All Things Cahill

Category: Web 2.0

  • Social Media Community Building 101 – The Team

    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 team members in the beginning, but to keep them involved, your going to need to see some financial success fairly quickly (but that’s a good thing, right?).
    • Hire – The dreaded FTE, which is something a new and unproven business model should avoid at all costs.  You’ll know when its time to get serious and hire people, but pre-launch isn’t the time.
    • Contract – As Charlie Sheen notably said about call girls, “I don’t pay them for the sex, I pay them so they will go home after the sex.” This is the reason I like contract work or freelancers for building sites initially.  The project is scoped, the project is built and eventually, they go home.  No long term commitments, no nasty divorces.
    • Outsource/Third Party – Hire a company or freelancer for a specific task or area of expertise.   
    • Barter – Yup, you can trade your skills for those of other professionals.  The good news is that no cash has to change hands.  The bad news is that you’re going to be doing work for someone else, for free…
    • Intern – There are folks out there who will want to become involved in your site, and they’ll be willing to help, and they’ll do it for free.   Not all of them will work out, but you’ll find over time that looking inwards to a community for help is a great way to make things happen.

    You should have a good idea from your business plan where the major areas of work are going to be.  Let’s generally assume: (more…)

  • Social Media Community Building 101 – The Starting Points

    (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 building a stable, sustainable and scalable platform that will make growth and success technologically possible.

    First off, you have an important technology decision: are you going to roll your own from scratch, assemble pre-packaged systems, or look for a complete system that will fill your needs. Considerations:

    • Roll Your Own (think of custom coded PHP, ASP, Perl, Java, etc. solutions):- You need to be a competent coder.
      – Time to market will be longer.
      – You will have complete control over how your site works.
      – Your feature set at launch will probably be restricted.
      – Less spam issues, as you’re solutions will be one off, hence the packaged spam products will not know how to attack you.
         (more…)

  • Friday Music Video: King Crimson

    In honor of all the bloggers out there who think “Sponsored Posts” are okay…time to Google the term “Journalism Ethics“.

    [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lCYdMXVre0[/youtube]

  • Major Site Update – Splitcoaststampers.com

    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.

    In addition to the standard upgrade stuff, we’ve added more Social Media functionality.  Facebook Connect buttons, a Twitter Stream, a Facebook Page and a Facebook Group.  There are several other big Social Media features we’ll be unveiling over the coming weeks, but thos will be subjects for another day.  

    The important point is that the site is no longer running on a horribly out of date vBulletin install, which I’d taken as my personal mission to resolve.  If you’re using systems like vBulletin, you really need to stay current.

    The upgrade wasn’t without it’s problems. We did find we had several issues with formatting when we went live. In further researching them, I find they were almost universally IE6 and almost universally using 800 x 600 screen resolution. The screen shots from users were almost comical, as some had 5 or 6 malware toolbars installed in their browsers, making the vertical space in the browser window almost non-existent.

    If you are using IE6, I strongly urge you to try downloading Firefox or Google Chrome, or even the latest IE version(IE8). Your current browser is close to 10 years old. Your internet experience is lacking because of your use of outdated technology.

    Also, I suggest you right click on any area of the empty desktop screen and click properties. Then click settings and increase your screen resolution. It is becoming very hard for us to support people using very low screen resolutions, when we also have to be able to handle very high resolutions as we are seeing from laptops. If I cater to you, the laptop users are going to see my site at postage stamp size.  And again, you’re missing out on a lot as no one really designs for small screen resolution anymore.

    Oh, one very funny thing, we began our upgrade at around 10:30 am.  At 10:45 vBulletin released an update to their system, so as I was upgrading I immediately got a message about it.  Timing, it’s all in the timing.

  • MediaPost Gets It Wrong – “What Social Media Can Learn From Email Marketing”

    It’s hard to be taken seriously when you don’t even get the terms straight.  The title of the article and its main premise should of course be “What Social Media MARKETING Can Learn from Email MARKETING.”  Very clearly when Stephanie Miller says “Social media pulls the marketer off the brand pedestal and drags her into the throes of the messy, wild, unpredictable community” she is talking about marketing, not building Social Media.  

    It’s one thing when a clueless social media wannabe makes the mistake on Twitter, but MediaPost is supposed to be a bastion of journalism online.

    (Do you need Social Media defined properly for you:  see my post from earlier in the week.)

  • Boagworld.com: 7 Harsh Truths about Running Online Communities

    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.  

    1. Technology doesn’t create a community
    2. Show some commitent
    3. Learn to lead
    4. An antisocial community is your fault
    5. You need to swallow your pride
    6. Stop trying to control the message
    7. Nobody likes to be alone

    Particularly I like to think about #4, in which he posits that it’s your own fault if your community becomes antisocial.  He attributes it to the site owner having setup a generally snarky and negative tone for the site to begin with.  Very easy to do, especially when you’re looking at a niche that’s heavy on reviews.  As anyone who’s ever written reviews knows, the bad ones are the fun ones, and we all have a tendency to go overboard.

    I think theres another facet there which he’s missed; if you tolerate antisocial behavior in your community, you’ll just get more of it.  Basically, by allowing the trolls a place to live, you allow them to take over.  I’ve seen it too many times, when a site owner fails to act against one antisocial force in his community, only to find the positive, core members of his site move on to greener, more troll-free pastures.  As I have said before, as a site owner, you’re the Sheriff and you’re going to have to step in and maintain discipline on occassion.  If you’re not up to the task, you have no business running a site.

  • Social Media, Social (Media) Marketing and Where the Difference Lies…

    I’ve finally put my finger on what it is that’s been chaffing my britches about the new found popularity of Social Media; that is most people are using the wrong term.  They’re not talking about Social Media, they’re talking about  Social Media Marketing.

    I’m sure a lot of you are saying the same thing right now: “What the heck gives this bozo the right to define what is and what is not Social Media?” Let me answer that for you.

    I’ve been building online communities, doing user generated content, and generally fostering what you all like to call “the conversation” since 1995. That’s before most of you had Internet connections, and certainly before most of you ever thought about blogging, commenting, or the like. If you don’t like my opinion on what is and what isn’t Social Media, talk to Dave Winer, or Doc Searls, or some of the other folks who have been around since the early days.

    So here are the defininitions I believe would be more correct:

    • Social Networking – anything having to do with the major sharing and online networking sites and applications.  Think about LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Delicious, etc. here.  Generally these are communication based sites.  Wikipedia does a good job of defining:

      “A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services. “

    • Social Media – development of and operation of content driven websites in which user generated content, comments, and discussion forums play a large part.  Wikipedia offers a definition, but I believe it is overly broad, although it does hint at the consumer generated content aspects:

      “Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).”

    • Social Media Marketing (I’ve edited the post here due to concernes that the lack of the word media here was confusing)  – using either Social Media sites or Social Networking to sell, advertise, promote or develop “the buzz” for a product, brand, website or person.  Wikipedia prefers the term Social Media Marketing, which I don’t utterly hate, however their definition is somewhat mealy mouthed, so I won’t republish here.
    • Social Media Marketing Consulting (edited to add ‘media’) – telling other people, generally via Twitter, or at expensive conferences in out of the way place, that they should be doing Social Marketing.  If you’re telling people to “join the conversation”, you are probably a Social  Media Marketing Consultant.

    My case in point is this: there is a fellow offering certification  in Social Media, yet when you read the prospectus, it’s obvious he’s pushing Social Media Marketing.  It’s more about how to game the system, than how to build the system, a rather fundemental difference in my mind.  

    To recap:

    • Social Networking:  a communications service
    • Social Media : the consumer generated content aspects of content driven websites
    • Social Media Marketing(edited to add the word “Media” to avoid confusion): selling or promoting products, brands, people or things via Social Networking services or Social Media sites.

    So please, if you’re going to consult on Social Media,  or Social Media Marketing, at least get your terms straight.

  • Manifesto for Social Media: Stop Talking and Start Doing

    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 was there when the conversation started, and have been a part of it ever since.  I remember using forum software and even email for comments back in the good old days of 1995 and 1996 when we really were inventing this stuff.  Heck, I was technically one of the very first bloggers, although we hadn’t even named the format in 1996.

    The push back against the current “hurrah for social media” has been building for some time.  For a good laugh and an idea of how bad it’s getting, read this entry from Brett Borders entitled ‘Social Media ‘Rockstars’ vs. ‘Narcissists’“.

    I’m going to avoid going negative here.  In fact, I’m getting out of this debate entirely after this post (he says, hopefully).  Here’s my manifesto for all you purveyors of Social Media: Stop talking and start doing.

    • Instead of continually twittering shopworn platitudes about “joining the conversation”, go ahead and start a conversation we want to join.  Something with substance like keys to success in community building, or the biggest mistakes I made while working with XYZ.com.
    • If you don’t have real experience, if you haven’t run a social media site, or built a community, start doing so.
    • If you don’t have real experience, take the words “Social Media” out of your twitter handle, Facebook account, etc.  You haven’t done it, you’re as qualified to consult on this subject as you are to do brain surgery.  Stop insulting the rest of us by calling yourself a guru…
    • If you are experienced, start discussing hands on stuff that will help the rest of us.  What was a problem you had and how did you solve it with Social Media, etc.  Share your successes and, even more importantly, your failures…tell us what didn’t work, what mistakes you made.
    • Experiment, push the boundaries, do things that have not been done before.  You will find many don’t work, but in the process, some will.  Share your findings with us.  Become an expert by experimenting…

    The point is this, Social Media isn’t ready to have a museum built for it, it’s almost brand new with the wrapping only partway torn off it.  Experiment, build, and take the time to make things work – that is where the true experts will be found, not twittering incessantly about the parties they are going to attend at SXSW.

    I look forward to seeing many posts forthcoming that will expand the Social Media corpus scientia.  For my part, I’ll be posting more about the inner workings of social media and community building here, as my time permits.

  • Google Social Toolbar

    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 toolbar at all, rather it’s a toolpack that site owners can embed in their sites.  From Techcrunch:

    Basically, the social bar is a small strip that webmasters can layer on top of any web page, either at the top or at the bottom. That way, website visitors are provided with a bit of information, and the bar also lets them interact with any social feature the site incorporates through drop-down gadgets. As Software Engineer Christopher Wren explains in the announcement blog post, this is a good way to save on pixel space and keep putting the actual content of the site forward first.

    The Google Social Web blog explains:

    • On the far left, visitors can join your site, see their identity, and edit their profiles and settings.
    • Your visitors can also delve into your site’s activity stream to see what’s happening throughout your site. It includes links to recent posts made anywhere on your site, helping other visitors quickly find where the hottest conversations are taking place.
    • The wall gadget can host a discussion for the whole site, a section of pages, or each individual page, letting your visitors easily read and leave comments.
    • Lastly, visitors can see the other members of your site, check out their profiles to see how like-minded they really are, and even become friends.

    These are for the most part functions that you should have addressed on your site by proper design (have I not told you that social media is an important tool in your toolbox?).  Why would you want discussion about your site going on at another site, where the readers are seeing ads from which you do not profit?  If discussion is needed on your site, add it, but for God’s sake don’t hand that traffic and it’s revenue over to Google for free.

    We are looking for good value adds for our sites, such as the ability to share content ala Facebook Connect.  What we don’t need is a convenient way to off load our revenue generating traffic.

    If you’re going to build and manage a site, then do it.  If you want Google to do it for you, then don’t come running to me when you want to “monetize it”.

  • Online Tulip Mania and Social Media

    We’ve reached a points where we now have both a major backlash against social media and at the same time an explosion in usage.  The problem from my point of view is very, very simple.  Too much discussion of what is and what isn’t Social Media, along with far too much hot air from the non-practitioners.  

    I’ve been saying for a very long time, call it Web 2.0, Social Media or whatever else you want, its just another tool in the arsenal of the community developer or web developer/designer.  

    Let me say that again, more clearly: Social Media is a tool which we employ where it makes sense and provides benefits to the overall project/community/site/etc.

    Yesterday, Bobbie Johnson, the technology correspondent at the Guardian.co.uk posted an article entitled “Why I am Finished with Social Media.”  In it, he chaffs at the “Twitter goes mainstream meme” resounding the net in the wake of the Christian Bale tirade last week.

    Nobody talks about people down the pub laughing about Bale’s expletive-laden bullying as a “social drinking sensation”. They don’t call people giggling about it on the phone as a “social telecommunications sensation”. They call it joking, or they call it gossip, because that’s what people do. Whether they do it online or offline, down the pub or on Facebook doesn’t matter. “Social media” is mainstream – we don’t need to claim any more victories for it.

    So, that’s it. I’m sick of “social media experts”. (If I know you and you are one, then obviously I’m not talking about you). I’m sick of “social media sensations”. And I’m sick of social media.

    He has a problem with the same thing so many of us have a problem with.  Just because it’s cool to focus on Social Media right now, doesn’t mean that everything must be measured in terms of Social Media.  The predeliction to see things from that narrowly focused point of view is a tell tail of inexperience.  Real developers and community managers are able to view things from a more balanced, more holistic point of view.

    In some ways I worry that we’re placing too much emphasis on Social Media.  As such we overvalue it to the point where I suspect it has become its own version of online Tulip Mania.

    I remember Alan McKee telling us in screen writing class one time: when the audience can see the tools you use in your writing, such as a metaphor, then you’ve utterly failed (not quoted directly, but from memory).  I will take that and say that when someone views your community or site as a “Social Media Experiment,” then you have failed.  Experimentation should always be part of your efforts, and when users see the machine behind the curtain, things have gone wrong.

    Social Media is a wrench.  Don’t try to use it as a hammer, but do use it where it makes sense.