The Expedition ventures into the world of video with Chris O’Conner and Prodigi Arts! Chris showed our attendees today just how powerful the impact of video can be over a still image. Even adding a little animation to a company logo can add the pizazz needed to make the impression you want. Chris suggested a few tools, including Adobe Premiere, After Effects, and Final Cut for anyone who wants to try their hand at some DIY video. For Dave’s pretty mind mapping of Chris’s presentation (which includes more suggestions for tools and tricks!), click here!
For the core conversation, we split into three groups. One group continued down the video road with Chris, Beth Sanders answered some Wordpress questions with another group, and the last huddle compared Foursquare to the brand new Facebook Places. One Expeditioner shared the harrowing tale of a young man who has already faced a solid grounding due to Facebook Places when a friend shared his location, which was not where he told his parents he would be. Facebook, however, definitely has the upper-hand in visibility since even people not using Places are able to see where their friends have checked in right in their feed.
On the Wordpress side of the room, the big confusion seemed to lie in the difference between Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org. For a great explanation of the difference, click here, or better yet, head to LunaWeb TONIGHT for…
Elizabeth Cawein, long-time friend of the Social Expedition, loaned us some of her time from Memphis Music Foundation to speak at our August Breakfast. She shared with us some of the ways in which social media is helping Memphis musicians grow and thrive. Besides the usual Facebook and Twitter, Elizabeth also recommends artists utilize sites like bandcamp.com and the old-standby MySpace to connect with their audiences, build relationships, and expand their fan-base.
Plus, Elizabeth issued a challenge to everyone present at the breakfast, and we in turn are extending it to you and everyone in Memphis – Support just one Memphis musician. It can be as simple as signing up for their email list or going to a show. Every bit helps keep Memphis’s rich musical heritage going!
In WREG reporter Melissa Moon’s experience, news coverage and Twitter go together like peanut butter and jelly. Functioning on several levels, the social platform can spark interest to get people to tune into the broadcast, but it can also disseminate crucial up-to-the-minute information or fun human-interest stories. She even says that Twitter has been where a story first breaks, as in the case of Michael Jackson’s death. Tweets of condolence and loss for the King of Pop preceded the official reports of his death, Melissa reports, by no less than 20 minutes! After a brief explanation of how she uses Twitter, Melissa opened up the floor to questions. Mainly, our Social Expeditioners wanted to know why she opted for Twitter instead of Facebook. Her answers cited the openness of Twitter and the even faster updates. To receive her great news updates, follow Melissa at @melissamoon3.
Today’s Core Conversation was something a little different, but exceptionally cool. We “Tribe Sourced.” For anyone who attended TribeCamp in April and sat in on Dave Barger’s roundtable discussion, this isn’t the first time you’ve heard the term, but to most people, the term and the whole concept will be unfamiliar. “Tribe Sourcing” is a new business model that turns the traditional ideas of competition on its head. For a detailed description, you can see the post “What is Tribe Sourcing?” at the LunaWeb blog.
To quickly break down the concept of Tribe Sourcing, though – it is the collaboration of many specialists on one problem to achieve a richer solution. Today, the Expeditioners joined forces for two non-profits, Women of Style, Spirit and Success, Inc. and Forever Young Senior Wish Organization. This second charitable group works to grant wishes for senior citizens, 65 and older, with a special focus on WWII veterans. Most recently, they organized a trip to the World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. for veterans who had never seen the monument erected in their honor. The group is now hoping to finance another trip. At the breakfast, Expeditioners brainstormed with the founder and president, Diane Hight, on how she might be able to use social media to gain sponsors and help bring more veterans to the memorial.
Not only did the group collaboration bring forth new ideas, but it also raised everyone’s spirits to be working together for two great causes. The Social Expedition certainly wishes both Women of Style, Spirit and Success and Forever Young the best of luck!
May is just around the corner, and we’ll be celebrating Cinco de Mayo with our Social Expedition breakfast. LunaWeb’s Dave Barger will be speaking this time around, and if you’ve wondered about any of the changes or features Facebook has rolled out in the past few months, you won’t want to miss it. He’ll be talking about what the new Facebook tools mean for individuals and businesses in the social scene, as well as giving us a primer on Facebook privacy.
RSVP here and be sure to connect with us on Facebook as well. We’ll see you in May!
Many of the Expeditionaries who came hungry to this month’s meet-up might have left hungry, too — but it’s not for lack of breakfast. Any stomach would’ve been growling after Kerry Crawford Trisler (of the Memphis Convention and Visitors’ Bureau) took us on a walk through the I Love Memphis blog, a guided tour through the city’s happenings, hang-outs and seriously good eats.
Kerry walked us through all the facets of the I Love Memphis social presence, from the blog to Facebook to Twitter, as well as talking about her full process for each blog post. Every piece of content that goes up on I Love Memphis will also post to Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, UrbanSpoon, Mark’s Menus and FourSquare, not to mention photos hosted on Flickr and videos on YouTube.
In talking about how she measures successes and failures, Kerry first noted that she had no real job description or expectations when she set out on this project, other than to start a blog. Being able to learn through trial and error has been the greatest asset to maximizing the success of the campaign, she said. Now, managing a Facebook fan page that boasts more than 5,000 fans and a Twitter handle with more than 1,800 followers, Kerry says those numbers are the ones that matter the least. What she’s more concerned with is the number of actual interactions she has with the humans behind those social profiles, because that is more telling of true engagement.
She also shared with the group plans she has in the pipeline for FourSquare, including creating several FourSquare tours of Memphis (a foodie tour included, don’t you fear) and working with local businesses to try to create and implement unique FourSquare promotions, like deals or discounts for mayors and other tie-ins.
While Kerry said a lot of her work with FourSquare is focused on out-of-towners — they use the platform to explore the city most, she said — the spike in readership of the I Love Memphis blog on Thursday and Friday suggests locals are becoming a huge chunk of her dedicated audience, even if just to scout out what’s happening this weekend.
In looking at the Google analytics overview for the blog, Kerry noted a few stats she’s particularly proud of, like the average one minute and forty seconds being spent on the page by visitors. With an average that high, it’s safe to assume that most people who visit the site are taking the time to consume at least one post.
Following a little Q-and-A, the room separated as it typically does into two groups for our monthly Core Conversations. This month the topics were social metrics/measuring success and blogging, both of which were particularly topical given Kerry’s presentation. You can hear a brief rundown of those discussions on this week’s podcast, which you’ll find here later this week.
If you missed this breakfast, definitely mark your calendar to join us in April, and take a listen to last week’s Expedition podcast featuring Kerry Crawford Trisler.
Whether we like it (or believe it) or not, February arrived this week and brought with it our second Expedition breakfast of 2010, featuring Dave Barger of LunaWeb speaking on social tools for the enterprise.
Dave made reference to one of the phrases that has been a staple of the Expedition for some time: “Social” is a philosophy and a shape-shifter– not just a marketing tool. When it comes to the enterprise, Dave said, “social business’ is the philosophy, and it’s not just about bringing your workplace online.
He talked first about determining the health of your business’s ecosphere. By mapping out all the important nodes of your business — from customer service to clients to providers to marketing — and looking at the connections between them, you can see the ideal version of your business ecosphere and identify current weak points to achieve that ideal.
No doubt several of the nodes in your ecosphere, no matter your business, will be internal. Creating transparency and enhancing communication within the enterprise are just as critical to the social business philosophy as those actions taken outwardly like a Facebook fan page or Twitter handle. Dave ran through a laundry list of platforms and methods businesses may use to achieve this, from wikis to discussion boards to presentation tools like SlideShare or traditional social networks.
Dave then introduced the Expeditionaries to a handful of sites specifically designed for enterprise social, talking most extensively about SocialCast, which was recently adopted by LunaWeb. You can find out more about SocialCast and others like Yammer and SocialText on this week’s Core Conversation podcast, where we’ll be continuing the conversation on social in the enterprise. You can call in at 11:30 a.m. CDT (646-721-9429) or listen live here.
More essential than the introduction to the tools, though, was the underlying philosophy and benefits of use: creating peripheral vision across the enterprise, sharing knowledge, allowing executives to offer praise and set the tone and pace of business and allowing employees to get help and access data easily are just a few examples.
If you missed out, you’ll definitely want to join us for the Core Conversation this Friday.
Just six days into 2010 and we’re back at it — our January Expedition breakfast kicked off the new year right yesterday morning at the University of Memphis Holiday Inn. The temperatures were frigid, but the coffee and conversation were flowing.
Eric Mathews, co-founder of Mercury Technology Labs and LaunchMemphis, introduced the Expeditionaries to what he called the new digital divide. Currently we use the term to refer to the haves and have-nots of basic web access; the “new” digital divide would refer to the split between the haves and have-nots in the social media realm. The tweeters and the non-tweeters, the Facebookers and, well, surely there’s someone out there who’s not on Facebook.
An even closer look at the divide reveals more distinctions in levels of access or activity, Mathews said, with smart phone users landing at the high end of the spectrum, non-users at the opposite end and levels of involvement in between, from the person who is always attached to social media to the person who uses social tools occasionally through other web platforms. That idea — the integration of social elements in non-social web presences — is what Mathews called “social light.” The concept, alongside location-based services and niche social networks, is where Mathews predicts the money-making will be for web entrepreneurs in the immediate future.
To illustrate the point, Mathews introduced the group to four Memphis-area start-ups: Mark’s Menus, Into Outdoors, Xtrant and NRange. Each company is using one of the tools he mentioned, whether light social, LBS or niche networks, and the results are measurable and impressive. Into Outdoors, a niche network for hunters and anglers, is just peeking out of beta and already has more than 1,200 fans on Facebook and six advertisers who want to get on board, site unseen.
Another of the start-ups, Xtrant, is a social network for the enterprise, a topic that was explored further during the core conversations following Mathew’s presentation, along with WordPress and Facebook in 2010. If you’re interested in learning more about start-ups and technology/entrepreneurship in Memphis, check out Mathews’ Mercury Tech Coffee, happening every Monday at 7:30 a.m. at Republic Coffee.
You can also hear more from Mathews later this month when he’ll be appearing on the Expedition podcast (in the meantime be sure to check out this week’s episode featuring Thom Rigsby — you can find it here later today). In other podcasting news, our first Core Conversation of the year happens tomorrow, so join us at 11:30 a.m. to talk about the mobile web in 2010. You can listen here or call and weigh in at (646) 721-9429.
And don’t forget to check out our Wave to find or post helpful links and continue on conversations you started at a breakfast or tweet-up. For now, just search “Social Expedition” in Wave or contact @SMExpedition on Twitter for an invitation — we’re working on a way to make it more easily accessible to all interested Expeditionaries soon!
The weather outside was frightful, but the breakfast was so, well, you know the rest. Expeditionaries braved the chilly rain this morning to welcome Dr. Kris Markman to the December Social Expedition Breakfast. She offered up some insight into the hard numbers of social media use and just a taste of the academic research currently underway on everything from perceptions of MySpace to the podcasting community.
Much of Dr. Markman’s talk felt like a look in the mirror; the statistics represent who we are as a social network site using population, from our median age to the specific messages we communicate through even a simple status update. Dr. Markman led off her presentation with a huge number — 46. That’s the percent of adult web users who use social networking sites. SNSs, as she called them, have hit the mainstream. Of those users, 73 percent have a Facebook account, while 48 percent are on MySpace, 14 percent on LinkedIn and just 6 percent on Twitter.
One of the key functions of the SNS that is increasing in prevalence is the status update. 19 percent of adult web users share or read status updates through Twitter or another platform, which Dr. Markman noted would include the Facebook status. Status updaters, she said, tend to be younger adults and tend to be early adopters who are highly plugged in.
But perhaps even more interesting than this increase in status interest is the categories of updates Markman introduced. 80 percent of updaters are called “Meformers,” who post self-focused, “me-now” messages. Just 20 percent are considered “Informers,” who share links or information through Twitter and status updates. Both groups occasionally indulged in the more peripheral categories, opinion/complaint and random thoughts.
Teenagers are a whole different animal, tweeting mostly to follow and interact with celebrities, and obsessed with the number of times they’ve tweeted. The statistics go on, and you can download and read Dr. Markman’s full presentation by clicking here. You’ll see more in the slides about the newly emerging racial breakdown of MySpace usage, incredible increases in online video viewership and a taste of Dr. Markman’s own research on podcasting — who podcasts, why they do it, what keeps them involved and more. It’s particularly interesting to us, because we’ve got a podcasting project in the pipeline to get Memphis podcasters together to talk shop. Keep watching here for more information soon.
Though it’s only been eight months since Dr. Kris Markman last spoke to the Social Expedition, so much has changed in the social media realm that we could spend 10 tweet-ups just catching up.
And while we might not have that kind of time, we were able to pencil ourselves in to Dr. Markman’s 7:30 to 9:30 slot on Dec. 2 for the upcoming Expedition breakfast. She’ll be presenting “Current Trends in Social Media Usage,” talking about the big changes that have been afoot on the social media scene in 2009, and as usual we’ll break up for core conversations following the presentation, so do a little brainstorming on what topics you’d like to see on the shortlist.
The details remain the same: we’ll be at the University of Memphis Holiday Inn and the cost to you is $20, or $15 for you and a guest if you bring along a brand new Expeditionary. Either way, remember to RSVP.
Here’s a little more background on Dr. Markman, taken from her University of Memphis vitae: Markman’s academic research focuses broadly on the areas of identity & anonymity, language & social interaction and organizational uses of technology. She is also interested in the relationship between the internet and popular culture and new forms of media production and distribution. She teaches Computer-Mediated Communication (Communication on the Internet), History of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Media 2.0: Production & Distribution in the Internet Age and Broadcast Regulations & Programming Policy.
Since its launch in March of this year, MemphisConnect.com has been viewed by people in more than 1,300 cities across the globe. It’s an impressive figure, and even more so when you consider that 50 percent of those 1,300 are municipalities outside the region. So instead of the Forbes Most Miserable list, those thousands of outsiders are getting the real Memphis as told by real Memphians.
That’s one of the ways Elizabeth Lemmonds, director of marketing and communications for The Leadership Academy, sums up the message of MemphisConnect.com. But however you choose to describe it, the site is using community blogging not only to refresh the national (and international) perspective on our city, but also to connect its citizens and create a hub of information on what’s going on, what’s gearing up and what’s good in Memphis.
Elizabeth Lemmonds, MemphisConnect.com
Lemmonds spoke to Expeditionaries at the monthly breakfast this morning about the history and purpose of the site, but also about the challenges of community blogging and the ways the site is working with social media tools to build and expand. Though she faces some challenges that any blogger could empathize with – keeping a conversation going once it’s ignited, for example – she also faces challenges unique to this medium. For example, you probably wouldn’t hear a blogger complaining about having too much content, but it’s an issue for Lemmonds. With so many contributors and authors, the content, she says, is realistically too much to manage on a daily basis.
But – and maybe she’s crazy – she still wants more. “You have to grow, because if you don’t grow, you’ll die,” she said. So instead of turning content down, she’s constantly looking for new opportunities for growth and learning. In that growth, the site has undergone some changes, like the addition of Facebook Connect to make the log-in process easier for new users.
Cracking the code of that natural ebb and flow of user participation and commenting is another hurdle for the site, Lemmonds said. One of the greatest functions of MemphisConnect is conversation, but it isn’t always easy to keep it rolling. She gave a specific example of a Halloween happenings post by Memphis Daddy Blogger Buck Rogers, and how many comments it received. “One commenter even said, ‘I’ve been online all day trying to find this information, thank you for posting this,’” Lemmonds said. It’s that type of participation (and utility for users) that will keep people coming back.
Lemmonds said the site also aims to bring people in through social media channels, specifically through Twitter. For example, each week on Thursday posts go out through the MemphisConnect Twitter handle asking followers what they’re getting up to over the weekend. The responses are re-tweeted and also posted on the site. Lemmonds said she hopes to see a new functionality in the future that would allow users to post photos in comments, meaning they could give feedback during the week on how all those weekend recommendations turned out.
If you missed out, the good news is that you can get a little taste of what Lemmonds has to say about MemphisConnect through last week’s Expedition podcast, still available for listening or download here.
