple to tag or share on sites like Facebook, Digg, and del.icio.us.
Investments in MySpace.com and Facebook will reach not only a quarter of the online youth population, but also support natural word of mouth and email, which are top sources of site referrals for youth. The key is tracking where traffic originates — for example, from a note posted on Facebook — as well as the channel, be it from a blog, email, or word of mouth. Use services from providers like Hitwise and Compete to map traffic patterns of your target customers.
  blog it
kenekaplan Jeremiah Owyang, Jobs, Marketing, Social Media

Find Social Media Jobs & Make Connections

Jeremiah Owyang not only helps show us how to use new communications tools and how to measure social media, he let’s us know who’s movin’ and shakin’ in this blog post.
clipped from www.web-strategist.com
How to Connect with others:
Submit an annoucement
If you know folks that are moving up in the social media industry, leave a comment below, or if you’re feeling shy (it’s cool to self-nominate) send me an email.

Seeking Social Media Professionals?
If you’re seeking to connect with community advocates and community managers there are few resources

  • Start with my community manager group in Facebook
  • Check out Jake McKee’s community portal for jobs
  • See Chris Heuer’s Social Media Jobs
  • SimplyHired aggregates job listings, as does Indeed

    • Hiring? Leave a commentt
    If you’re seeking candidates in the social media industry, many of them are within arms reach, feel free to leave a link to a job description (but not the whole job description, or I’ll delete it.
      blog it
    kenekaplan Social Media, video, Web 2.0

    Video Upload Once, Syndicate to Many with TubeMogul

    I stumbled upon TubeMogul and set up a free account. I haven’t tested out the services yet, but would like to learn from others who have tested or are using the service. Please let me know what you think.

    tubemogul.giftubemogul.gif

    From the TubeMogul site:

    Features

    Stunning Charts – easily create charts that track videos and/or video publishers.
    Powerful Analysis Tools – create custom groups of videos, video publishers and online video sites, and receive analytics by group.
    Universal Upload – Upload your videos to all major video sharing sites in one shot!
    Aggregated Analytics – track online video analytics across online video sites including Google Video, MetaCafe, MySpace, AOL, Yahoo!, Revver, YouTube and more!
    Communication Tools – effortlessly email charts to the recipients of your choosing.
    Data Export – exports charts and other data to Excel.
    Ease of Use – enjoy TubeMogul’s intuitive user interface and easy to understand charts.
    Advanced Features – TubeMogul also provides advanced custom reports, viewership demographic reports, and multivariate video testing upon request. Email us at comments@tubemogul.com for more information.

    The benefits of using TubeMogul include:

    • Save Time – uploading videos to each site in your distribution is no longer necessary – upload to TubeMogul and let the Universal Upload tool do the rest. Then you can login to understand your viewership across online video sites in one place.
    • Increased Reach – with your videos on more sites at no extra effort, your opportunity to gain viewers multiplies! Users of Universal Upload have witnessed up to 3x more views per video.
    • Improved Understanding of Viewer Base – better understand your customer base to create more targeted and relevant content or products and services.
    • Track Trends & Buzz – create groups of videos important to you or your industry and track spikes in viewership to identify trends and monitor the pulse of online video viewers.
    • Assess Marketing Efforts – assess the effectiveness of your marketing efforts by analyzing spikes and trends in viewership across any range of time.
    • Competitive Intelligence – see what’s working for your counterparts and competition and compare and contrast viewership trends with your own.
    • Share the Intelligence – send and share data and charts with colleagues or friends.
    kenekaplan Blogs, Social Media, Uncategorized

    Improving My Blogging

    Some good tips and comments in this DailyBLogTips post from January 18, 2008.
    clipped from www.dailyblogtips.com
    Productivity itself is pretty unimportant. It’s what productivity allows us to do that matters. A productive blogging habit means more posts and more quality, and we all know what that means: more links and more traffic.
    Productive blogging can also affect our day-to-day lives. It allows you to accomplish more in less time. That means: more time spent with the people that matter in your life.
    Many bloggers, myself included, struggle to balance the needs of this hobby with the needs of our loved ones. Being productive can make that task a little bit easier.

    • Write more than you publish.
    • Turn off auto-notifiers.
    • Check emails less often, but deal with more when you do.
    • Write as much as possible when you’re feeling creative.
    • Use your feed reader as an all-in-one inbox.
    • Process different types of tasks in batches.
    • Work out a ‘To Post’ list.
    • Spend less time reading feeds.
    • Sketch posts before filling in the detail.
      blog it
    kenekaplan Gaming, Intel, PodTech

    Reboot Shows Blinged-Out Solid Gold PC with Intel Core 2 Duo $3/4Million

    [podtech content=http://media1.podtech.net/media/2008/02/PID_013360/Podtech_The_Reboot_Ep_12.flv&postURL=http://www.podtech.net/home/4906/the-reboot-wii-want-rock-band&totalTime=139000&breadcrumb=e7a232f835684d509be5a6ec008872b0]

    Rio Pesino of PodTech has a short, nifty episode of his gaming show, “Reboot” that spotlights a Japanese company selling PCs covered in solid gold ($750,000) or silver cases covered with diamonds ($560,000). Sure the bling is the thing, but it’s that Intel Core 2 Duo inside that make me sing!  See it here:

    Solid Gold Bling PC