So you’ve got the basics set, having a general plan ready to go (you did read the first article in this series, right?). Now it’s time to nail down another important aspect of your little project: the community team. Again, we’re going to have some choices to make, and each one comes with it’s own set of baggage. Partner – give up equity in your project and pay the team member with an ownership stake. This helps to properly motivate…
(This is part 2 of an on going series of posts on Social Media. If you didn’t see my first post, in which I define Social Media is, I emplore you to start there now. All the posts in this series will be tagged “Social Media 101” so you can find them easily.) Starting a new community is a fairly daunting task. In this post, I’ll point you to some initial steps that will help you along your way towards…
Yesterday we updated the Splitcoaststampers.com site, the absolute best site on the net for Rubber Stamping and Card Making, with to the latest version of vBulletin, added a left column and did a whole bunch of system integration throughout the site. The project took approximately 4 months to complete, with tremendous work by Scott Bigelow, a great backend engineer and hardware guy, and Daven Nolta, the site manager, who kept us on track and on target for the community needs….
Paul Boag’s got another great post this week at Boagworld.com – “7 Harsh Truths about Running Online Communities.” This is the kind of knowledge you only get by managing online communities, and frankly, every failed community I’ve seen feel prey to one (and more likely, several) of these harsh truths. Technology doesn’t create a community Show some commitent Learn to lead An antisocial community is your fault You need to swallow your pride Stop trying to control the message…
I’ve got a serious love/hate relationship going with Social Media. I absolutely love building social media communities, but I honestly am tired of the blather I’m hearing on twitter and the blogs about it. My problem is simple: There is too much hot air from people with little or no practical Social Media experience. There it is, the perverbial turd on the carpet – so deal with it. I’m sick of people telling me “to join the converstation!” Hell, I…
I’m ready to vent here. Are we, as community builders, becoming so lazy that we don’t want to take the time to build in the social media features we want for our sites, the way we want them? Do we really need to have Google package them up and provide them for us, the way they want them? Two days ago, Google announced they were releasing the Google Social Toolbar, which is really a misnomer, as it isn’t really a…
As our economic downturn continues, it’s become very apparent that the buzzword for the year is going to be Monetize. That means just about anything we’re doing (as web developers, designers, community managers, etc.) is going to be expected to pick up the yoke and plow the fields from the start. That’s a lot to ask in a field like social media and social networking where the 800 lb. gorilla, Facebook, has just entered it’s 5th year, with 110 million…
Following Ari Herzog’s example, here are my top 10 posts of 2008. It’s a hard choice to make, but the votes are all in and I’ve got the envelope from our friends at Price Waterhouse containing the winners: Why Most Online Communities Fail… A peice that really sums up the problems we face building online communities, and the common problems that cause them to fail. The Newspaper Decline – The Side We Don’t See – A great analysis of the problems facing…
Paul Gillin posted on a topic that I’ve been mulling over for the past few days: Branded Communities. I’ve said it in the past and I will say it again here and now: why would you buy a build a branded community when you can rent one instead? From Gillin’s post: Pssst… is intended to bring fans of General Mills products closer to the company by inviting them into a members-only space where they can receive inside information, get coupons…
The idea: to run a live Tweet stream from the varied events of the Sutton, Ma Chain of Lights, a celebration that happens at many different locations thoughout the town and its villages. I used my Iphone with the Twitterlator Application that lets me post pictures direct to Twitter with pictures that I take on my phone uploaded right at that moment. The tweets all contain the hashtag #suttoncol – short for Sutton Chain of Lights which make them searchable…