Monday, November 24th, 2008
Twitter
If you’re still using Twitter, Louis Gray has 15 Tools For Your Twitter Toolbox which you might want to check out.
Social Media
How To Be The Social Media Champion At Your Office by Jason Falls. Many of us are graduating this year if not next, it might be time to think seriously about bringing such a change to our offices.
Collaboration
And speaking of offices, EtherPad is a tool that allows you to collaborate on text documents in real time. I was pretty blown away by the screencast, you should give it a view. I’m looking forward to using this on future projects!
Recessionary Marketing
Do Not Kill Off Marketing During A Recession is the call by Hutch Carpenter. Most of us in marketing (unlike the CEOs) know this, and I’ve read that there is statistical data to show that it’s a bad idea. Try Hutch’s little cartoon for a more intuitive feel.
Generation Y/Millennials/Digital Natives
New Study Shows Time Spent Online Important for Teen Development - I’m a little out of the “teen” demographic, but I think this study hits the right notes and more importantly, should give employers an idea of what to expect when we hit the workforce. I haven’t had time to read the full white paper, but the two page executive summary is pretty exciting.
As always, share your links with me on delicious/uniquefrequency or post them in the comments!
Tags: championing social media, collaborate on text documents, collaboration, delicious, digital natives, do not kill off marketing during a recession, etherpad, generation y, how much to spend on marketing in a recession, hutch carpenter, jason falls, louis gray, millennials, recessionary marketing, screencast, social media, social media champion, social media in the office, teen development, twitter, twitter tools, uniquefrequency
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Monday, November 17th, 2008
A weekend of travel means less blogging this week, but definitely not less reading!
Blogging
You want to show you know what you’re doing, even if the company you’re in follows prehistoric methods, so that the next person who hires you has a reference point. Joseph Jaffe tells you how in AdWeek - Save Your Career, Start A Blog
RSS
Daily Blog Tips has 50 Simple Ways To Gain RSS Subscribers - some might just come in useful!
Word Of Mouth
Andy Sernovitz gets another link this week for telling us why Your Word Of Mouth Markting Doesn’t Have To Be About Your Product. I’ll admit I liked this post partially because Molson Canadian is my new favourite beer while I’m here in Canada. (Oh and they have a blog, and recently an event right here at Queen’s!)
John Johansen had a great experience at Best Buy, which is the polar opposite of what some companies are doing in this recessionary period. (Examples to be posted, soon). He also mentions that because it was a special event there was extra help, free drinks etc, but many people also bought something. Do you think they included his blog post (or any other positive ones) while measuring the ROI of that event?
Social Media ROI
While we’re on that topic, David Meerman Scott tells us how to Answer The Ultimate Question: “How do I convince my boss of the ROI of new marketing?” - It’s not a long video, definitely worth a look.
Gen Y, Millennials and Digital Natives
Quickly becoming an interest point for me these days. Prof Netzley has a deck on Educating Gen Y and how collaborative technologies foster participant-centered learning. . I’d say it’s definitely worth flipping through, especially if you’re trying to figure out what the heck Gen Y is about and how we learn.
Tags: adweek, andy sernovitz, best buy, blogging, collaboration, collaborative technologies, communicate asia, daily blog tips, david meerman scott, digital natives, educating gen y, Gen Y, generation y, john johansen, joseph jaffe, michael netzley, millennials, molson canadian, new marketing, participant centered learning, queen's university, recessionary times, ROI, rss, save your career, social media roi, start a blog, ways to gain rss subscribers, word of mouth marketing
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Thursday, May 8th, 2008
Listening to Marketing Over Coffee on the way home, there was a very small section talking about GoogleDocs and how you can activate a form to collect data for you. It also made me think further on the question about how much we’re collaborating (or not collaborating) online.
We had to create a wiki for our social media class, and of course, wikis tell you how much (or little) someone edited the final output. It was noted that a handful of people contributed the majority of the content, which made our Professor, Michael Netzley, less than thrilled. I brought up the point that though a few people may have been the actual ones to enter the text, doesn’t mean the whole team did not collaborate together. Both sides are debatable, but that’s not the point.
I’m an assistant scout leader for my alma mater’s scout troop and every year around this time we have a camp. As with previous years, the emails pile up, meeting minutes get distributed, camp schedules get sent and changed and re-sent and re-changed until eventually, no one knows what in the world is going on anymore.
To solve this, I set up a wiki for the leaders. It’s a private wiki so I’m sorry I can’t share the link. I will however say that we’re using PBwiki, which I find to be superior to Wetpaint in terms of editing as well as help. But that aside, so far it’s been helping us keep track of personnel and manpower, topics of discussion, a couple of things to be noted, schedules, equipment lists and so on.
No more losing of minutes on paper, no more “can you send me the latest schedule? I can’t find it”. Everything is up there and updated. To the minute.
So why aren’t more of us doing this? Is it the challenge of working alone as Michael brings up? Or an unwillingness to change our styles of working?
Does it make sense for us to share our items on Google Reader (my shared items are here)? Or on del.icio.us? How about collaborating on Google Docs in the classroom? In the office?
To me the biggest problem is convincing the people you’re working with that it’s worth their while. In my scout case study, I knew the people who were primarily going to enter the data would be the younger adult leaders, while the older leaders would keep and eye on it from time to time. To both of these groups, you gotta speak their language.
To my peers, it was the idea of collaboration. To see everything in one place, to have links and for easy reading. To the senior leaders, it was the idea of streamlining information. Not losing paper, not having to distinguish whether schedule(final).doc is the true schedule or schedule(final)THISISTHEREALFINAL.doc is the true schedule.
So how’s collaboration working (or not working) for you? Are you using wikis regularly? Online document processors or software based? Is it a challenge convincing your classmates/colleagues to use it as well?
Tags: collaborating with google docs, collaboration, collaboration on google docs, communicate asia, google docs, googledocs, marketing over coffee, meeting minutes, michael netzley, pbwiki vs wetpaint, schedules, scout wiki, scouts, sharing google reader items, social bookmarking, social media class, wiki
Posted in Google, Icio, Research, collaboration, social media | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
Social Media class discussed wikis today. Not just Wikipedia, but wikis in general. What’s a wiki? Here’s the definition from (where else) Wikipedia:
A wiki is software that allows users to easily create, edit, and link pages together. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites.
That’s a little hard to understand, but let’s put it this way: You and anyone you choose to invite, can put whatever information you want on a page, as well as edit it. And you immediately think: Why aren’t we using that in our projects more often? Wouldn’t it cut out the hassle of email?
The thing about wikis is, with most new technologies, everyone has to know how to use it. I don’t mean know how to bold or underline text, I mean to really use it and gain the synergies that it offers. That’s where the tough part comes in. Will we be spending more time editing our wikis, or focusing on what really matters, the sharing of ideas, information and knowledge?
I know it’s hard. A few friends of mine used to have our meeting agendas on Google Docs, but gave up after awhile because we weren’t using it efficiently enough to get rid of email. As with all technology advancements, the new offering must offer significant benefits over the old, otherwise the switching cost is just too high.
Which brings me to ooVoo, a webcam-chat programme that allows up to 6 people to converse at once. Good for short meetings right? Would you use them? I personally would, but I’m not sure whether productivity would be higher or lower than if we had meetings face to face.
On a separate, curious note: does anyone know what happens if 2 people try to edit the exact same portion of a wiki at the same time and both save their changes?
Tags: collaboration, community, edit wiki, email, oovoo, social media class, synergies, video conferencing, voice chat, voip, wiki, Wikipedia
Posted in SMU, Wikipedia, social media | No Comments »
