Social Media Expedition » Elizabeth Lemmonds

November breakfast: Elizabeth Lemmonds from MemphisConnect.com

LunaWeb — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:03:57 +0000

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.

Expeditionaries gathered in Core Conversations

Social Expedition Podcast #4: Social search and MemphisConnect.com

LunaWeb — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:01:44 +0000

In the fourth installment of The Social Expedition Podcast, we talked with Elizabeth Lemmonds (who happens to be the speaker at next week’s breakfast) about community blogging, promoting our city and how sites like MemphisConnect.com are contributing to the conversation.

It’s a fitting time to be on this topic with the launch this week of Google’s social search, a tool that displays your online peers’ opinions and comments right alongside traditional sources in search engine results. We tackle the social search, plus social media news in Memphis, how city entities are using social media to improve services and more in this episode.

Elizabeth Cawein, Matthew Crawford Trisler, Elizabeth Lemmonds, Dave Barger

For the URLs mentioned in this podcast, see the complete list below, and be sure to join us Friday for our Core Conversation call-in podcast on doing business through social media.

This episode mentioned the following links:

Download the episode here, or click below to listen on the page.

November Breakfast: It’s all about connecting

LunaWeb — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:00:07 +0000

The time flies when you’re having fun, because it’s already time to mark your calendars for the next Social Expedition Breakfast. If you enjoyed hearing from Lindsey Coates last month about what ArtsMemphis is up to, you’re going to want to hear what Elizabeth Lemmonds, of The Leadership Academy and Memphis Connect, has to share about community blogging and moving Memphis forward through Web 2.0 tools.

We’re excited to learn more about not only what the Leadership Academy has accomplished through Memphis Connect thus far, but also the challenges they’ve faced and how they’re overcoming them and how they’ve marketed the site and started a conversation through social media.

We’ll be at the University of Memphis Holiday Inn as usual, and we’re looking forward to seeing faces both new and old at 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 4. Please RSVP though, as there is a limited amount of space.