48. Building Blocks of Social Media We would like to thank the Packard and Surdna Foundations for their generous support of this webinar series.
Hinweis der Redaktion
Tag this! What do you think/hope/expect this webinar will be about. We will talk about what tags are a bit later. But as a fun warm-up, why don’t you type a key word/s, phrases or how you would categorize this webinar into the comment box and we can share what some of the popular tags are.
The first hour-give or take - will be a walk through of tools, the way they work and the way they work together, some examples and case studies. Then we’ll leave the presentation and head out into the wild web :) We can do some live examples and how-tos, and will be able to identify the ones most requested once we get to that stage. Then we’ll have time for Q&A and conversation about what we’ve covered and so on.
The three buckets of tools we are going to focus on are onces for listening, aggregating and sharing - whether it’s information, news, pictures, etc. Note: all tools we are going to discuss today are free to use - it’s the time and energy you put into them that varies. http://flickr.com/photos/nickfarr/2166269709/
Why listen? Talking to yourself is only doable for so long, at least for most people and organizations. :) Listening let’s you learn about the community around you (offline and online) - it let’s you take the pulse of the larger conversation. Are your services relevant? Is your work relevant? How can you best serve your community? http://flickr.com/photos/laszlo-photo/467278351/
Some great tools for listening are some of the easiest to use! http://flickr.com/photos/28481088@N00/857223509/
Google Alerts is a tool from Google that lets you set search criteria - just like you would use in a web search - like your organization’s name, key words related to your services or sector, project names, and so on, and then determine how often you want to be alerted with any search results (daily, whenever it happens). We can look at an example of this a bit later. What’s great about Google Alerts: can find web content you never would have seen otherwise Alerted as often as you want Can create as many alerts as you want
Technorati allows you to search the “blogosphere” for blog posts discussing your services or sector. The site has become the definitive source for the top stories, opinions, photos and videos emerging across news, entertainment, technology, lifestyle, sports, politics and business. Technorati.com tracks not only the authority and influence of blogs, but also the most comprehensive and current index of who and what is most popular in the Blogosphere. A new blog is created about every second, there are over 80,000 blogs created daily. There’s no way you can find all the relevant content yourself.
Google Blog Search is a way of narrowing your Google Search to blog content - so, instead of pulling up organizations, consultants, and so on in your search, you can pull up blogs where conversations are more likely taking place.
My favorite part of the Google Blog Search is the advanced search options. So, the next time your executive director or communications officer says they think they overheard someone else on the bus mentioning some blog post and you have no hope of finding it in a general Google web search - this lets you narrow your search really well.
Why aggregate? Just like the amount of time and energy saved by using the blog searches and alert tools, aggregating your online activity can streamline much of your information gathering.
There are, of course, a few different options when it comes to aggregating content.
What IS RSS? RSS means really simple syndication. Instead of visiting your favorite bookmarks, whether they are websites, blogs, youtube channels, or even craigslist sections, you can subscribe to them using RSS - the little signal icon that appears on the page or in the URL bar of your browser. Then, updated content, postings, etc will be checked for and delivered to you via RSS. The subscription is called a feed. So, all you need, is an RSS Reader to serve as the dumping space for all your feeds.
Google Reader is a very easy-to-use and widely used RSS reader. You can mange your feeds by sorting into folders and so on - you can also share posts with others straight from the reader. We can take a closer look at my Google Reader in a bit.
Google Reader is a very easy-to-use and widely used RSS reader. You can mange your feeds by sorting into folders and so on - you can also share posts with others straight from the reader. We can take a closer look at my Google Reader in a bit.
Netvibes is a lot like a Google homepage, if you have used or seen one of those before. It’s a way of subscribing to and managing RSS feeds by using little widgets, or boxes that you can customize and arrange as you like.
Why share? How do you share news and articles in the office now? How do you post interesting material or news on your website? How do you find information that should be shared? http://flickr.com/photos/efleming/237379252/
http://flickr.com/photos/noahfans/386165036/
What are tags? Tag cloud from wordle
Anything can be tagged - and it should be! Tag your blog posts, your website pages, your videos, your photos, everything.
With FriendFeed you can
It is aggregating and sharing.
Plus conversation.
Plus conversation.
Picture of magnents Why work together? You are already doing all the work so you might as well let it take off! http://flickr.com/photos/oskay/197915236/
There is a lot you can do with tags, RSS, and sharing content. For example, you can s ubscribe to RSS feed of tag. Or push items from your reader onto your website.
My brain lives online, so whenever I want to use it, that’s where I go! http://flickr.com/photos/david_carroll/2806062722/
So, here’s an example of a Google Alert email about netsquared. That first post looks pretty timely and could be a great place to leave a comment to show support or perhaps provide more information about the organization.
When I click through from the email, I see that this is a meeting on the Obama site…
So, I’ve read the post and since it is talking about one or our past Challenge winners, I want to share it with the team to be sure they all see it. To do this, I save it as a new bookmark in delicious. Discuss tagging system Discuss net2 tags Discuss how to share items within delicious
Google Reader Show subscription to blogs Show subscription to tags Show subscription to Huddle Show subscription to friendfeed Discuss how to share items in google reader
TweetScan is like Google Alerts but for Twitter.
TweetScan is like Google Alerts but for Twitter. Here’s an example of a tweetscan email.
Picture of brain and computer 4. Website where things get posted automatically from my tags
Based on time left in webinar we can go online and check out some of the tools. Vote in your participant window by typing the word above you’d like to check out first. http://flickr.com/photos/geishaboy500/100043823/
Picture of brain and computer 4. Website where things get posted automatically from my tags
Picture of brain and computer 4. Website where things get posted automatically from my tags