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!
The Expeditionaries spent their Cinco de Mayo morning talking social at the monthly breakfast meeting of the Social Expedition. Dave Barger of LunaWeb spoke with the group about new Facebook features and online privacy.
(Fun fact: it was Dave’s 62nd presentation in the last two and a half years on social topics, to more than one thousand people.)
Dave talked us through all of the new plug-ins being offered by Facebook to connect the site and its features with sites across the web. The first one on the agenda has already been adopted by around 50,000 sites, and Dave says it will likely be the most game-changing tool of the group: the universal “Like” button.
A user simply needs to grab a snippet of code and plug it in to a site to see the now iconic “thumbs up” appear on a page. When someone visits the site and clicks the button, an item will appear on their personal activity feed and the news feeds of their friends on Facebook, just as it would with activities and interactions within the four walls of the site itself.
Other plug-ins Dave discussed included a comments tool, which will bring the function of commenting — as you would on Facebook in response to a photo, video or note — to external sites, allowing users to leave text comments and, of course, linking that activity back to the user’s news feed.
After the plug-ins, the discussion turned to privacy. Facebook’s recent partnerships with external sites like Yelp and Pandora have made public information that many users thought was only being shared among their friends and connections. Dave noted that one of the main problems with Facebook’s privacy settings is that users have to choose to opt out rather than choosing to opt in.
He walked us through the steps a user would need to take to access privacy settings and discussed each section and potential implications of each — for example, information your friends can share about you. You may think you’re protected because you’ve tightened up your personal security, but your profile details can still find their way out into the public through your friends.
Generally, Dave advised against putting anything remotely sensitive on Facebook; even if you think you have that portion of your profile locked down, Facebook could change the rules of the game at any time, leaving you exposed.
Dave wrapped up his presentation with some highlights from his recent trip to SOBCon, including the advice “Quit collecting blueprints and start building something.”
Join us for our next meet-up on May 20, Twilight Camp at Davis Kidd’s Bronte Bistro, and be sure to mark your calendar for next month’s breakfast, happening Wednesday June 2.
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!
We braved the pollen Wednesday to make it out to the April Social Expedition breakfast, featuring guest speaker Rod Kirby and his thoughts on blogging.
Rod’s presentation was titled “The Four Pillars of Blogging Success.” He broke down those four pillars — Content, Community, Design and Scalability — into step-by-step guidelines, beginning with creating quality content. The best blog content is scan-able, Rod said, because ultimately, as much as we’d love people to spend hours on our sites reading every word we write, it’s just not the way people consume online media.
A second key to developing quality content is planning, Rod said. He uses an editorial calendar to plan out when he will post about what topics, and also employs a strategy for the types of content he posts. For example, on a certain day of the week he will post a text blog post, on another day a poll and on a third day, a video. Setting the expectation for content delivery also keeps people coming back to the site as repeat visitors, he said, because they know there will be new content on a particular day.
The next pillar is Community, and Rod used the word “nurture” to describe how a blogger should treat his or her online community. Start conversations, participate with your readers in your own comments section and continually strive to offer value. As in business, Rod noted that a blogger must offer his reader a value proposition. What can the reader gain from reading this blog, what is the value in a post?
The next pillar is design, where Rod said the key is “easy.” Easy to navigate, easy to subscribe, easy on the eyes. And as for the fourth pillar, scalability, Rod asked the bloggers in the room: Where can your blog take you? What are your possibilities with this brand and this content outside of just your site and outside of the online space? Think about E-Books, radio, television, etc. How can you build a business and brand around your blogging?
During the Q and A session, Rod mentioned some of his favorite plug-ins for WordPress, the platform he uses for RodKirby.com. For comments, he recommended Disqus and CommentLuv. We also got into an interesting discussion about the value of negative comments and e-mails, and the value of leaving those comments up or even posting a negative e-mail live to your site. The general consensus was that showing those alternate viewpoints can be a huge positive for a blogger, because others may have had the same thoughts; posting the negativity allows you to respond to it and clarify your points.
If you missed out this month, don’t miss the May breakfast, and of course join us for Twilight Camp on Thursday, April 22 at Davis Kidd’s Bronte Bistro. You’ll also want to sign up now (while you can get the Early Bird discount!) for TribeCamp, the upcoming web/tech conference from LunaWeb and Launch Memphis.
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.
