Social Signal: Latest Blog Posts

Why we love ScreenFlow: screen capture for the Mac

Rob Cottingham — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:02:18 +0000

If you spend any time teaching people about online tools, or documenting them, or pitching them, chances are you've thought about screen capture software. And last week, a post on the Web of Change email list asked for recommendations on just that topic.

I weighed in on the side of Telestream's ScreenFlow, and I'm sharing it here in case you're looking for something for your next computer or Internet tutorial:

I have a two-year torrid love affair with ScreenFlow (although Darren Barefoot has actually proposed to marry it, so consider me trumped). It's Mac-only, but if you're in the Apple universe, you get an awful lot for the $99 pricetag.

Here's some of what I like:

A simple, intuitive editing interface that – for me, at least – beats the more recent versions of iMovie for making sense right off the bat
Fast and easy creation of callouts (that is, highlights, with background blurring and darkening, and foreground zooming)
Fast and easy annotation with text and shapes
Easy addition of new recordings
Simple adjustment of playback speed

And here's some of what I'd like to see:

Clip masking or cropping
Integrating edited clips into one, so you can then apply affects to the whole
Customizable presets for text, annotations and callouts
More customization in the export settings, especially publishing
Better HTML5 support in publishing

Check out some of the other feature requests from the user community.

A note: because its export function relies on QuickTime, you're limited to Apple's selection of video formats (of which H.264 is probably the most universal). So if you have your heart set on WebM or Ogg, you're out of luck.

How about you? Got a favourite screen capture tool? Do you use QuickTime's free screen recording feature on the Mac? CamStudio on Windows? Camtasia? Jing? Make your case in the comments!*

* Vendors, you know we love you, but please leave this conversation for users and customers. Thanks!

A bookmarklet to hide the Drupal 7 administration toolbar

Rob Cottingham — Fri, 11 May 2012 23:54:26 +0000

The (barely-tested) bookmarklet: Drag this link to your browser's bookmarks bar: Hide toolbar | Restore toolbar

I love the administration toolbar that comes with Drupal 7, the one that puts the admin menu within easy reach at all times. It's one of the most convenient developments in my online life.

But there are times when it's really inconvenient – like when you I want to show an unpublished page the way an ordinary mortal will see it when they visit. There's a shortcut bar underneath it, which you can hide or show at will... but that toolbar stays there, come hell or high water, as long as you're logged in.

Short of installing a module (which would be rude of me, if I'm not the guy actually developing the site), I've resorted to hiding the toolbar by manually editing the CSS properties in my browser. A little "display:none" here, a sprinkle of "padding-top:0px" there, and we're in business.

But that gets old pretty quickly. How about handling it in one click? The JavaScript is actually pretty straightforward (this is on a site where the body's CSS "padding-top" value is zero throughout):

javascript:document.getElementById("toolbar").setAttribute("style", "display:none");void(document.body.style.paddingTop="0px");

It works by hiding the contents of the toolbar, and resetting the body's padding-top value to zero.

I tested it successfully in Safari, Firefox and Chrome, but I ran it through John Gruber's JavaScript bookmark builder to work its magic encoding on the spaces and punctuation just to be safe. It now looks like this:

javascript:document.getElementById(%22toolbar%22).setAttribute(%22style%22,%20%22display:none%22);void(document.body.style.paddingTop=%220px%22);

Of course, you might want the toolbar back again. So:

javascript:document.getElementById("toolbar").setAttribute("style", "display:block");void(document.body.style.paddingTop="65px");

...and, encoded:

javascript:document.getElementById(%22toolbar%22).setAttribute(%22style%22,%20%22display:block%22);void(document.body.style.paddingTop=%2265px%22);

Limitations:

It only disables the toolbar until you reload the page or navigate to another one.
I haven't tested it in anything except the Mac versions of Safari 5.1.5, Firefox 11 and Chrome 19.0.1084.46. Oh, and I've tested it on all of one Drupal site.
It assumes the body's padding-top CSS value is zero pixels.

Let me know if it works for you – or if you've found a more useful/robust solution.

Bookmarklets: Hide toolbar | Restore toolbar (or, if you get easily frustrated, Die, toolbar, die! | Restore toolbar)

Social Speech Podcast, Episode 7: Chris Brogan

Rob Cottingham — Fri, 04 May 2012 08:46:47 +0000

For several years now, Chris Brogan's blog has been a must-read for anyone who wants to use social media productively. Add his thriving practice as a speaker, the fact that he co-founded PodCamp, and his New York Times bestseller Trust Agents (cowritten with Julien Smith) along with two other books (Google+ for Business: How Google's Social Network Changes Everything and Social Media 101)...

...and his now-legendary 2009 presentation at New Media Atlanta, where he brought an angry backchannel into the open and won it over...

...and you have a shoo-in for the social speech hall of fame — not to mention someone well worth listening to on the subject of social media and public speaking.

Especially because he'll explain what you, as a speaker, can have in common with the Grateful Dead.

The links:

Social Speech Podcast, Episode 6: Mitch Joel

Rob Cottingham — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:17:57 +0000

Mitch Joel has a lot to share with the world - including some brilliant insights and expertise on marketing, communications and community - so it's now wonder he's found so many ways to do it. He has a long-standing blog, a podcast that just passed the 300-episode milestone, a book... and a well-deserved reputation as one of the best keynote speakers around.

In our conversation, Mitch talks about what matters the most to him about social media and speaking, and the sheer miracle of being able to press "publish" on a blog post and share your knowledge with the world. "These are such early days, and we haven't spent the time to appreciate the tremendous canvas we have in the palm of our hands," he says.

Some links from our conversation:

Mitch Joel's blog and podcast
@MitchJoel on Twitter
Mitch Joel's U.S. and Canadian speakers bureaus
the TED 2012 Conference
Six Pixels of Separation: "the first book to integrate digital marketing, social media, personal branding, and entrepreneurship in a clear, entertaining, and instructive manner that everyone can understand and apply"
Mitch's forthcoming book CTRL ALT DEL

The image on the right is a doodle I did a year or two ago.

Social Speech Podcast, Episode 5: Ian Griffin

Rob Cottingham — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 18:40:48 +0000

With this episode, we flip the mic (metaphorically) and talk with someone who's a lot more used to writing speeches than delivering them. That's not to say Ian Griffin isn't at home behind a lectern; he's an accomplished speaker and a skilled communicator.

If you're in the tech industry, you've probably heard his words; Ian has worked in executive communications at Cisco, Hewlett Packard and Sun Microsystems. He's also incredibly generous with his time and expertise, as many Silicon Valley communicators who've attended one of his presentations can tell you.

In this interview, he asks why we put so much effort into creating a speech, and then fail to do that little extra bit that can help it reach far more people... and he offers lots of ideas for what that little extra bit can be.

Ian Griffin's blog, Wikispaces hub, LinkedIn profile and Twitter feed
Wikispaces, Slideshare, Twitter search, HootSuite
Cliff Atkinson's The Backchannel (yep, it came up again!)

Social Speech Podcast, Episode 4: David Eaves

Rob Cottingham — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 03:23:45 +0000

From the moment I thought up the Social Speech Podcast, David Eaves was at the top of my list of people I wanted to talk to. He's a good friend, and a provocative thinker and writer on some of the issues that matter to me most – like the open web and open government.

And he's a terrific speaker, travelling around the world to address audiences on five continents (Australia and Antarctica, that's your cue) about topics as diverse as negotiating, collaboration, conflict management, social media, open government and open data. As you'll hear in this episode, Dave has thought a great deal about what makes for a great, productive speech – one that doesn't just get a solid audience response, but also achieves a larger goal. And you'll hear about how his blog is a crucial resource for his speeches, and how yours can help you deliver a more powerful presentation the next time you're on stage.

Some links:

Dave's blog (check it out to see what a mental gymnasium looks like!), Twitter and LinkedIn profiles, TripIt feed and speakers agency
TripIt, Dave's travel lifeline (I've just started using it – phenomenally useful)

Cartoon-blogging at NTC 2012

Rob Cottingham — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 15:54:05 +0000

It was another great Nonprofit Technology Conference, my second in San Francisco... and my second cartoon-blogging outing for my friends at NTEN.

This time around, the good folks at Rally – a social fundraising platform, and the folks behind a very cool workspace – sponsored the graphic recording effort.

Which meant there were not one but two pens flying during various keynotes and breakout sessions. My colleague was the amazing Kate Rutter, who manages to combine detail, structure and composition in ways that amaze me. You can see the results of our work here.

I'm pulling together the last of my cartoon-blog images, and I'll post them here soon. But in the meantime, here are the cartoons I drew from the floor of the conference. They include my notes from the session on social media policy, led by Idealware's Andrea Berry and Darim's Lisa Colton and centered around their free social media policy workbook.

Social Speech Podcast, Episode 3: Maggie Fox

Rob Cottingham — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:32:04 +0000

This episode: Social Media Group founder and CEO Maggie Fox

Only a few years ago, business - especially non-tech Fortune 500 business - was pretty skeptical about social media. One of the first people to break through that barrier was Maggie Fox, CEO of Social Media group. And she did it by creating solid strategies rooted in tangible business goals, breaking ground with companies like Ford.

Our conversation looks at everything from handling the backchannel to how you can stand out as a smallfrog presented in a big pond conference. And here are some links relating to our discussion:

Maggie Fox on Twitter and LinkedIn
Social Media Group on Twitter and LinkedIn
Doodle, the how-to-schedule-busy-people app

Also from the podcast: I'm heading to San Francisco for NTEN's Nonprofit Technology Conference next week. And I'll be speaking at Ignite NTC on the social speech. I'd love to see you there!

Social Speech Podcast, Episode 2: with Tod Maffin

Rob Cottingham — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 02:18:47 +0000

If you were to assemble a herd of top-notch researchers, and tell them "Find me someone who embodies public speaking, social media and podcasting," chances are fights would break out as several of them vied to be the first to get to Tod Maffin's door.

One day he'll be speaking to large corporations about digital marketing; the next, to a hometown social media conference about podcasting. His "Taking Crazy Back" keynote takes an unflinching look at his own struggle with depression and addiction as a powerful way of bringing conversations about mental health into the full light of day.

In this conversation, you'll hear Tod's insights on using social networks to get a sense of a room weeks before he sets foot in it; how meeting planners want more value from an engagement, and how you can offer it; why a projected backchannel is as bad a distraction as a troupe of dancing chimpanzees; and why digital dazzle can't top a good, compelling story.

A few links that came up:

Tod Maffin on Twitter
Tod's company, engageQ
Professional Speaking Tips, Tod's email newsletter
Apple's Keynote presentation app, CloudApp and Dropbox
Photo by Jeremy Lim, used under a Creative Commons license

Why you should help users recover gracefully from their mistakes

Rob Cottingham — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:08:13 +0000

We all like to talk about how organizations can recover from their own customer service failures: the gadget that won't connect, the handle that snaps off, the delivery that never arrives.

But how about when the customer screws up? How easy do you make it for them to recover lost information, correct a mistake or get out of a dead end?

Put it this way: if the web is like an episode of The Simpsons, is your site more like helpful, compassionate Lisa, or Nelson "Haw, haw" Muntz?

After a pretty Nelsonish user experience, here's what I included this in a customer feedback survey from Rogers Communications.

Their kind Twitter customer service rep, @rogers_kate, helped me resolve an issue where I was trying to update my expired credit card info for my iPad data plan. The interface wouldn't accept my email and password, and offered to send my my forgotten password. It turned out the problem was I was using the wrong email address - but I didn't find that out before wasting a lot of time troubleshooting.

Every person I dealt with was great. But the interface for handling billing info on an iPad is awful.
Telling someone who's just entered the wrong email address for their account that you've sent them a password reset email, when you actually haven't, leads to lots of digging through inboxes, checking spam filters and troubleshooting. If instead the form had said "Incorrect email address - please try again", I'd have saved myself hours - literally - of frustration.
So kudos to your customer service team. And a tsk-tsk-tsk to whoever set up that billing workflow.

I should have added a little wrist-slap for yours truly; the original error was mine. I just had no way of knowing I'd made it. And customers logging in with the wrong email address, when many of us are running around with three or more, is commonplace these days.

From forms like that iPad billing registration that mislead the customer, to email authentication error screens that tell you you've entered the wrong username or password but won't tell you which one , helping your customers emerge gracefully from their own mishaps will make you some friends.

And save @rogers_kate from yet another tweet of distress.

Social Speech Podcast, Episode 1: Nancy White

Rob Cottingham — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 01:08:55 +0000

The social web has gone a long way toward changing what it means to be in the audience at a speech – making an audience member less a passive spectator listening to a monologue, and more an active participant in a conversation among peers.

And nobody does that quite like Nancy White – except she doesn't just rely on digital technology. She's one of the best group facilitators in the business, working all over the world with everyone from small community groups to Fortune 500 companies. You can see her approach at work in the March of Dimes' Share Your Story site, which several years on is still one of the examples we cite the most often of how online community can make a real different in people's lives.

So who better to kick off Episode 1 of the Social Speech podcast?

A few links:

Nancy White on Twitter
Nancy's company, Full Circle Associates
Free tools for integrating PowerPoint and Twitter (for Windows) courtesy of Timo Elliott
Timo's Mac-friendly integration between Prezi and Twitter
Alex's case for recognizing online life as real, too: her Harvard Business Review blog post and her TEDx Victoria talk

Photo by kk+
Graphic: A quick sketch I did of Nancy at Northern Voice a few years ago

Introducing the Social Speech Podcast

Rob Cottingham — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 06:56:41 +0000

If you're involved in public speaking – as someone who delivers speeches and presentations, or as an executive communications practitioner, or as an event organizer – then this is for you.

Over the next several weeks, I'm going to share conversations I'm having with some of the smartest people I know about public speaking and social media: how connected audiences are transforming the world of presentations, and how some forward-thinking speakers are making the most of it.

I'm calling it the Social Speech Podcast. You can find the feed here or subscribe on iTunes. Here's the introductory episode; the first interview will go live next week.

But please – don't let my schedule hold you up. Give this intro a listen, and if you have thoughts about the Social Speech (I've posted some of mine here) then please share them in the comments. Or email your text or audio comment (up to 25 MB) to rob@socialsignal.com.

Thanks – and I'll look forward to hearing from you!

A social media Valentine

Alex and Rob — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:19:41 +0000

Dearest Valentine,

It has been five years since I last wrote to you, yet my heart is still
a. And though the un demise of so many familiar places casts a over our happiness, I have a we still have a dee in each other.

I don't need to to stick to you; an endless river of joy my way. Heavens to B, you'd have to be an not to feel at least a of love – if not a of passion. And I'm sorry I freaked out when you suggested we get our in your four-. I'll admit - I'm a little .

Let's never ll again. my own judgement when we're apart, sob into my pillow.

It's just that I'm not interested in a mere , or hearing that you me as a friend, but are only interested in . I want to stand beneath your window, and , sweet songs of love to you. And I want children – right now, so we can make your mom an ma.

Let's walk the same , and for the joys of
commit, our lives extricably together.

I'm sorry - I do on. All I'm saying is please,
be my .

Love,

Social Signal

PS - If this letter was tl;dr, fret not - you can always .

Alex on why you should stop apologizing for your online life

Rob Cottingham — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:55:29 +0000

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking what we do online isn't real, and doesn't matter. And it doesn't help that we've developed the acronym IRL, In Real Life, to refer to the offline world.

But why shouldn't we regard our online lives as just as real, just as valid and just as meaningful as our offline ones? That's the question Alex posed a few months ago at TEDx Victoria, proceeding from a blog post she wrote last year for the Harvard Business Review.

The talk, titled "Ten Reasons to Stop Apologizing for your Online Life", just went live. And if you've ever wondered why a valued online friendship doesn't count as "the real world" while a trip to the mall does - and, more to the point, what you can do about it - you'll want to watch.

Just because you have numbers doesn't mean you have insight

Rob Cottingham — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:43:38 +0000

One of the most seductive things about social media is the way it allows us to quantify things. I have more friends than she does – I must be more popular. That blog post got more hits than this one, so that one's more effective. We have more Twitter followers this month than last month, so we're on the right track.

Numbers are lovely that way. In a world where everything seems open to interpretation, numbers offer certainty. Five is bigger than three: end of argument.

Problem is, a beautiful number can hide an ugly bunch of oversimplification. Trying to quantify the complexities of human interaction in a multidimensional matrix of influence and activity in a few simple numbers is next to impossible (although potentially very attractive to venture capitalists).

Which is why, despite a valiant effort, social-media-analysts-turned-political-prognosticators fell so heavily on their virtual fannies in trying to use online metrics to predict last Tuesday's Iowa Republican caucus.

The good folks at Trilogy Interactive summed up how woefully short those predictions fell in a handy infographic. (Only one prognostication came close - eerily so - until a glitch in the data it was based on got corrected, and then it fell into line with the others.)

So why are retweets, likes, mentions and follows such poor predictors of electoral success? As Trilogy points out, it's partly because of the difficulty of focusing that information geographically. And it's partly the way those numbers confuse conversational buzz and notoriety with support. Micah Sifry puts it well:

Saying simple, stupid things that lots of people want to tell their peers about can get you tons of followers and retweets. But it doesn't mean anything definitive about grass-roots support. Otherwise, right now we'd be talking about Herman Cain's amazing victory in Iowa.

More fundamentally, the information that Twitter, Facebook and other platforms can offer us about our relationships to brands, candidates, ideas and each other is still pretty crude. And it would take a far more subtle, sophisticated and complex reading of the things we say to each other to infer anything very meaningful from those blunt-instrument statistics.

Which is worth remembering the next time you find yourself or your organization getting hung up on the number of followers, fans and subscribers you have. Those numbers can be useful... but they couldn't predict Newt Gingrich's future, and they shouldn't dictate yours.

15 best practices for managing your first (or subsequent) web development project

Alexandra Samuel — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:05:28 +0000

Back in the day, the only real way to have an online conversation was to build your own blog or online community. These days, many people, companies and organizations have their first taste of online conversation and social media through pre-established social networks like Twitter, Facebook or YouTube.

But eventually, you might outgrow what you can do with those sites alone, or decide you want to have a new kind of conversation that is best supported with an online community of your own. When that day comes, you’ll face the painful, terrifying and thrilling experience of building a website — if not with your own bare hands, then through the efforts of an in-house web development team or web development company.

It’s a process that is always challenging, but never more so than the very first time you undertake the job of managing or supervising a development process, even if it’s as a client rather than as a developer. You don’t know what to expect, you don’t know what questions to ask, and you don’t know who is responsible for what. So let me offer a very partial set of observations and insights into the development process, which may make your first time out a little less overwhelming — and which may help experienced web-heads refine their approach, too:

Developer hours are your new hard currency. If you’re managing a development process, you need to treat each developer hour like it’s a bar of gold. If this is your first dev process and you’re working with experienced developers (if this is your first dev process, I really hope you are working with experienced developers) then they probably cost your company or client somewhere between 2-5x what you get paid per hour. Unless you’re dealing with an infinite budget, that means you have to be careful about where you spend those hours and dollars — and even if the dollar constraint isn’t tight, you’ll find that a good developer typically has other demands and will offer you only so many hours, so use them wisely. Once you start seeing your development hours as very, very precious, a lot of other development principles follow….
You are supposed to be the bottleneck. One of the challenging aspects of the client or project manager role is that you turn into a bottleneck: there’s a steady flood of incoming tasks for the dev team, which you’re supposed to pass along, only you feel like you can’t feed them to the dev team fast enough. You’re the bottleneck, which we are told is a bad thing, so you feel terrible. But here’s the secret to your role in the development process: you are supposed to be a bottleneck. By slowing the rate at which incoming tasks flow to the dev team, you allow them to work on the priorities that have already been established. While you may need to feed them some occasional additional tasks, particularly after a period of testing, it’s your job to filter all those incoming requests so only the essentials make it to the dev team.
Ticket your tasks. Web development companies typically use tools like Unfuddle to track their outstanding development tasks including bugs that need fixing. If you’re working with a development team that will give you direct access to their ticketing system, you may find it easiest to feed your tasks directly into the system; most of the time, however, the dev team will want you to give them tasks in some other form, so they can enter them into the ticketing system with all the details they need in order to address the task correctly. But you can create your own de facto ticketing system by religiously writing each incoming issue down in a single place, using a consistent format that allows you to review all issues and prioritize the ones that will go forward to the dev team. I recommend doing this in a spreadsheet (if you want others to see what’s already on the list, use Google Docs) or using a task/project management system (like Basecamp).
Review and prioritize. If you’re “ticketing” all the incoming questions, bug reports and change requests in a single spreadsheet or task list, you can review that list on a weekly or daily basis to decide on which items will get forwarded to the dev team. (Weekly for most of the process, daily when you are in the final phase of quality assurance and launch.) The closer you are to launch, the higher your threshold for what gets prioritized: if you’re just a few days from launch, the only things that should be addressed are the 5-alarm fires.
Batch your questions, bugs and change requests. It’s very easy for a web development process to get overwhelming, if only due to the volume of email it generates. (A project management tool that includes threaded messaging, like Basecamp, can help a lot.) If you are relying on email to send requests to your dev team, try to limit yourself to one email a day unless you are facing a major emergency. Ask your dev team to do the same — to reply to all your questions in one email per day (or week), replying to each line item/question directly underneath that question, so you see that each issue is addressed (even if it’s just to say that the dev team has now added that bug to their ticketing system). (You may want to agree that they can reply to each ONE email from you with up to TWO or even THREE emails from them: the first email to answer all the questions they can answer off the top of their heads, the follow-up email(s) to address any outstanding issues that require further investigation.
Snap your glitches. Part of the secret to communicating with a dev team is communicating clearly about what problems you are having or what you need done. That’s a bit of a Catch-22 when you’re new to web development, because you don’t necessarily know how to describe what you are looking at. So don’t try — take a screenshot instead, and send that to the dev team in your next batch of requests/bug reports! Use a tool like Skitch, and you’ll be able to draw an error on the part of the screen that is puzzling you, or to write a short note directly onto the screenshot noting your concern. Just make sure your screenshot includes the URL of the page you’re looking at. (The easiest way to do this is by including the top of your browser in the screenshot.)
Google your problems. If you are doing hands-on work as part of the site development process, such as authoring or loading content, you may run into problems that could be bugs — or could just be things you don’t yet know how to handle. Before you ask your dev team for their (expensive) help, try googling your problem: if you’re getting a specific error message, google that, or if you’re just trying to figure out how to do something, google the task along with the name of the web tool you’re working in (e.g. “WordPress how to insert image in post”). Unless you are working with a custom-built or obscure tool, the odds are good that somewhere on the web, someone will have done an awesome job of explaining how to do the thing you are trying to do, or how to fix the thing you are trying to fix.
Give up quickly. The flip side of batching your concerns is that you know you will be in touch with your dev team every couple of days. So if googling your problem doesn’t yield a quick answer, don’t keep slamming your head into a brick wall. Add your question to the batch you will be sharing with your dev team later today or this week, and then set the task or problem aside until you send your next batch of questions and get the answers your need.
Define what constitutes an emergency. Talk with your dev team about what constitutes an emergency, so that you agree on what calls or emails simply can’t wait for the next batch. Normally that will include any issue that prevents users from accessing a significant part of the site (either because it’s a very important part, or a very large chunk) , an issue that produces a visible and embarrassing bug (like a huge missing image on your home page), or an issue that creates some kind of legal liability (like disclosing private user information). And agree with your dev team on how to reach them quickly if you do face an emergency: email? tweet? SMS? call? Whatever your communications mechanism, it should be a channel that can get a response in less than 1 hour anytime during business hours, and ideally well into the night. (But remember, that channel will only stay open and responsive if you are onlyvery careful not to abuse it. If you have “emergencies” on a regular basis, either you are too quick to call your dev team, or they aren’t doing a good job of keeping your site bug-free.)
Schedule a standing check-in call. Email is great, and project management software is even greater. But there is nothing to keep you in sync with your dev team like regular phone calls. Scheduling can be tricky, so set up a time for a regular weekly call or meeting as soon as your work gets underway, and increase that frequency to at least 2x/week (possibly even daily) for the last couple of weeks leading up to launch (those daily calls can be short, but can help to quickly address urgent issues). Keep a separate queue of issues to discuss during your next call, and take 15 minutes to prioritize that list just before you have your weekly check-in, so that your most important issues get addressed even if you run out of time.
Build a buffer. Just as your job is to serve as a buffer between your site’s users and your web team, you may find that you need a buffer between you and all those authors/users. Don’t feel like you need to address every single question or suggestion as it rolls in: set up an auto-reply if you must (“thanks for your email, someone will reply soon”) and then do a daily (or for smaller sites, twice weekly) review of incoming reports, feedback, info requests etc. Decide which of these should be transferred to the queue for your dev team (if any), which you can and should reply to in detail yourself, and which can either be ignored or get a non-personalized follow-up (“We’ve reviewed your suggestion and will consider it for our longer-term marketing plans.)
Pay attention to what your dev team says is easy or hard. This is a longer-term investment, but unless you are going into web development yourself, the most useful thing you can know about how to build websites is what’s easy and what’s hard. That varies substantially from platform to platform and even version to version, but if you think you’re going to be working with the same web development tools or content management system in the future, it’s worth learning about what is easy to fix and what’s complicated. This is not intuitive, since things that often seem incredibly simple (changing wording on a field, adding a checkbox to a form) can turn out to be very tough, and things that seem hard (adding a rating system, displaying related tweets) could turn out to be incredibly easy. The more you listen to what your dev team says is easy or hard, the better you’ll be at prioritizing items during future dev projects (because you’ll know to prioritize easy-but-important tasks over hard-and-important ones).
You will not get it right. Even if you take all the foregoing to heart, your website (and especially your first website) will be full of shortcomings — if not outright errors and bugs. That’s not a sign you’re doing it wrong: it’s a sign you’re doing it right. If you waited until every last problem was fixed, you’d never launch. Better to get your site up on its wobbly legs as soon as possible –to “launch crappy”, as we used to say — and to start learning from your users before you invest any more money in building functionality they’ll never use, editing pages they’ll never look at, or fixing glitches they’ll never notice.
Get a mantra. When we were building our very first client website, our client gave us a crucial piece of advice: iterate. In other words, get it done, get it live, and start learning. We printed out that one word — ITERATE — and plastered it on the wall of our office as a touchstone. Choose the touchstone that will help you remember that you’re not trying to build the perfect website, and put it where you’ll see it every day.
Enjoy. One of the things my non-web friends often say they envy about my work is that I actually make stuff. This used to seem kind of funny to me, because I grew up in a world where making stuff meant actual physical stuff like cars and clothes. But with so many of my friends working in professional fields where there is truly no tangible work product — just ideas shared, organizations improved, people made less neurotic — I’ve come to see the miracle of a job that actually creates a visible outcome that other people can visit, experience and participate in. Looking at the site you’ve been part of and thinking, hey!! I helped to make that!! is almost the coolest part of building your own social website.

But not quite. Because the actual coolest part comes when your part is done, at least for now, and all those community members start moving in and posting content and talking and actually using this thing you thought you built. Because that’s when you realize you didn’t actually build a site at all: you built an invitation. And now other people are accepting that invitation, and using it to build something far more personal, meaningful and alive than anything you could ever have imagined.

What bits of wisdom would you pass along to someone working on a web development project for the first time? Please do share your thoughts in the comments below, or tweet them and link to this page in your tweet.

Engage your audience before your speech

Rob Cottingham — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 15:55:34 +0000

A lot of speeches begin with someone introducing you to the audience - reciting your background and qualifications, and then encouraging them to greet you warmly as you head to the microphone.

And once the applause dies down, you're looking at a sea of people who are probably as unfamiliar to you as you are to them. Your first few lines not only have to launch your speech, but establish a rapport and some degree of trust with your audience.

But in the era of the social speech, you don't have to speak to an audience of strangers. You can get acquainted and start the conversation days or even weeks before you break out the index cards. You probably won't get to know everybody beforehand... but you'll know at least some of them, and they'll know you.

Start by finding out where your audience hangs out online. Are there professional groups on LinkedIn, or groups on Facebook where they get together? Is there an event or chat hashtag they use on Twitter? Do they frequent the sponsoring organization's blog? Do they go even more old-school, with discussion forums? Are there Twitter lists or public Google+ circles that can help you discover them? (Just be sure these are public-facing spaces, and not places where participants are expecting some degree of privacy.)
Now that you know where to find your audience – or a chunk of it – you'll want to introduce yourself. But before you do, listen to the public conversations they're having. What's the tone? What issues are high on their agendas? Who are the natural hosts and leaders in the conversations? Once you have a sense of the dynamics, then it's time to let folks know who you are.
Post a message in the various venues you've identified. Let people know who you are, and that you're excited that you'll be speaking at the event. Ask who else will be attending, give everyone an idea of what you're planning to talk about, and invite suggestions and questions. Unmarketing author and speaker Scott Stratten likes to do that through a webcam video he records before his speeches, greeting his audience and letting them know what it's in for. They get to see who he is and get a taste of his speaking style. (You'll find that and other fantastic Scott Stratten speaking tips in this blog post.)
Write a blog post referring to your upcoming speech, and dealing with one of the key themes you'll be covering. (If it's a theme you've posted on before, you can revisit a previous post with a few more thoughts.) Consider asking your audience a question, or assigning a little homework: "You'll get a lot more out of this presentation if you can come in with a list of the three things you'd most like to try this year in your organization's fundraising." And include your video, if you've recorded one.
Looking for a big-picture idea of your audience's interests or level of experience? An online poll (using a service like PollDaddy or GoPollGo) can allow audience members to score their skills, choose a favourite topic or place themselves on a spectrum of opinion.
Your host can make a big difference in the success of your outreach. Ask the event organizers to include links to your blog posts, polls and video on their blog and in their emails to attendees. (Chances are they'll be delighted that you're doing this. We'll look at more ways to collaborate with your organizer in a future post.)
Use Twitter to announce your arrival at the event (which you'll do early) and at the socials and networking events (which you'll attend), using the event hashtag. Aim to meet some of the people you've talked with online. The face-to-face contact strengthens your online relationships, and can give you a sense of the event's intangibles that can be invaluable in fine-tuning your presentation.
During your presentation, mention some of the people you've talked to and the conversations you've had. And if you've assigned homework beforehand, mention it and weave it into your speech — you can even call on a few of your new online contacts in the audience to read their answers. (In each case, clear it with them first; some people are happy to talk online, but squirm if they're singled out from the stage.)

What you've done is to bridge your online and in-person presence with these audience members. Your speech will be better, because you've had the benefit of some insight into your audience's thinking. You'll be more at home on stage, because you know there are friends — or at least some friendly acquaintances — out in the crowd. And you've laid the groundwork for ongoing relationships that last long after you leave the stage.

The social speech: How your friends and followers can help you write your next presentation

Rob Cottingham — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 22:44:21 +0000

Speechwriting is a notoriously solitary profession. You might have a few conversations with a client, their staff or — if you're writing for yourself — a mirror. But a lot of your work is going to be just you, a keyboard and the unforgiving blank screen.

At least, that used to be the case. But when you're crafting a social speech, speechwriting can be a team activity. And even though you still have to do the actual writing, you can draw on the ideas, experience and ingenuity of a large networked audience.

You may feel a little hesitant about asking your network for help, especially out in the open: aren't you supposed to be the expert? But even experts have to do research. When you ask for suggestions or ideas, you're acknowledging the collective knowledge, experience and expertise of your friends, fans and followers, and inviting them to make a contribution. That's not admitting a weakness; it's paying a compliment.

Here are five ways to bring your network in on the act the next time you're working on a speech:

Crowdsourcing: Find yourself falling back on the same old examples and cases? Shake things up by asking your network for their favourites. A tweet like "Speaking to HR conference tomorrow - what are your favorite examples of innovative recruiting? #HRINS11" can help you add a few new arrows to your quiver — for this speech, and future ones.
Storytelling: It's one thing to set out an argument and back it up with statistics. It's another — and a whole different level of emotional resonance — to illustrate that argument with a real-world story, attached to an actual human being. Ask your followers for their personal experience, and you can find some remarkable stories to share with your audience (with permission, of course). And if you want to go that extra mile, and you have a willing friend with a terrific story, a webcam clip can dramatically boost its impact.
Media: Flickr's Creative Commons archive and iStockPhoto can get you some great images. But many of your network members' hard drives are packed to the gills with their own photos and videos, some of them quite compelling. Put out a call for a specific image ("I'm looking for a photo of a really beat-up old car for my next presentation") and you may well get just what you're looking for. Alternately, you could consider having a series of related images — people making angry faces, beautiful shots of waterfalls, screenshots of error messages — and turn them into a mosaic or mini-slideshow that reinforces a particular theme in your speech. (Just do your due diligence about usage rights. Make sure the contributor is also the creator, and consider privacy issues around any identifiable individuals.)
Brainstorming: Want to see how an idea or a line of reasoning flies with people? Posting it and asking for feedback (or, if you're up for it, pushback) can help you sharpen your thinking. You may get some encouragement and validation — or maybe you'll hear an unexpected point of view that leads you to revise your approach. (Inviting perspectives from outside your organization and your usual circle can be a great way to break out of groupthink.) And even if you don't change your mind, you'll have a better idea of some of the objections your audience might raise... objections that you can address during your speech.
Polling: A service like PollDaddy, GoPollGo or Facebook Questions lets you create multiple-choice polls to unleash on your networks. Don't go looking to draw any valid statistical inferences from the results... but if you're looking for a general expression of sentiment, you'll be able to tell your audience things like "More than three-quarters of the people I asked in a Twitter poll said they feel extremely swamped by email... and not one said they felt like they were on top of it."

You can turn to a wide range of online services for inviting collaboration and soliciting contributions. Twitter is great for short questions and answers (if you're asking people to share links, for instance). LinkedIn Answers lets you reach out to your professional network. Your profile or page on Facebook or Google+ can serve as a more conversational venue for longer contributions. A Google or Wufoo form can allow people to submit structured responses (the tradeoff being a slightly higher barrier to participation and a much less social experience). And if you have the viewership or readership to reach the right crowd, your blog or YouTube page can be an even more targeted, effective way of connecting with people.

It can't just be one-way, of course, with your friends and followers giving and you taking. You need to thank your network members for their help, and encourage them to be there for you in your next speech:

Immediate thanks: Reply to everyone, if that's even remotely feasible. If you've been deluged, then you might have to consider a group thanks — but most of us should be so lucky.
Credit where it's due: If you're using someone's personal story, you want to attribute it to them (after confirming they don't mind). And you should consider crediting somebody who's provided an especially remarkable piece of information. Letting them know you gave them a shout-out in your speech is a great way to thank them.
Credit where it's due, part 2: If you've used a photo or video clip in your presentation, you'll definitely want to add a credit on-screen. Ask the contributor how they'd like to be credited – and keep the typeface readably large (without detracting from the image itself). If you've created a mosaic or a mini-slideshow, consider adding a credit slide at the end of your presentation.
Thanks afterward: A post-speech blog post or webcam video is your chance to thank everyone who contributed, and single out the folks you leaned on particularly heavily. And not just by name; linking to their online presence of choice is the sincerest form of gratitude.
Continued engagement: Now that they've contributed to your speech, your network members are going to feel vested in its outcome, and in your future presentations. Keep reaching out conversationally, even when you don't have a speech on the horizon, and reciprocate in kind. You're starting to build a more engaged, more committed following — one you'll want to devote some genuine attention to.

Is online activism effective? 5 ways to ask (and answer) the question

Alexandra Samuel — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 03:07:12 +0000

Can social media catalyze or support political change? To answer that question, you have to understand who is asking, and what they really want to know.

And it’s the fundamental question we addressed today in a panel on social media and political activism at Meshwest Vancouver. I’ve been part of a couple of similar panels recently, one hosted by UBC Journalism, the other at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). What strikes me about each of these conversations, as well as in reading articles or online conversations about this topic, is how often we are talking at cross-purposes.

Even people who might reasonably be considered “experts” in online politics and activism approach the topic from radically different perspectives, different not (just) in their left-right orientation but in the way they understand the question. These differences can enrich the conversation about online politics, but only if they can actually converge on a common conversation. Too often, we end up conversing in parallel, using the same terms but meaning such different things that we can’t really understand one another. So let me share what I observe to be the intersecting but very different agendas and frameworks that inform how people approach the topic of online activism.

Policy makers, including both public servants and politicians, want to understand how to weight, respond to, harness or control the online pressures for policy change. They are often eager to fit the phenomenon of online engagement into established, well-understood channels of public engagement, so that they have a template for how to respond: e-mails are treated like letters (but may be taken a little less seriously); online policy consultations are structured like paper surveys or town hall meetings. Channels that don’t correspond to traditional channels, like Facebook or Twitter, leave policy-makers more perplexed, so they want to know how social media participation reflects the intensity of political preferences (if I “like” the page of a given issue campaign, am I really invested in that issue as a voter?) and what kind of formal response, if any, is warranted (does every tweet to a government official require an answer?)
Political organizers and social change organizations, who are trying to catalyze large-scale participation (usually, but not always, to pressure policy-makers), want to know about proven and emergent strategies for online organizing. They typically have some theory of social change: an explicit or implicit causal model of how a given form of political expression (votes, letters, sit-ins) translates into a given form of influence (on public servants, elected representatives, citizens who pressure politicians). They are interested in how social media and other online tools compare with other mechanisms for aggregating voices and converting those voices into political pressure, or often, in how online tools can be used to drive participation in the offline forms of political expression that they recognize as politically influential.
Political scientists and academic observers typically approach the question of online activism with some kind of intellectual framework for understanding how political change occurs. This framework may be a highly formalized, recognizable school of thought, such as “institutionalism”, “realism”, “rational actor theory” etc. They will typically analyze the dynamics of online activism according to their usual analytic framework: if they are used to explaining policy change as a competition among different interest groups, they will be inclined to see the story of online activism as the story of how competing interest groups vary in their effectiveness at catalyzing grassroots pressures on policymakers.
Internet geeks are typically interested in demonstrating how the technological or social characteristics of the Internet make social change possible, or sometimes, in talking about which types of online tools or strategies enable which kinds of social or political change. By “Internet geeks”, I’m talking about a wide range of players, including digital strategists, web developers, and social media enthusiasts: in my experience, these different groups approach the question of the Internet’s political impact with a common passion for showing how the Internet matters. If they have a a priori theory of social change that tells a story about how change happens, they may try to map the Internet’s political significance onto that map of how change happens; if they haven’t got a theory of social change apart from online politics, they may construct a narrative of online political engagement that has no corresponding explanation for how political change occurs offline, and thus, may be limited in their ability to weigh online activism in relation to offline activism.
Citizen-activists are interested in how to allocate or amplify their activist efforts and political voices. They are interested in online channels that can provide the various benefits of political engagement (social interaction with other activists, identity claims, a sense of efficacy/impact) at potentially lower cost (if it’s easier to “like” an issue on Facebook than to show up at a rally). Unlike political organizers, organizations and policy makers, they are not necessarily invested in affecting policy; they may derive the benefits of activism through forms of online participation that have other kinds of pay-offs. They are interested in how online activism can make them feel politically effective, connected and/or identified, in away that is more fun or less effort than offline activism.

When you realize how differently each of these groups approaches the question of whether and how the Internet supports political change, it comes as no surprise that you get wildly varying answers. In today’s panel, for example, I found myself underlining the way in which online activism can defy the label of “slacktivism”, and have a potentially greater impact than traditional forms of offline engagement; in the process, I obscured the fact that high-efficacy forms of online activism (like the example I used of coders distributing banned software) are far less common than low-efficacy forms (such as “liking” a cause on Facebook), and that many forms of offline activism (like sophisticated pressure politics) can still have a greater impact than that Facebook “like”. No wonder that an argument that the Internet can support meaningful and consequential political engagement (as is typical for an “Internet geek”, above) often ends up sounding like a claim that the Internet is the most important or powerful source of political change.

Conversely, when you’re listening to a policy-maker, political scientist or political organizer, it’s helpful to note that the impact of online activism may well be under-estimated. If you’re evaluating an online political effort strictly in terms of its policy impact (which is often not the focus of an online political effort), or if you’re trying to make sense of it by fitting it within the framework of offline organizing, you may end up missing or misunderstanding a big part of the story.

Perhaps it is the citizen-activists, then, who are best placed to assess the absolute and relative significance of on- and offline organizing. Think of citizens as “consumers” of political change, making rational decisions about where to spend their political change dollars (or just as often, their political change-making hours) in order to get the most bang for their buck (or the most political impact for their hour). If online organizing provides the greatest pay-off, they’ll do their activism online; if they feel they make a greater impact in the street, then that’s where they will pitch their tents, metaphorically (or these days, literally) speaking.

But that assumes a level of rationality that citizens may or may not apply to their political activism; I, for one, am deeply skeptical of so-called “rational actor” models. I’m even more skeptical of any constructive political change coming out of a model that treats citizens as consumers, or policy change as a product to be consumed. Most of all, I’m skeptical about citizens having access to credible information about where their time will be best invested: if experts can’t provide a coherent answer to the question of whether online activism has an impact, or even a coherent way of analyzing the problem, I’m not sure how the average voter is meant to make sense of the choice between on- and offline activism.

The reality, I suspect, is that few citizens make that choice per se. They are living their lives online, and they are engaging in political action there because that is where they live. Or they are living their lives offline, as much as they can, and want to keep their political engagement in what they perceive as the “real” world. They’re not asking whether online or offline activism is more powerful. They are engaging where they live. The policymakers and the organizers and the analysts and the Internet geeks can only choose whether and how far to follow them.

Gmail's new design offers plenty of white space... and a good example

Rob Cottingham — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 18:54:03 +0000

Gmail has had a very interesting redesign. (I love the big fat red "Compose" button. Doesn't work on me, though; I press it, and I'm just as anxious as ever.) You can read about some of the details on the Gmail blog, including an account of the choices they made around designing the left sidebar.

That redesign has a number of people upset at the amount of white space it involves. I get that: it's great to be able to skim tons of information at a glance. And nobody leaps out of bed grinning from ear to ear and says, "I get to do lots of scrolling today!"

But white space has its virtues, too. In the hands of a skilled designer, it can guide a user's focus to the handful of things that matter the most on a page - maybe even letting you think about one thing at a time. (I know: heresy!) Yes, lots and lots of information can be great, but there's real truth to the adage that when everything's important, nothing's important.

Back when I was designing leaflets and mailings for Members of Parliament, there was a constant battle between those of us who wanted to maintain some structure on the page and a sense of hierarchy, and the MPs who wanted to add just one more paragraph of information. "It can go right here - see that blank space? Oh, and there's more blank space over there. You know, if you dropped the type size to nine points, we could fit a lot more stuff on!"

Thing is, for a small number of constituents, the jam-packed-with-information, looks-like-a-Dr.-Bronner's-Castile-Soap-label leaflets actually worked. They loved 'em. And for those few dozen people, if we'd had the time and resources, it would have made sense to create a separate version.

But for the thousands of others we were trying to reach, not so much.

Google does have the resources, and in addition to the airy default (or "Comfortable") layout, you can choose "Cozy" and "Compact" (or, as I call it - affectionately - "Bill Blaikie mode"). If you're feeling the need to flood your eyeballs, by all means make the switch.

But maybe give "Comfortable" a chance first. You may surprise yourself.

And then ask yourself if your web site has enough room for your users to breathe - even if it means a little scrolling.

Using social media to turn your next speech into an ongoing conversation

Rob Cottingham — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 21:44:18 +0000

For all the effort that goes into a speech - especially a big one - they're over surprisingly quickly. You reach a few dozen, a few hundred or (if you have a huge crowd) a few thousand people for a brief while, and then you walk off the stage, and the audience walks out the door.

For a few minutes, you've made a significant connection with those people. But all the potential relationships and conversations that could arise from that connection walk out the door with them.

That's why a growing number of speakers are using social media and online networks to start building those relationships, and expand both their audience and their impact. From Twitter hashtags to YouTube clips, public speaking - the oldest broadcast medium there is - is rapidly embracing the digital realm.

And over the next few weeks, this blog will look at some of the ways you can use social tools to turn those one-speech stands into ongoing relationships.

I can imagine a lot of speakers' and speechwriters' hackles going up right now. You're already going to an incredible amount of effort: writing, reviewing, rehearsing, preparing slides. Why would you add even more work?

Actually, because you're going to so much effort. You want to see as much of a return as possible on all that hard work. And just as social tools have dramatically increased the potential audience for everyone from writers to photographers to (cough) cartoonists, they can do (and are doing) the same for speakers.

You have an audience far outside the walls of whatever meeting room, banquet hall or conference center you're in. Why not address them too? And for that matter, the people who are attending your speech are probably going to be interested in what you have to say before and after your speech as well as during those 20 minutes when you're behind the mic. Why not give them a way to engage with you apart from sitting and passively listening?

And while right now that's an opportunity to stand out from the crowd, it won't long before it's the norm. Audience expectations are changing, as nearly every one-to-many communication channel they use is opening up to many-to-many conversation. It won't be long before participating in Twitter backchannels is the minimum level of engagement many speakers are expected to offer.

Just what that looks like differs from speaker to speaker. For some, it means expanding their reach by posting clips from their speech on YouTube and Vimeo, and uploading the slides to Slideshare. For others, it means crowdsourcing some of their material by posing questions on LinkedIn and Facebook. And for still others, it means carrying on conversations with their online and face-to-face audiences — via their blogs before and after their speech, and via a hashtag-based chat while they're on-stage.

All of this can be powerful... but much more so when those individual tools are integrated into an overall strategy to connect, converse and collaborate.

One caveat: there aren't any guarantees. It's not like social media magic will turn a dull speech into a viral success (at least, not one you'll appreciate - a few million views on a YouTube video labelled "Can You Believe How Long This Guy Goes On About Carriage Bolts?" may not be what you're looking for.)

But when you do have a compelling message (and what other kind of speech is really worth giving?) then your network can magnify it many times over - and help it become a conversation with many of the people you want to reach the most.

Platform requirements for delivering an online course to 4,000 businesses

Alexandra Samuel — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 18:26:22 +0000

What's the best way to deliver online training to individuals and small businesses?

At Social Signal, we've explored a number of options over the years. Now we're developing content for an online course that launches in January 2012, and the team we working with needs your help in identifying the best courseware solutions or courseware developers/integrators.

This course offering will be seen by 4,000 companies within the first 90 days of launch, so it needs to run on a robust and polished platform. We are considering both pre-existing course delivery platforms, and custom-built solutions.

I've documented the high-level project requirements (below) and would love to hear recommendations. Have you taken an online course that wowed you -- not only with its content, but with the ease and polish of the online interface? Have you delivered an online course using a platform or working with a developer that you would recommend? Are you a vendor with a proven solution or a portfolio of online training projects you've built for other customers? I'd love to hear from you, either in comments below, via Twitter, or via email (alex [at] socialsignal [dot] com). (Vendors, please read the note at the end of this post before e-mailing.)

Requirements: Essentials

Web-based course delivery
Intuitive, polished interface: this should look great and be a pleasure to use
Support for multiple media types: video, text, imagesRobust, per-segment paywalls (i.e. students should be able to buy 1 course unit, all 24 course units, or any combination)
Speed of deployment: platform must be live, with all content loaded, by Jan 15 (client to supply all media files and all text in HTML)

Requirements: Important

Alternate distribution channels: apps in app stores (Android and iOS), ebooks (Kindle, Nook, iBooks) and/or physical distribution (DVD/USB drive); purchasing a course on one platform (e.g. web) gets you access on all other distribution channels (e.g. iOS, Kindle); same set of options to buy individual courses or complete package
Social network integration (ability to share selected quotes/videos beyond the paywall via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook etc)
Interactive worksheets & tests
Some mechanism for student-to-student discussion, e.g. through forums or comments
Tech support: Ideal solution will include a tech support option that you support, addressing any user issues with lost passwords, confusion about how to use the site, etc.

A note to vendors

I am open to direct pitches by vendors, but we will only schedule demos or test drives with a handful of highly likely candidates. If you would like us to consider your platform, please include in your email:

Examples of past projects and clients
Link(s) to your platform or client projects
Paywall approach/expertise
Whether & how you support distribution via non-web channels (e.g. apps, DVD)
Licensing/development model: How are your fees structured (if a licensing model) or what are likely to pay (ballpark costs for a custom dev project building a platform for a 24-unit course)

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and suggestions. I'll let you know what we choose -- and when we're able to share more details about the course itself!

Good news: you don't have to follow people back on Twitter

Rob Cottingham — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 06:31:05 +0000

I've just read another blog post about someone who was accused of arrogance for not following people on Twitter just because they happen to follow him. And it's driving me crazy - crazy enough to have left a comment on his post, and crazy enough to adapt it below.

There are many people out there who will tell you it's a hard-and-fast rule of etiquette: if you don't follow back, you're a boor. (Some of them have suggested it's a crime.)

This arbitrary law of mandatory reciprocity actually makes Twitter less useful, because unless you're incredibly lucky, there are going to be people who follow you who aren't that interesting to you. Maybe they tweet about their cats all day. Maybe they're zealots for a religion, a political view or an operating system (cough) that you don't believe in, share or use. Maybe their entire Twitter feed is devoted to complaints that other people don't follow them back.

Or maybe they're following a few dozen people, but you have several thousand following you, and if you follow them all back, then it's going to flood your feed and you'll miss some conversations you'd really like to have.

The functional purpose of following someone is because you want to hear what they have to say. That's why Twitter created the feature; that's how they suggest you use it.

If you just want to show your appreciation to someone for having followed you, then courtesy already offers a tool for that: the thank-you. It's been around for millennia, and it has the virtue of being unambiguous. Twitter's pretty good at delivering it, too.

What's being invented here with the creation of arbitrary rules like following back isn't etiquette; it's a whole bunch of new reasons to take offense at someone else's behaviour. And when we tell people have to make a tool less useful in the name of being polite (which is what demanding that people use lists to follow the people they're actually interested in boils down to), all we're doing is throwing up barriers to genuine connection and conversation.

Isn't that the opposite of why we have courtesy in the first place?

Update: Jeff Haden, whose post sparked this one, has posted that he's reconsidering his policy of not following anyone on Twitter. "I won’t follow people just because they follow me. But I will start tweeting when I find cool people or ideas I think others might benefit from. I will start engaging in conversations."

Don't delete online criticism. Embrace it.

Rob Cottingham — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 20:15:57 +0000

First posted on ReadWriteWeb

So it’s happened again: a company comes under fire for some misdeed — perceived or actual — and gets a few critical comments on their Facebook Page. And their crisis communications strategy is to pour gasoline on that little flame by deleting those comments.

The latest folks to do this are the people at ChapStick, who ran a print ad that offended a few folks. Those critics posted their complaints on ChapStick’s Facebook page (most of them quite civil). ChapStick’s page administrators then deleted the comments; this case adds an ironic new wrinkle because of the ad copy pointing people to their Facebook presence, which reads “Be heard.”

After enduring a torrent of criticism for deleting the criticism, ChapStick posted an apology for the ad and a sort-of explanation for deleting the comments, saying they follow Facebook guidelines and “remove posts that use foul language, have repetitive messaging, those that are considered spam-like (multiple posts from a person within a short period of time) and are menacing to fans and employees.” Which, with most of the comments, wasn’t the case.

It seems to bear repeating: brands, learn to take some criticism on your social web presences. Why? Because…

Accusations of suppressing those comments are often more damaging than the original criticisms themselves.
The presence of critical comments gives the conversation happening on your Facebook Page, blog or other presence a sense of authenticity. That means the positive user comments carry more weight than they would if your site had nothing but obsequious flattery.
A critical comment can be an opportunity for engagement on your part. It’s your chance to answer a criticism, resolve a complaint, correct some misinformation. And you may be catching a little issue before it becomes a much bigger one.
A critical comment can be an spur to participation and conversation by your community. Let’s face it; for most brands and organizations, excess participation usually isn’t the problem with their Facebook pages.

So maybe it’s time to learn to love the negative. A thicker skin not only saves you from the sting of a little criticism; it can let you realize from genuine benefit… and keep you from becoming the latest high-profile case study in why comment deletion can backfire.

How to spur reluctant bloggers

Rob Cottingham — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:37:23 +0000

"Why won't they blog?"

That's a lament I hear from community managers, social media practitioners and communications directors who are begging, cajoling, coaxing and wheedling coworkers, trying to get them to post something to their organization's or company's blog.

It can be tempting to throw your hands up. "If your team hates blogging, you need a new team," suggests one post. The author adds, "They don’t really hate blogging. They hate their job: and that’s a problem beyond the fact that you can’t get them to blog."

True, someone who hates their job is unlikely to blog about it - at least, not in a way that would make their employer happy. But that isn't the only reason that people say they hate blogging. Here are a few others... and some ways you can respond before you give up on your coworkers:

Do they hate blogging... or do they hate the time it takes?

If your workplace is like many others, employees have seen their workloads grow, with less support for getting the job done. If you're expecting them to crank out blog posts, but you haven't taken anything off their plates to compensate, you may want to look at some adjustments.

Do they hate blogging... or do they hate the kind of blogging you're asking them to do?

Are you expecting detailed, lengthy posts from busy people? Consider starting off by asking for contributions that have a much lower footprint on their time and attention. Are you asking them to write puff pieces about what a fantastic organization they work for? Give them the latitude to be more authentic, and to talk more about their own work passions without having to pump up your brand.

Do they hate blogging... or do they hate doing something they don't think they're good at?

Have you offered training - not just in the technical details of your blogging platform, but in how to write blog posts quickly and easily? Do you encourage them to start out small - for instance, with one-paragraph contributions to a longer post - and work their way up? Have you considered an informal peer mentoring system, group workshops, or assigning a communications specialist to help them write their first few posts?

Do they hate blogging... or do they hate being exposed to the public?

Some people love being in the public eye (cough). Others find the idea intrusive, or even terrifying. Try finding an area of their work they feel more comfortable sharing with the world. Give them the option of starting out by blogging on the intranet, where their exposure is limited to their coworkers.

Do they hate blogging... or do they hate doing something they think is pointless?

More to the point, something that's pointless to them. Look at it from their point of view: maybe you're asking them to put their urgent work on hold so you can get some content for a trendy blog they suspect will be a flash in the pan. You can - and should - talk to them about the blog's significance for the organization. But you should also figure out how the blog can advance things they care about, like a professional passion, their profile within the organization, or a cause they're committed to.

Do they hate blogging... or do they hate being the first on the dance floor?

You'll often find it harder to get contributors to a new communications vehicle than an established one. And even if the blog has been around for a while, people may not want to be the first ones from their department or job function to post. But there are still ways to break the ice - for instance, by writing a series of posts based on brief interviews with a few of the kind of individuals you'd like to see contributing. That can be the spark they need to jump in.

Do they hate blogging... or do they hate, well, you?

Okay, not hate. But could your relationship be stronger? Do you have bridges to build with other departments before you can start asking for their help? Have you worked as hard to understand them as you would with an external audience you want to reach?

Do they hate blogging... or do they hate what it means in your workplace's culture?

Is yours an organization that welcomes honest conversation, or are people legitimately worried about inadvertently saying the wrong thing? Do you have a "tall poppy" culture where it's safer to keep your head down and blend in? If you're having trouble getting one or two people to participate, then maybe - maybe - the problem's on their end. But widespread resistance to blogging may alert you to deeper issues. If that ends up spurring your organization to make badly needed changes, then that refusal to blog may turn out to a valuable contribution after all.

Use tags to replace the RSS feed from Google Reader's "Share" button

Rob Cottingham — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 17:14:14 +0000

Updated: Yes, you get a news feed from this tip... but it's only available if you authenticate as the user who created it. I'm digging around to see if there's a solution.

Subsequent update: I'm not sure if the issue is that I got caught between feature updates, because this was working last night, but there now appears to be no way around the authentication requirement. What's more, you can't just create any old tag in the Edit tags field; you have to choose from your list of existing folders. Lesson for Rob: wait a bit before posting your Handy Tip™.

Some big changes came yesterday to Google Reader, the venerable RSS newsreader that has become part of the texture of daily online life for a lot of us. The design has changed dramatically, in line with changes made to most other Google services. But there are big functional changes too, as Google aims to consolidate social activity in Google+.

That means the end of nearly all of Google Reader's sharing features. There's no more Share link; no more Followers; and no more public pages for starred or shared items. Instead, you click Send To under any post, and share it through one of a variety of web services (most notably Google+).

For many people, that will work just fine. But some of us have been heavy users of that Share link... and at least in my case, it's been a great way to populate an RSS* feed of posts I come across in Reader. That feed can then do everything from generating Twitter posts to updating a widget on my blog.

If that's one way you've been using Reader, then good news: you can still create an RSS feed of blog posts you flag from inside Reader. Better yet, you can draw on one of Reader's lesser-known features - tags - to createseveral RSS feeds.

Here's how it works:

Look at the bottom of any post in Reader. You'll see several links: star, +1, Email, Keep unread, Send to, and - most interestingly - Edit tags.
Come up with a short distinct keyword that you want to use for shared items. Maybe it's just the letter "s". From now on, you'll be tagging any item you want to add to that RSS feed with that keyword.
Click the Edit tags link. Enter your sharing keyword.
Once you click Save, the keyword becomes a hyperlink. Click it, and you'll be taken to a page listing all of the posts that you've tagged with that particular keyword.
Click on the Folder settings... button at the top of the page. Then click "View details and statistics" in the menu that appears.
Hurray! You'll see an URL for the RSS feed for this tag. Use it the same way as the RSS feed for Shared Items.

Note that this isn't a new feature - you've always been able to find an RSS feed for any particular tag. But the latest changes mean it's just become even more useful.

* Actually, it's the Atom format. But people seem to be more familiar with the term "RSS", so I'm using it generically here.

BBC: podcasting still around, and it's bigger than Twitter

Rob Cottingham — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 23:17:47 +0000

Podcasting, as any social media guru worth her or his robes knows, is dead. Like so many social technologies, it failed to jump the adoption gap, break the hype cycle or clear the Great Hurdle of At-First-Raving-and-then-Dismissive Punditry.

Except that the common wisdom - that podcasts are the 3-1/2" floppy disk of the 2000s - has been lost on one group of people: listeners.

According to a BBC story from the summer,

[P]odcasting has continued to grow and grow.

More than eight million adults in the UK - around 16% of the adult population - have downloaded a podcast, with almost half listening to one at least once a week. This figure is echoed in the US.

As a comparison, this is still a greater percentage of people than use Twitter.

And while many of those podcasts are just repurposed content from broadcasters and other big media voices, they're creating a channel that the rest of us can use as well, whether it's as individuals or organizations.

The lesson? (One that I have to constantly remind myself of?) Don't dismiss a platform just because it isn't on the front pages, or being talked up by the hottest social media voices. It may well be the humble, unsung hero of your next foray into social media.

Three handy tools for engaging on Google+

Rob Cottingham — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 06:03:35 +0000

If you've had the same experience of Google+ that I have, then you're probably loving the more expansive conversational room, the in-context shared content, the simplicity of Circles, the immediacy of Hangouts.

But you may be missing the handy tools that more-established platforms have developed (or that others have developed for them). I'd like to share things right from Google Reader... share any web page with one click... and see who's been sharing other pages on Plus.

You too? Then I have good news.

The folks I cartoon for every week at ReadWriteWeb unleashed a rapid-fire series of posts today, each with a handy tip or tool for making Google+ engagement that little bit easier:

Find something you want to share in one of the newsfeeds you follow on Google Reader? Here's how to set up a custom sharing link in every Google Reader post, using the powerful (and unsung) "Send to" feature.
Landed on a great web resource you want to share with your Circles? This post has a bookmarklet will let you do it in a single click.
Want to know who's shared a particular page on Google+? Here's another post, with another bookmarklet that uses Topsy's new Google+ search service (currently in beta).

I'm delighted to see more and more tools coming out to support the Google+ ecosystem. I've found it to be a great place for more indepth, thoughtful conversations, and for discovering content with more context than just the usual "OMG u have 2 c this!!!"

Got any favourite tools, browser extensions or other Google+ add-ons?

Twitter for Good: positive social change, 140 characters at a time

Rob Cottingham — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 22:08:08 +0000

By now, Twitter's media stereotype as the place you come to share details of your last meal is finally starting to fade, giving way to a growing understanding of its real impact on the world.

And while a lot of attention has been going to Twitter as a tool for marketing and PR, Twitter is also emerging as a powerful tool for social change. From fundraising to pay for a Cambodian student's tuition to organizing the street protests that marked the Arab Spring, people around the world are using Twitter to advance important causes.

Now there's a new guide for anyone hoping to make a difference in the world using social media: Twitter for Good: Change the World, One Tweet at A Time, by Claire Diaz Ortiz. (If her name sounds familiar, that may well be because she leads social innovation and philanthropy at Twitter.)

I enjoyed her talk at BlogWorld last year, where she set out her TWEET (Target, Write, Engage, Explore, Track) model of Twitter effectiveness. So I'm looking forward to reading the book, which launched today.

And if you are too, good news. Until midnight tonight, Twitter for Good is Twitter for Good for Free: you can download the electronic version at no cost from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and iTunes.

And if you miss that deadline, you can always enter to win a copy on Claire's blog.

When social creations take flight

Rob Cottingham — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 21:03:29 +0000

Five years ago this summer, in a boardroom at Vancity, William Azaroff was unveiling a new online community to an audience of Vancouver-area bloggers — a community we had worked with Vancity to conceive, build and launch. Also in attendance (maybe explaining his later affection for computers and gadgets): our one-week-old second child. (No, not the little one there on the left; that's a stock photo. Ours is cuter... no offence, ©stockphoto.com/tarinoel.)

Today, that child is his own amazing human being, and if you get me started on just how wonderful he is, I won't shut up — which is parental pride at work.

And I feel a shadow of that parental pride toward that online community we were launching half a decade ago this month, called ChangeEverything.ca.

When you create an online social project, and then step back and let your client run with it, it's not that different from watching a beloved child leave home as a young adult. You fret, you worry, you check in... but most of all, you can't wait to see who (or, in the case of our online communities, what) they become.

Three of the online projects we've helped to build over the past few years passed some pretty important milestones recently — kind of the equivalent of hearing that a grandchild is on the way.

With one project, it's a profound transformation; with another, a rebirth; and with a third, a huge step forward to a whole new level of impact.

We'll be blogging about each one over the next few days. But for now, I'm struck by how apt the comparison is between building a community and raising a child.

You can provide infrastructure (whether it's a server or a house). You can manage content (blog posts or books, videos or video games). You can monitor metrics (analytics or report cards) and respond accordingly. You can offer guidance, set and enforce rules, and give them all the love in the world.

But in the end, you can neither determine nor predict where they'll go. It may be that they veer off in a much different direction than you'd planned, or surprise you with some completely unexpected ability. They will become their own amazing, astonishing, wonderful organism.

And you won't be able to shut up about them.

Common Craft's latest move helps point the way for content creators

Rob Cottingham — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:57:39 +0000

Sachi and Lee LeFever's company Common Craft has reinvented itself a few times... and each time, they just get more and more useful. From an online community consulting firm, Common Craft turned into a creator and provider of simple, charming and monstrously popular explanatory videos - starting with the now-famous RSS in Plain English.

Now they've relaunched Common Craft with a membership model for anyone who wants to help educate others. Join for a reasonable fee (there's a reduced rate for schools and non-profits) and you gain access to the entire Common Craft library, which you can use in presentations or embed on your site.

There are a lot of reasons I'm delighted by this latest evolution, not the least of which is my happiness at seeing friends succeed. But maybe the biggest one is this:

Nearly every traditional business model for content creation is in turmoil these days. Books, newspapers, television, movies, music — all of those industries are scrambling to cope with the challenges of a new and dynamic digital world. So when someone comes along who can create something terrific, who can do it really well, and can turn that into a viable business, it offers real hope for anyone who wants to earn a livelihood from their creative talents and skills.

Maybe, on a good day, I could whip up an explanation of what I mean using paper cutouts and a whiteboard. But I think I'll leave that to the experts.

Google Circles is great. But I'm waiting for Google Venn Diagrams.

Rob Cottingham — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 16:02:49 +0000

If you’ve managed to sprint inside of Google+ during one of those brief periods when the front door has been left ajar, then the first thing you’ve seen has been Google Circles. It allows you to organize your contacts into lists, based on how you know them, how much you trust them, whether you consider them cool, how you want to communicate with them… whatever criteria you want.

It’s a great feature, done in an appealing way. But it only goes so far.

If I want to create a circle called Close friends, for people I deeply trust, and another called nptech, for folks active in the non-profit technology field, I can. But say there’s something I want to share only with close friends in the nptech community. There’s no way to say “Share this with the people who are in both of those circles, but not with the people who are in only one of them.” Instead, I’d have to — manually — create a new Close nptech friends circle.

So either I’m creating a lot of circles, some of which I may only use a handful of times, or I’m missing out on the potential power of the feature.

The thing is, this is exactly the kind of issue Google deals with easily in its search function. (Yes, Google still does search.) If I wanted to search for content that contains both the phrase “Close friends” and the word “nptech”, I’d just enter this:

“close friends” nptech

If I wanted pages that contained “close friends” or ”nptech”, or both, I’d enter this:

“close friends”|nptech

And if I wanted pages that contained “close friends” but not ”nptech”:

“close friends” -nptech

I can do it (and much more complex queries) with search terms. I can do it with iTunes playlists. Why not with Circles - either post-by-post, or with automatic smart circles?

Added competitive bonus: I can't do it with Facebook Lists.

Facebook Group or Facebook Page? Time to decide... now.

Rob Cottingham — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 22:25:13 +0000

There's an issue people raise constantly in my seminars and workshops, in a conversation that usually goes something like this:

Them: "Should we have a Facebook Group or a Facebook Page?"

Me: "Well, Facebook wants you to use Pages for organizational profiles, and Groups for small group collaboration..."

Them: "You see, we've had a Facebook Group for a few years now, and it does really well. Will Facebook convert it to a Page for us?"

Me: "Funny thing: when they introduced Pages, they told people they'd take requests to convert existing Groups. But after keeping a lot of folks on a waiting list for months, they abruptly announced they wouldn't switch any more Groups."

Them: "So what do we do?"

Me: "Well, either live with your Group - and its shortcomings - or create a new Page, and post messages to your Group's members, asking them to Like the Page. Some will come over; a lot probably won't. You can also maintain both simultaneously for a while, but that can be a lot more work, and you're diluting participation."

Them: "Geez, those choices kind of suck."

Me: "Yes. Yes, they do."

Well, for those who haven't jumped to Pages yet, Facebook is now arguably making the situation a little easier: you're about to be pushed.

Facebook is "archiving" Groups created under their old process, and converting them to the new-style group feature. They'll port over your content... but your group's members will all be kicked out:

Keep in mind that the new groups format was designed to help you share with the small groups of people in your life. If you’ve been using your old group to promote your business, we recommend you create a Page instead. Learn more about the differences between groups and Pages.

(By the way, there is no FAQ to explain Facebook's rationale in capitalizing "Pages" but not "groups".)

So my advice to pretty much everyone now is to start a Page as their organization's Facebook presence. And if you've been relying on a Group until now, this is the time to start gently prodding your members to move over to the new Page:

Message your Group's members (yes, Facebook uses "message" as a verb). Let them know you'll be wrapping things up on the Group, and direct them to the address of the Page.
Post similar messages...
- to your Group's wall
- in any active discussions.
- in the Description field for your Group's "Info" tab
Send a follow-up message every week or so.
As soon as you have enough Likes on your new Page, be sure to claim a username for it.

And, of course, promote your new Page on your organization's blog. (Social Signal's is right here. And my cartoon's is here. See how easy that was?)

Why attribution is important - even (especially) on Tumblr and Posterous

Rob Cottingham — Tue, 24 May 2011 17:06:51 +0000

Not long ago, I saw a reference on Twitter to a clever illustration of either Wolverine or two Batmans looking at each other. I clicked through to a Tumblr page, where someone had reblogged it from someone else on Tumblr, who had reblogged it from someone else, and so on.

I wanted to send a quick note of appreciation to the artist, and have a look at some of her or his other work. But there was no credit to the person who created it. It was only after a dive into Google that I found the original artist: the brilliant Olly Moss. (Really - you have to see the illustration.) Others have also identified him, and credit is gradually rippling outward. (Interestingly, his blog is on Tumblr, too.)

But much of that huge initial viral wave passed him by — as it so often does on Tumblr, Posterous and their less-well-known short-form-blogging cousins. Those platforms are designed to make it quick and easy to share media... and even easier to reblog it.

Spend enough time on Tumblr, though, and you'll notice something is often missing from the photos, cartoons, videos and Photoshopped gags that populate so many of its pages: attribution.

Giving credit to the creator of a piece of work you use is a pretty basic standard of behaviour — and it's become more tangibly important with the rise of the free economy. Even if we aren't getting paid when people republish something we've made, we can hope for compensation through attribution.

For creators, the reward for creating and sharing is often no longer monetary, at least not directly. Instead, it comes in the form of:

reputation
instrumental advantage (for instance, if inbound links to content you've created help boost your traffic)
attention
a sense of achievement through reaching and affecting people.

All of those rely at least partly on attribution. If nobody knows you're the one who shot that amazing photograph that just went OMFG viral, then your reputation doesn't budge a bit. If there's no link to your site from that infographic you created that's just been reblogged a few thousand times, you won't see any traffic - and won't build an audience.

This has happened to me a few times with my cartoons. At first, I'd thought it had to be a deliberate thing because of the number of steps I thought had to be involved : save image to hard drive, fire up image editor, crop image to remove credit, save image, and finally post. One incident in particular stands out because the image had (for me) a huge response: nearly 600 reposts and Likes.

But once I looked at the profile of the user who'd first posted it, I started to reconsider my presumption of guilt. Beth Tucker has social media smarts and an engaging online voice. And when I contacted her, my assumption turned out to in fact be wrong. She was mortified to have dropped the credit; she'd used a screen-capturing utility to snag the cartoon, and had inadvertently cropped out the credit at the top. (And she'd acted in good faith, too, maintaining the link to its original home on ReadWriteWeb.) She apologized and quickly replaced the image with a complete version.

It was one of the most gracious exchanges I've had online. (And I'm now following her on Twitter.)

The experience suggests to me that there's hope. For the most part, people aren't failing to give credit out of malice or dishonesty. Some just can't be bothered; with others, it's an accident; and for many others, the information isn't available because they're discovering the content second-, third- or hundredth-hand, and the attribution fell off far up that reposting chain.

The fact that so many of the posts on their platforms don't include creator credit suggests that Tumblr and co. have some work to do to make it both easier to apply attribution, and clearer that they expect it of their users. Kearn makes a strong case for that in a blog post about hunting down the original source for my cartoon:

Someone posts something cool on a site that usually accredits things well and it leads back to Tumblr, where there’s no clear attribution of where it came from, so people give up and just say it was from there.... Most of the time you can’t even search for where it originally came from (even with tineye, which is awesome), because it has been so heavily reposted on Tumblr without notes on where it came from, that the search engines just show you a hundred Tumblr links.

Those of us creating sharable content can make attribution easier, too:

If you're feeling geeky, adding a few lines of code to your template can generate a snippet that people can copy and paste into a blog post to repost content from your site. I've done that on Noise to Signal.
Tell your visitors clearly how you'd like your content credited, and what permissions you're offering. (Your Creative Commons notice isn't a bad place to do that.) For instance, you can say "Feel free to repost my content non-commercially. Please link back to the page you found it on and credit it to (your name here)."
If you put Twitter's Tweet Button on your site, you attach your Twitter user name to attach to a piece of content when people share it. Here's how to add yours.
Embed attribution in your content. My URL is part of every cartoon image I post. Yes, it can be lopped off by mistake - but that doesn't happen very often.
Remember my experience: you don't want to mistake a fan for a thief. If you find someone has reposted something of yours without crediting you, don't go in with phasers blazing. Instead, give them the benefit of the doubt and start with a politely-phrased request. (Unless you work for the recording industry, in which case that attitude seems to be a condition of employment.) Of course, if they're claiming they created it, all bets are off. Cry havoc, and all that. (Depending on how grievous the situation, you may want to start thinking about - sigh - legal options.)

And for anyone reposting content, make sure you attribute it. (If you're already crediting everything you post, then bless you.) If you're reposting it from a site that failed to credit the author, and the author's identity isn't readily apparent, then take the few minutes needed to track it down:

TinEye is an image search engine that can help you find where a particular image has been posted elsewhere. It's great for tracking down an original source... and handy for checking for uses of your own work, too.
Google web, image, video and blog search let you unleash the full force of Google's sophisticated search queries. There's an art to choosing search keywords: you want them to be peculiar enough to the content in question to filter out irrelevant results, but general enough that it's likely the content creator used them. A little persistence will go a long way.
Popular YouTube videos are often re-uploaded by users who had nothing to do with creating them. So before you share that great YouTube find, run a search on some obvious keywords — and sort by the upload date. That way, you can go back in time to the original posting. (Sorting by date is great for blog searches, too.)

And link to the source. You're doing a service to your visitors who like that one piece of content, making it easier for them to go find others like it. It's also a nice thing to do for the author, who gets a little traffic, attention and search engine juice. And it makes it likelier that the author can find you, and possibly strike up a conversation. (I've met some of the nicest people because they've shared my stuff.)

I'll give the last word to Beth, who says "as more content consumers become curators, I think this issue is going to become more pervasive." Agreed.

Now, your turn. Do you make a point of attributing when you share content? And how can content creators — and platforms like Tumblr — make that easier?

Everything I needed to know about social networking, I learned from my mom

Rob Cottingham — Sun, 08 May 2011 19:24:29 +0000

When my mother died in early 2004, Friendster was the domain of the young'uns, MySpace was barely out the door and Facebook was still a month from launching.

But for someone who never saw used the word "friend" as a verb in her life, JoAnne Cottingham taught me an awful lot about social networking.

Things like being of service, and giving instead of taking. Mom volunteered on everything from the local community association to the church. (It got to the point where someone witnessed a break-in at our home - the burglar walked in through the unlocked front door - and thought nothing of it except "Poor JoAnne; people aren't even bothering to knock any more when they walk in with more work for her to do.")

Or like offering something of value when you invite people over. Mom would cook and bake for days before a party, stuffing the fridge and freezer with a parade of treats that would then reappear, tray by delicious tray, over the course of the evening.

Or like finding a niche and filling it. When they moved to a small rural community, one where news coverage was next to non-existent, Mom and Dad started a local newspaper. It was a labour of love, not profit; a month where their revenue exceeded their printing and distribution costs was a pretty good month. But they kept it going for years.

And when I'm having my greatest impact online, it's almost always when I'm doing one of those things I saw Mom do so often in the offline world.

She didn't have analytics to track their progress, or an ROI measurement strategy so she could tell if what she was doing was worthwhile, but she did have a clear reward for her efforts: a large, broad circle of friends. As Mom and Dad's kids, we were often beneficiaries of the goodwill they earned, with warmth and friendliness automatically extended to us by virtue of our parents' contributions. And toward the end of their lives, when they had to draw on that community more than they were able to give to it, those people were there for them.

What did your mother teach you about social networking?

Want to stop election-night tweeting? Appeal to online culture

Rob Cottingham — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 16:49:08 +0000

Hi, Elections Canada. We go back a long way, you and me. I'm the kid who had your colour-coded riding map masking-taped to my bedroom wall.

So let me offer some friendly advice. You want to stop people from tweeting election results from Eastern Canada before folks in Western Canada have had a chance to cast their ballots?

Then don't use section 329 of the Canada Elections Act. The full weight of the law is way too blunt an instrument.

Instead, think about the medium. You’re trying to get people to change their online behaviour, right? So look to the social mores and codes of conduct that govern behaviour on the Internet.

And on the Internet, there are few sins more egregious, few offences less forgivable, than the spoiler.

By “spoiler”, I mean a post that gives away a key plot point or twist from a TV show, movie or — yes, even in 2011 — book before it’s common knowledge. And unless you take measures to prevent people from stumbling onto it and spoiling the surprise, you pay a heavy social price for posting one. (Most recently, an extra on the hit show Glee recently tweeted a massive spoiler about the show that brought the almighty wrath of the Intertubes down on her head.)

People on the West Coast resent seeing spoilers on Twitter the night of a big Grey’s Anatomy or Chuck episode. So why not position election night returns the same way? Play up the suspense, the drama, the thrills and chills that westerners will miss out on if those eastern swine insist on ruining the ending. (If there was ever a time to manipulate regional grievances toward a public policy goal, this is it.)

Next, encourage the use of the #tweettheresults hashtag… and then educate users on how to filter it out of their Twitter feeds for the hours between the closing of polls in Newfoundland and the end of voting in B.C. and Yukon. (As an added bonus, promote tools like the Canadian-made HootSuite, which lets you do that kind of filtering easily.)

(Speaking of #tweettheresults, check out TweetTheResults.ca, the site that Alexandra Samuel and Darren Barefoot created to capture the conversation around this issue.)

Then publicize ways people can conceal spoilers on forums and blogs (if they’re still using such antiquated technologies) from the eyes of casual readers:

the famed invisio-text markup that many forums like to use (which makes the text the same color as the background, requiring people to select the text with their cursor to read it)
a “Spoilers follow!” warning, followed by spoiler space: two dozen or so hard carriage returns, to push the spoiler text below the screen; readers must deliberately scroll down to read it
for the slightly geeky, a combination of JavaScript and CSS that lets you hide information unless a reader clicks on a link.

The result? Casual online folks won’t accidentally discover early results, and the people who were actively seeking them out can still find them — but it’ll take roughly as much effort as phoning, texting or emailing an eastern friend or relative.

You’re welcome.

How a big push and a little help can convince people to change

Rob Cottingham — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 22:44:06 +0000

This is the story of how one elephant drove us to make a change... and another elephant, courtesy of Switch authors Chip and Dan Heath, showed us the way.

We've been meaning to leave domain registrar GoDaddy for a long time. The endless come-ons and up-sells, the relentless and depressing sexism of their marketing, and one or two appalling posts on CEO Bob Parsons' blog all combined to alienate us completely from the company over the years.

If it had been a question of switching grocery stores or vitamin brands, we'd have done it long ago. But registrars tend to make leaving kind of complex; they don't see it as being in their interest to have one big Transfer All of Your Domains Somewhere Else button. And since we own dozens of domains, the barrier to action was even greater. Switching domains was on our list of things to do... someday.

Enter the first elephant.

In March, Parsons uploaded a video himself shooting and killing an elephant in Zimbabwe, and there was an immediate outcry. Parsons' defence that the killing was an act of humanity, helping villagers protect their crops and providing a little badly-needed meat, was undermined by the video itself, which was flippant and self-promotional.

(The video has since been re-edited to replace the initial title labelling it a vacation video and to remove the shots of Parsons standing triumphantly over the elephant, and the AC/DC music that ran over the footage of villagers — wearing GoDaddy caps — stripping meat off the elephant's carcass, as well as closeups of the villagers and company logos.)

I watched the video on March 31, agog. But it wasn't until our operations manager, Morgan Brayton, wrote Alex and me a quick email to say that she was sickened by the incident - and wondered if this might be the moment to change - that we decided to act.

But just what action, exactly?

Cue the second elephant.

We were at a place where a lot of people and organizations often find themselves: ready to change, but not quite sure how. In particular, there are a lot of domain registrars out there. Who to go to?

That brings us to Switch, and Chip and Dan Heath's elephant. Their book examines how organizations can bring about change. And they argue that the human brain is a lot like an elephant with a rider on it. The rational, calculating rider believes she or he is actually in charge... but it's the emotional elephant that ultimately decides where they're going.

If you want to change someone's behaviour, then, you need to direct the rider and motivate the elephant. But even that often isn't enough. There's a third step: shaping the path: removing obstacles, setting out step-by-step instructions, and making change as easy to embrace as possible.

In our case, we'd heard good things about Namecheap, and their rapid response to a Twitter query I'd posted was very promising. But our friend, sysadmin and development partner Mike Kelly of Soniccat suggested we look into Tucows-affiliated Hover.

And when I checked out Hover's site, I found an offer to handle the entire transfer process for all of our domains for a modest flat fee. We had been planning on hiring several hours of part-time help to execute the transfers, some of them a little tricky because of DNS settings. And here was Hover offering to take that all off our hands (with something they call concierge service).

When I called, Hover's Mike Walker not only gave me all the information I wanted, but added that they were currently waiving the $25 concierge fee, and that he could apply a 10% discount on the overall charge.

My elephant and rider not only had the path shaped for them: it was cleared, smoothed and then paved in comfy velour.

We were sold. That was Friday. And today, just a few hours ago, the last of the transfers wrapped up.

An irresistible combination: strong motivation and an easy path

The experience has been a valuable reminder of something (well, two things, if you count "whenever we have a question about anything network-related, ask Mike Kelly").

Hover won our business when all three elements of the Switch model fell into place. We had the rider's direction (Mike Kelly's recommendation), the elephant's motivation (the video and a backlog of dissatisfaction), and a clear, easy path to follow (Hover's concierge service, and Mike Walker's encouragement).

Even when motivation is strong, change may not happen... unless there's a clear next action to take, and the barriers to taking it are low. That's worth remembering, whether you're trying to convince people to participate in an online community, vote for a particular candidate, or switch domain registrars.

Five ways to use Twitter to make the most of an election debate

Rob Cottingham — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:15:25 +0000

Let's be honest: election debates are usually pretty awful for voters.

They get to passively endure an hour or two of overrehearsed talking points, dodged questions and set-piece arguments... washed down with the kind of analysis that usually boils down to "So, who won?" (In a few hours, Canadians will do just that, as they watch the first of two debates among the leaders of the four parties with seats in Parliament.)

There may be a few merciful bright spots — some fact-checking here and there, for instance — and maybe even some surprises. But on the whole, the debate experience is usually tedious — and in the social media era, it's a prehistoric relic.

But this time around, a lot of prospective voters have a tool that wasn't at their fingertips in past elections: Twitter. And if you're planning on tuning in, here are five ways you can use Twitter to turn the debate into something a lot more useful and interesting.

You may not be able to knock the pols out of their message boxes — but you can convene and join an actual conversation about the issues you care about. Here are five ways to start doing that:

Create your own panel of experts - or several panels - using Twitter lists. Use Twitter's people search or a service like Listorius to find your experts. (This is an idea that came up in an interview Postmedia's Misty Harris conducted with me this morning, and she deserves credit for getting me to think along these lines.)
Well in advance of the debate, search Twitter for people who disagree with you, and follow a few who are smart, thought-provoking and civil. (Don't want to follow them? Create a Twitter list and call it something like "Other views".) You'll broaden your perspective and get to consider some new ideas — and even If you're a dyed-in-the-w00t partisan, you'll still gain a sense of what the other side is saying and be ready to counter it.
Chances are this is going to be a firehose of tweeting, which Twitter's web site isn't really great for following. Instead, use a Twitter client like HootSuite, Tweetdeck or Seesmic, and follow your lists in separate columns. Add another column for the debate hashtag #db8.
If you are using Twitter.com to follow the debate tweeting, some good news: they let you turn off retweets from individual users. So if there's a particular user you're following who's cluttering your feed with retweet after retweet, just head over to their profile and click the green retweet button so that it's greyed out.
One more tip for Twitter.com users: get a picture of your local discussion by selection the "Tweets near you" tab.

And, of course, once you're following the conversation, join in with your own questions, ideas, thoughts, reactions and options.

Hey, fellow Canadians - any other ideas before the first debate begins?

How to write a blog post in 10 minutes

Alexandra Samuel — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 01:06:13 +0000

Part of a series. Original version at AlexandraSamuel.com.

In my recent blog post about how to sustain your social media presence in just 3 hours a week, I advise drafting 3 blog posts in under one hour. That may sound unimaginable if (like me) you've fallen into the habit of turning each blog post you write into a mini-manual or philosophical essay.

But back in the day -- you know, before Twitter -- a lot of blog posts consisted of simply sharing a link and saying, hey, here's something useful you should read. Now that we've got Facebook and Twitter, people tend to share links in 140 characters or less, and the blog-post-as-link-share has largely disappeared.

I'm all for sharing links in an efficient way, through Twitter or Facebook or even delicious. But we've lost something in this rapid-fire micro-sharing: we've lost the conversation about why something is worth sharing (or reading). We've lost the reflections on what we learned by reading the post we're about to share.

And we've lost a great, valuable route to sustaining a blog. My 3-hour social media method relies on bringing back the "I read this and so should you" blog post. But in the era of Twitter et al., just sharing the link is not enough. You've got to provide some additional value....something that makes the reader glad to read your blog post, and not just annoyed you didn't point them towards the original.

Here are seven ways to add value to a blog post you are sharing:

Summarize the main argument of the post (but in a way that still encourages the reader to read the full post)
Share a (brief) excerpt or two from the original post that you think was exceptionally interesting or useful
Explain why you think it's worth reading, or what you enjoyed about it
Suggest another way to apply the original post's advice or insight
Raise a concern, criticism or missing piece of information
Ask a question prompted by the blog post
Point to another related or complementary resource, or draw a thematic connection between multiple blog posts

If you can add value to the post you are sharing in one (or more) of these ways, you can draft a useful, legitimate blog post in 10 minutes or less. Don't believe me? Then watch this video, which records the process of writing yesterday's blog post about digital fasts.

Full disclosure: I cut 6 seconds from this video to remove a confidential search string that auto-filled in Google while I was searching for my previous digital fasts post. But the total drafting time still came in under 10 minutes!

How to sustain a social media presence in three hours a week

Alexandra Samuel — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 00:52:38 +0000

Part of a series. Original version at AlexandraSamuel.com.

When it rains on a weekend, I don't bemoan my decision to live in the Pacific Northwest: I just know it's time to queue up my blog posts and tweets for the week. That's what I try to do in about two hours every weekend, and since folks often ask me how they can keep their social media presence alive in an efficient and sustainable way, I figure I'm long overdue to blog my system.

First, let me come clean. I don't maintain my social media presence in just 3 hours a week; for me, it's more like 40. But that is because social media is what I do, and I do a lot of it: I write for five different sites, contribute to seven different Twitter feeds, and aim to write at least 3 (typically 4 or 5) in-depth posts per week. All that social mediafying is the heart of my work, and more importantly, I love it. I would write that much even if it weren't my work, so I'm just incredibly lucky that it is.

For most people, however, 40 hours a week would be overkill. And the same approach I use to maintain all my different social media activities can support a much more streamlined -- but still very effective -- presence. Three hours a week is enough to:

Tweet original content 2-3x day, 5 days/week
Publish 3 blog posts per week
Reply to comments on your blog posts
Reply, retweet and engage in conversation on Twitter

Let's start with items #1 and #2 -- which is what I spend about two hours tackling each weekend. If you've got your setup in place, that two hours is all you need to keep your social media presence alive and useful. By "useful", I mean useful to the people you are trying to reach...which in turn makes it useful to you. The point isn't to queue up a bunch of junk that keeps your blog and Twitter presence notionally alive: the point is to spend two hours teeing up some content that will provide real value to your target audience by speaking to the topic on which you are (or wish to be) an expert.

Here's how:

Open up Google Reader and look at the latest blog posts and news stories that are coming in through the custom searches you've set up and subscribed to. I've put my searches into a separate folder so it's easy for me to see all latest results in one place:

Quickly scan through the teasers for all the stories that look interesting, Command-clicking (that's ctrl-clicking for you Windows users) on anything that looks interesting so it opens in a new tab. I do that until I have ten or fifteen tabs open:

Flip through the tabs and skim (or where warranted, read) each post or story in turn. It's a sudden death system: as soon as I read something that makes me think that what I'm reading is too stale, too weird, too off-topic or too poorly written to share or respond to, I stop reading and close the tab.
If you find something useful, queue it up as a tweet in HootSuite. If you've got the "hoot this" bookmarklet installed, it will likely pre-populate your tweet with the title of what you're sharing:

At this point your fastest option is to just hit the calendar icon and pick a date and time when you want your tweet to go out, but I like to customize at least half of my scheduled tweets so that they reflect my voice and are more intriguing:

Continue flipping through your tabs, skimming and tweeting, but watch out for scrapers. A lot of content you find online will be scraped (i.e.republished or stolen) from other sites. I can't give you a hard-and-fast rule for spotting scraped content, but you'll get a feel for it. For example, this page on Youth Service America just didn't look like it matched the voice of a blog post about online dating. I selected a string of text, dropped it into Google search, and sure enough, it turned up as a blog post that originally appeared on the Social Citizens blog. (It looks like YSA republishes the Social Citizens blog in a totally legit way, but I'd like to share the original post, not the reprint.)
Look for the most thought-provoking stories and posts. When you hit something that's especially interesting, insightful or simply annoying -- something that makes you want to share your own perspective -- then don't tweet it. Instead, use it as the jumping-off point for a short blog post. Your post can share an excerpt or two from the source of your inspiration, but should do more than link to the post. You need to add your own perspective on it, or simply share the questions it raises for you. A blog post like this, which might be 2-4 paragraphs long, can take 5-15 minutes to write. That means you can queue up 3 blog posts in under an hour. (Don't believe me? My next post in this series will offer proof.)

Schedule your blog posts to go out on 3 different days of the week by setting the publication date and time in Wordpress:


Click "edit" next to "Publish immediately"....	...and you can choose when to post.

That might be Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or perhaps Monday, Tuesday, Thursday; I often front-load my prewritten blog posts because I usually get inspired to write something here or there over the course of the week. I drop those longer, original posts into my schedule on the days I don't have a post lined up, or I adjust my schedule to make room for them. I usually schedule my posts to go live between 9-10 am, when people in my time zone (Pacific) are at work and people on the east coast are ready for something to read over lunch.

Queue up tweets about each of your blog posts on the day it's scheduled to be published. Make sure you don't link to the "preview post" URL you get while editing (where it says "post draft updated" when you save a draft) -- that's not the URL that will let people access your blog post once it's published. Once you've got your post written and scheduled, Wordpress will give you a new "preview post" link with the real URL for your post. You'll know you've go the real URL if it doesn't include the word "preview" in the address.
Review your "pending tweets" column in HootSuite (you may have to add it if it's not already part of one of your HootSuite tabs) to see if your tweets are scheduled out evenly. You can click on any pending tweet to edit its text or scheduled time. Ideally you'll have two or three tweets about other people's content scheduled each day, and you will have the tweets about your own blog posts spaced out with tweets about other people's content so that you're never tweeting your own stuff twice in a row.

And that's it! Well, almost. Remember items #3 and #4 at the top of this page -- where I point out that you need to reply to your blog comments, Twitter mentions, and just generally participate in the Twitter conversation? That's what your third social media hour is for.

I'm confident that you can queue up 3 blog posts and 10-15 tweets in just two hours each weekend. But that investment won't do much for you unless you spend that additional hour -- ideally as 10 or 15 minutes, 4-5 days a week -- engaging with your community.

And yes, you will have a community. Because once you commit two hours a week to delivering real value to the audience you care about, you're going to have people reading, tweeting and talking to you. So please, don't forget to talk back.

5 steps to create your social media toolkit

Alexandra Samuel — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 00:30:27 +0000

Part of a series. Original version at AlexandraSamuel.com.

Building a social media presence around a specific area of expertise is your best way to connect with a network and audience that cares about your work, and gets real value from your online contributions. To do that, you need to begin by defining your turf: the area of expertise in which you will offer content and expertise. Ideally, that's a space that isn't currently well-served by dozens of other bloggers and tweeters.

If you're passionate about a topic that already generates a huge amount of online content, try finding a distinctive angle on that topic. Maybe you're not going to write the definitive sewing blog, but you can write the definitive blog about sewing with vintage patterns and equipment. Maybe you're not going to be the top Ruby on Rails tweeter, but you can be the top tweeter on Ruby on Rails for beginners. Your site might not be the web's foremost destination for South American travel, but it could be the web's foremost destination for choosing mobile apps for South American destinations.

Once you've got a hunch about how to define your turf, do some searches on Google News and Google Blogsearch to see how much is written in your space. Ideally you'll find a topic for which there are lots of news stories, blog posts and tweets, but no one-stop shop. Your job will be to round up all the news in your turf from all these different sources, add your own distinctive spin, and present it in a single spot.

I recently walked a bunch of Emily Carr's MAA students through the tools and steps I recommend for creating a simple social media presence that showcases your expertise, and for feeding that presence with a lightweight social media monitoring system that makes it easy to find content to blog or tweet about.

I won't write about each step in great detail because every tool I recommend is widely documented. Use Google to find specific resources to help you get up and running with any tool that is unfamiliar (for example, by searching on wordpress.com "custom domain" "how to").

Here's an overview of the 5 steps:

Get a blog. Set up a blog with a custom URL (i.e. http://yourfirstnameyourlastname.com or http://yourtopic.com). I recommend setting this up on Wordpress.com because you can get up and running for almost free (you'll pay $20/yr to register your custom URL through Wordpress.com, which is a little more than you might pay to register your URL elsewhere but saves you the trouble of configuring your domain settings to point to your Wordpress blog.) If your blog takes off or you want to customize and extend it in ways you can't do on Wordpress.com, it's very easy to export your entire blog and move it to another hosting service where you can run your own Wordpress blog.
Start monitoring. Set up Google Reader as your social media monitoring dashboard. You'll use this Google Reader account to subscribe to a wide range of sources in your field or area of (current or planned) expertise so that you always have something to write about. You can begin by subscribing to the RSS feeds of any blogs you read regularly; if you haven't been reading a lot of blogs, find a handful to follow (seeing which blogs people tweet a lot is a good way to find some) and read the regularly for a few weeks so you can think about what kind of content to put on your own blog.
Search for news. Set up searches to bring you blog posts and news in your field. I recommend creating advanced searches that really pinpoint the kind of content you want to read; it really helps to learn the ins and outs of Google's advanced search operators. Err on the side of pulling in too much rather than too little. My post on RSS for nonprofits may help you think about what kinds of searches you should monitor. In general I recommend setting up searches on Google News, Google blog search, Twitter search and delicious. For example my Google reader account includes multiple searches on strings like "information overload" OR "inbox overload" or ("social media" AND overwhelmed)".
Follow smart tweeters. Follow people who tweet in your field and follow them. Listorious is a good way to find entire lists of people you want to follow, whether your field is B2B marketing or psychology or classical music. Follow even one list in your field and you'll get the latest from a range of people instantly (but still have the ability to get rid of all of them just as quick). NB that if you really like the Twitter feeds of people you follow through a list, you may want to follow them individually so that you can exchange DMs. (My Twitter glossary is here if you need help decoding this step.)
Track Twitter news. Sign up for CoTweet, HootSuite or another tool that lets you track and schedule tweets. (Disclosure: I'm working on a project with Invoke, HootSuite's sister company). Use this client app to keep an eye on the news from the people and lists youa re following. If you're new to Twitter, check the news on Twitter for 5-10 minutes at least twice a day for at least a couple of weeks, to get a feel for the conversation and for the kinds of tweets you might like to write yourself.

This setup will take a little bit of time to set up -- figure on spending 1-2 hours on the set up for each of your three main tools (Wordpress, Google Reader and HootSuite). But once you have this set up in place you'll be able to maintain a very respectable social media presence in just 3 hours per week.

Really. My next post will tell you how.

The 5 requirements for a starter social media presence

Alexandra Samuel — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 11:02:11 +0000

Part of a series. Original version at AlexandraSamuel.com.

I often talk to people who wonder how they can get started in social media. The typical requirements are:

Cost: When you're starting out, you don't want to invest a lot in your tools, so you want to choose social media tools that are cheap or free.
Ease of use: When you're getting started, you want to use something relatively simple and user-friendly. That typically means hosted services rather than tools that require you to install your own software on a web host you pay for yourself.
User base: Services with lots and lots of users -- especially lots of geeky users -- typically have lots of resources available to help you use them (like on-site documentation, blog posts by enthusiastic users, and even how-to books). These services are also much more likely to have tools that enhance their functionality or that help them integrate with other applications and services.
Scalability/portability: You may want a more elaborate presence if it turns out that social media becomes a bit part of your work, so it's good to choose tools that can either scale up or that make it easy for you to pack up your files and move somewhere else.
Time commitment: You want a presence that is easy to set up and easy to maintain -- not just technically, but in terms of the amount of time you have to put into creating content or engaging with readers in order to make your social media presence valuable.

My cheater workflow meets these criteria. I'll spell it out in my next blog post.

Heart and Soul program puts poetry into grant-making

Rob Cottingham — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 21:59:40 +0000

If part of your job with a non-profit organization is to chase grants, then you may have found the proposal-writing process... well, a little dull at times.

That's especially true if you're applying for support from the kind of buttoned-down funding source that favors turgid, lifeless prose over imagination or creativity.

But here's some good news: your brain's left hemisphere can release its death-grip on your right hemisphere. Because the CTK Foundation—which celebrates non-profits and promotes technology to address the root causes of social issues—is offering a $10,000 USD grant to an American, British or Canadian non-profit... and the way you apply is by writing an original poem.

The poem should be four to eight lines long, and you have until March 28th to write it. The $10,000 award also includes having your submission turned into a song performed by Bill Dillon (recently exonerated thanks to the Innocence Project of Florida after nearly three decades in prison). You can find the details at http://communitytech.net.

There are additional awards on the line as well:

2nd place award is a cash grant of $5,000 (US) or its value in foreign currency

The 2011 Blogger's Choice Award, where a randomly selected blogger participating in spreading the word among nonprofits about the H&S Grant Award Program will choose a nonprofit applicant to receive a $1,000 cash grant or its value in foreign currency

2 steel-stringed guitars, signed by all members of Los Lonely Boys (which you can auction for fund-raising)

Up to 20 technology grants, valued at $10,000, to nonprofits that indicate an interest

The deadline for applications is March 28, so wake up your muse—or challenge your staff, volunteers, supporters or clients—and find the poetry in your organization's mission!

"Persona management": how automated fake profiles threaten the heart of online community

Rob Cottingham — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 15:09:51 +0000

There's a reason social media analysts and practitioners harp so much on authenticity: it's one of the underpinnings of the "social" in "social media".

Online community works because of our relationships with each other; those relationships can only happen when you feel as though you know the person you're dealing with. Not everything or even most things about the person, but something true... and something significant enough to let you build a certain level of trust. Discover the other person has misled you about who they are or about their motives, and trust dies.

That's why organizations take such a public beating when they engage in astroturfing, or sock-puppeting, or other forms of online deception (or a lack of transparency so egregious as to amount to the same thing). Sony, Wal-Mart, AT&T, Whole Foods and McDonalds—all large brands led by people who should know better—have all succumbed to the temptation to forge conversations that weren't happening organically.

Still, that temptation will probably always be there... as will agencies willing to help you indulge your ethical lapses. Some will even brag about it. They'll cloak their activities in dispassionate terminology, and kid themselves that they're being clever, but it comes down to lying.

One term for this kind of online deception is persona management. It's been around for a while, but came to light in a Daily Kos blog post after security firm HBGary Federal boasted about infiltrating Anonymous, the loosely affiliated group of online activists who recently gained prominence for their activities in support of WikiLeaks.

Members of Anonymous then released emails hacked from HBGary servers that detail a wide range of unethical practices. One of them is persona management: tying together a large number of fake social media accounts with content fed both manually and through RSS, and then managing them with software that helps you keep them distinct and internally consistent (so that Rose from Abbotsford doesn't accidentally post as Kumar from San Diego).

Here's one of the most chilling passages from that data dump:

In fact using hashtags and gaming some location-based check-in services we can make it appear as if a persona was actually at a conference and introduce himself/herself to key individuals as part of the exercise, as one example. There are a variety of social media tricks we can use to add a level of realness to all fictitious personas.

In other words, that very-convincing LinkedIn invitation you received from someone who said they met you at a conference a few months ago may or may not be from a real person.

There's a huge difference of scale between, say, the Whole Foods CEO posting to Yahoo! message boards under an assumed name and creating an army of at-least-superficially-convincing online presences to be wielded at will against opposing organizations, ideas or individuals.

And there are countless reasons to be appalled by the idea. Shel Holtz, for example, points out the enormous reputational risk to a sockpuppeting organization if this kind of ploy is exposed; worse, "if this gets more common, your honest, transparent communication efforts will be just as suspect as those of the actual bad actors. It threatens to undermine the credibility of every organization participating in the social space."

But it isn't just organizational credibility that's on the line. "Persona management" doesn't create fake organizations; it aims to create convincing fake people. And when people know that some of the individuals they're dealing with online are fictitious, it raises the possibility that everyone else might be, too (at least, those they don't also know from the offline world).

If there's anything the Internet doesn't need, it's yet another reason to dismiss views and perspectives that differ from our own. You'll already find plenty of contentious conversations where antagonists question each others' motives and honesty; the HBGarys of the world are pouring gasoline on that fire.

At least now we know what they're up to. And perhaps there can be something good to come out of it. As the writer of that DailyKos blog post put it, "Maybe this whole thing will be liberating. Maybe people will develop stronger spines and not be so easily swayed by raving mobs."

Maybe. But we'll pay a heavy price in trust and social capital along the way.

Toolbar and internal linking make WordPress upgrade compelling

Rob Cottingham — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 06:15:29 +0000

If your site uses WordPress software (as opposed to the hosted WordPress.com site), then you may have heard about the latest upgrade, released just today.

Version 3.1 offers the usual range of improvements - faster this, debugged that, more secure the other - but at first glance, two new features stand out from the pack.

The first is the new toolbar that you'll notice on top of your blog:

Only site administrators will see the toolbar; visitors just see the same old blog. And it offers several commonly-used admin features that may mean it's a long time before you feel the need to visit that admin dashboard again:

The menu under the user name lets you manage your profile, visit the admin dashboard or log out of your site.
The "Edit Post" button lets you do just that with the post currently displayed.
"Add New" lets you create a new post, page or custom post type.
"Comments" takes you to the comment moderation page, and displays the number of comments in the moderation cue (if any).
"Appearance" lets you edit your widgets or template.
"Shortlink" serves up a wp.me-style abbreviated URL that will redirect to the current post.

And that little graph on the right? That's your traffic over the past 48 hours... and if you're the kind of person who needs to glance at your stats hourly to see if there's been a sudden surge in interest, this could save you a lot of time.

Which is ultimately what the toolbar is about: saving time. It won't change the way you blog, but it will make administering your blog a lot easier.

What may change your blogging more profoundly is the second big feature: easy internal linking. When you click the "link" button in WordPress 3.1's visual editor, you see this dialog box:

You can scroll through recent posts and pages (the box refreshes with older content when you scroll to the bottom), or search by keyword.

If you're like me, and would like to link to other posts on your blog but feel daunted by the disruption to your writing process (open new window, load up blog, search for post, copy URL, close window - oh, hell, no, not that one!), this feature is heaven-sent.

We find ourselves recommending WordPress frequently to folks who'd like a site that's relatively easy to set up and theme and has some content-management muscle, but who don't need something as powerful as, say, Drupal. With version 3.1, WordPress has helped to keep themselves at the top of our list of great social media tools.

A tasty Valentine's Day greeting from Social Signal

Alex and Rob — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 19:42:35 +0000

One Oscar nominee has special relevance for social media. And it isn't The Social Network.

Rob Cottingham — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:19:14 +0000

The official Oscar nominations are out, and there’s a movie up for best picture that has a lot to say about social media and the online communications revolution sweeping the world.

The Social Network? Hell, no. I’m talking about The King’s Speech.

Set mostly in the years leading up to the Second World War, The King’s Speech deals with the extraordinary relationship between speech therapist Lionel Logue and Albert, Duke of York. Albert has a persistent stammer, an affliction that might have gone largely unremarked in past generations. But this is the era of radio, and when he ascends (a little relucantly) to the throne as King George VI, he must deliver an address to a nation suffering from grave fear and doubt.

(Spoiler alert: If you have some knowledge of history, you are probably assuming his address was at least good enough to avoid demoralizing the nation and forcing Britain’s capitulation to the Nazis. And you are correct. Also, you were probably a little surprised by the ending of Inglorious Basterds.)

This is the story of a friendship that crosses some very deep divides of class and colonialism. But it’s also a story of entrenched institutions confronting the transformational changes brought about thanks to technological innovation.

The Social Network was fascinating, engrossing and entertaining... but it had surprisingly little to say about Facebook or the larger social media revolution, and how they affect our daily lives. Instead, the movie was more about sacrificing friendships for the sake of a larger business vision.

While The Social Network contented itself with (a version of) the story of Mark Zuckerberg, The King's Speech touched on the changing relationship between the public and those in power, who have had a long time to become used to deciding when, where and how any communication will take place between them.

That’s a timely theme for anyone watching the past day’s events unfold in Tunisia and Egypt — or, for the matter, the past decade’s events in much of the rest of the world.

A version of this post appeared on ReadWriteWeb and Noise to Signal.

Adding an RSS feed to your iGoogle page

Rob Cottingham — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 05:36:33 +0000

I've been teaching social media fundamentals in the UBC and Emily Carr University continuing studies programs for nearly two years now. Early on in every course, I show students how to use iGoogle (and similar services) into a social media dashboard, displaying the latest results from online searches, must-read blogs and other sources.

The key to it all is the process of turning a feed into an iGoogle widget. (I know: Google calls them gadgets. Can't we all just get along?) And this year, it finally dawned on me that it might be handy to have a video reference my students can fall back on in case my in-class demo wasn't quite as memorable as I'd hoped.

And so, in case it's useful to you...

(And if these can be helpful in your own trainings, feel free to use them.)

What's the strategy behind your communication vehicle?

Rob Cottingham — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 20:24:52 +0000

Ever feel like you're working for a firm called Weneda Communications?

You know what I mean. You have an endless stream of people knocking on your office door and saying, "Hey, Weneda Facebook Page." Or "Weneda blog." Or "Weneda YouTube channel."

(At least Weneda has changed with the times. A few years ago, it would have been "Weneda leaflet" or "Weneda newspaper ad.")

Thing about Weneda Communications is, they're great at production. They know how to crank it out. They're just not terribly strong on why.

At Weneda, they don't think much about strategy. They go from problem to tactic in a single step:

"People are criticizing our customer service record." "Weneda podcast."
"Nobody knows about this issue." "Weneda Twitter feed."
"There's a crazed elephant stampeding down the hallway towards us." "Weneda web app."

What they don't do is ask a few intermediate questions, like "Who do we want to reach?" "What do we want to motivate them to do?" or "Exactly how did you get past security?"

Without those questions, there's no real way to measure success... except, inevitably, to notice that the problem seems to still be around, just as bad as ever.

It's rarely easy to be the one who puts a stick in the spokes at Weneda... but it has to be done. Someone has to say "Hold on. Let's take a step back and look at the big picture."

In other words, before Weneda vehicle - whether it's a leaflet or a mobile app - Weneda Strategy. And Weneda Plan.

Do Pentagon shifts signal the mainstreaming of social media?

Rob Cottingham — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 16:29:21 +0000

Two back-to-back stories on Wired’s Danger Room may well presage a change in the way organizations approach social media.

Unfollowed: Pentagon Deletes Social Media Office:

At a time when Facebook has 500 million users and Twitter is closing in on 200 million, the Pentagon no longer has a single person guiding its communications shop on how to use social media to get the military’s message out. Gone are communication pro Price Floyd and technology exec Sumit Agarwal, the two men brought in during the past two years to get the Pentagon comfortable with online interaction in the 21st century.

Tweet Away, Troops: Pentagon Won’t Ban Social Media

As Danger Room reported yesterday, the Pentagon’s gotten rid of its social-media office [....] And the 2009-era policy that enshrined military access to social media — the result of a hard-fought internal struggle — expires on March 1.

[...] But [Pentagon spokesman Bryan] Whitman says that by March 1, what’ll be gone is the bureaucratic format for the policy (.pdf), to be replaced by a more permanent one — not the substance. [....] The policy will still give military members access to social media.

Some bureaucratic shifts may occur, but in terms of substance, “we’re not anticipating any changes,” Whitman says, as social-media use is “the way a predominantly young force communicates.”

Now, organizations often put the best possible face on internal developments, and it’s not hard to imagine the Pentagon really is dialing back its social media engagement.

But here’s the other possibility: that social media are now so ubiquitous, and so far-reaching, that it no longer makes sense to segregate them from other communications functions. The ability to post to a Facebook page or handle a blog comment is now just as fundamental to the work of an organizational communicator as the ability to bang out a pithy, effective news release. (If not more so.)

That’s the case made by assistant secretary of defense for public affairs Douglas Wilson in the first Danger Room post:

Wilson says using social media ought to be the responsibility of the approximately 100 people he oversees. “I was increasingly concerned our approach to social media was a stovepiped professional area,” he tells Danger Room.

“It’s important for people in press operations, community and public outreach and communications and planning to be able to know how to use and access Facebook, Twitter and the other social media tools, rather than just have a single unit or single person do nothing but social media.”

Of course, if the permanent policy ends up clamping down on military social media activity, and the Pentagon pulls back from its own engagement online, this will all ring a little hollow. But I’ll be surprised if that happens.

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Do Pentagon shifts signal the mainstreaming of social media?