Social Networking 101

 

USE YOUR SOCIAL NETWORKS TO BUILD ONLINE COMMUNITIES
Media Maven Lunch: April 2007, January 2008

1. Online Community Building: The Basics & Core Concepts
2. Social Media & Social Networking
3. Case Study: Flickr, Facebook and Ning and Twitter
4. How to Manage a Social Network
5. More Reading and Resources

1. Online Community Building: The Basics and Core Concepts
The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
- The Cluetrain Manifesto http://www.cluetrain.com/

See: http://del.icio.us/lgdavitian/onlinecommunity
And http://del.icio.us/lgdavitian/socialnetworking
And http://del.icio.us/tag/ts-osn-event
See: Facebook: The Missing Manual at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517694/

Are you on an email listserve? Have you ever posted comments blog or bulletin board? Do you make regular conference calls? Have you ever added a customer comment? Or forwarded an article? Uploaded a video to Youtube? Shared your internet bookmarks?

One in four adult Internet users in the U.S. regularly visits popular social networking sites, according to “iProspect Social Networking User Behavior Study,” a report sponsored by iProspect and conducted by JupiterResearch = 41 million people.
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625536

Nonprofits can use online communities in a variety of ways to:

• increase visibility about an issue of concern

• mobilize concerned citizens to advocate for a political agenda

• facilitate shared learning between constituents, staff and other like-minded individuals and organizations

• support fundraising efforts by connecting donors and/or members

• announce current events to the public

• recruit volunteers for the organization

• share lessons and discuss challenges with colleagues and peers

Brief historic view: Broadcast model, email list serves, MUDS, the Well
http://www.well.com/

Evolved over time. Really hit public consciousness during election campaign of 2004.
- We are just starting to find out what works.
- These operate on “social software” – software that supports group interaction.

They include content/media sites where users add content: photos, blog posts, bookmarks, comments, review, feedback, ratings or their own pages.
and Social Networking Sites, Larger sites: myspace.com, facebook and amazon.com are organized around mass audience.

Remember, in all cases you have to hit the high points of “strategic communications planning”: What is their goal? Who is their audience? What are the values of their audience members? What action do we want them to take? How do we make it easy for them to do this? What tools do we use?)

Core Concepts: When we think about building an online community, the operative word is community. Before we focus on “online” lets think about this as a community event. Before planning a community event, what do you have to take into consideration? Brainstorm.

Purpose of Event/ Audience/ Location/ Program-Content/ Action to take as a result of attending/ Follow Up/ Marketing

You will also need to take these key features into consideration when you consider and plan building your online community.

See: A Group is its Own Worst Enemy, Clay Shirky, April 2003 – About what makes groups work and why.
http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
He talks about some core concepts of successful online communities:
- He emphasizes the group (rather than the individuals)
- Importance of Identity – Users have to identify themselves
- Way to for Members in good standing
- Barriers to Participation v. ease of use (you don’t really want everyone)
- Spare the group from scale (size matters).

http://blog.ning.com/2007/03/eight_steps_to_creating_a_grea.html
1. Start with a great idea and a host. (Clear purpose and lead personality)
2. Set the Mood (first impressions matter)
3. Invite the right people to the pre-party. (start with who you know)
4. Spend time setting up. (establish your point of view)
5. Open the doors. (promote your site).
6. Kick it into High gear (keep material fresh, keep working on it, recruit others to help)
7. Expect Party crashers (moderate)

2. Social Media & Social Networking

Social Media involves connecting and sharing information with other like-minded people via the Web. Internet message boards and Yahoo Groups fall under the general category of social networking, as do social bookmarking tools like del.icio.us and Technorati, applications that let users add their own keywords (or tags) to Web pages and blogs. (For more information on tagging and social bookmarking, read TechSoup's article What Is Web 2.0 Anyway?)

Example of Social Bookmarking from Common Craft:
http://www.commoncraft.com/bookmarking-plain-english

Social Networking On the other hand, friend-of-a-friend (FOAF) social networking sites such as Care2, Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster are specifically designed to connect individuals and groups directly with others who share common interests and goals.

Example of Social Networking:
The Common Craft Show presents a video is for people who wonder why social networking web sites are so popular.
We think one reason is because they help solve a real-world problem. We'll let the video explain how it works.
http://www.commoncraft.com/video-social-networking

A typical FOAF network will display a directory of people or topics. When you find someone with similar interests, you can send them a message asking to be added to their contact lists. This in turn allows you to meet other like-minded folks in that person's network, theoretically expanding your organization's contacts more efficiently and quickly than you could in the real world. Your network grows exponentially with each person you add, and you can interact with others using tools such as public and private messages and discussion forums.

Case Studies: Flickr, Facebook, Ning and Twitter
Examples of broad audience sites: MySpace, YoutTub and Amazon.com. More specific targeted sites.

There are sites that enable you to build your own unique online community (ning is a good example of this, or myspace). There are web features that you can add to an existing website to encourage discussion, membership and collective action (such as blogs or video blogs). There are communications applications (such as list serves) that may also be the appropriate tool for you to consider. Let’s look at some of them:

Let's look at Facebook:
From Beth Kanter How Nonprofits can use Social Media: http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2007/10/facebook-demogr.html

4. How to Manage a Social Network

Remember: Event Planning 101
o Seeding the Conversation
o Format and Location
o Usability/ Functionality
o Aesthetics

A. Clear Objectives: What are you trying to accomplish?
How will this community building activity serve your goals?
Is it a relevant topic?
• How will the online community advance our organization's mission? Be as specific as possible.
• What are reasonable expectations for the online community?
• What other online communities are addressing similar issues? How will ours be different? Will tapping into an already established online community address our online community-building goal?
• What are the topics to be discussed? How will we keep the discussion focused?
• What is the time frame for the discussion? Will it be a one-time event or will we host ongoing discussions?
• What will our organization do with the information once the discussion ends?

B. Who is your audience?
• Have you asked members of your intended audience for their input about using an online community, and what topics are of interest to them?
• Do potential participants already consider themselves a group or defined community? Or are you creating one from scratch? The latter requires significantly more effort to be successful.
• Who makes up the community? Is there cross-over? If so, will their different perspectives and needs help or hinder the goals of the community?
• How much time are you asking from your audience? Have you confirmed with potential members that such an amount is reasonable to them?
• Does this audience have access to the necessary equipment and software to participate? Are there local access sites that the audience members can use to participate in the online community?

C. Staffing and Capacity to Support
• Who will install the technology, moderate the conversation and provide technical assistance? Will this be one person or multiple people?
• How much time staff time will be needed for moderating discussions?
• How much staff time will be necessary for providing technical assistance to participants offline? How will technical assistance be provided (email, phone, in-person)?
• What additional tasks will the moderator take on, such as compiling news and resources relevant to the topic of the online community?

D. MANAGEMENT PRACTICES: Degree of Control: Is it moderated? Or Not?
- What is the direction of your communication?
- Should participants be allowed to be anonymous?
- Timing?
• Moderators need to have technology and people skills. Make sure the ground rules are clearly written and accessible to all (1 click away)
• Attempt to make the culture welcoming to new members. Further, current members should be encouraged to gently let new members know what is appropriate behavior, and what isn't.
• The moderator should be available and accessible to all via email / IM
• When serious infractions occur, action must be immediate, and should be consistent over time (always the same reaction). Abuse, and abusive members cannot be tolerated.
From: http://www.onlinecommunityreport.com/
- See: The Art of Hosting Good Conversations Online
- http://www.rheingold.com/texts/artonlinehost.html

E. PROMOTIONAL STRATEGY: SPREADING THE WORD
- Spreading the word
- Collect emails from contacts at offline events so that you can send a reminder email about participating in your online community.
- Add a "Participate in our online conversation" to your organization's home page. Don't make visitors search for your online community.
- Create and post an electronic press release to electronic mailing lists that serve the intended audiences. (Be sure that the guidelines of those other online communities accept promotional material.)
- Add a sentence to your email signature that reads "Join our online community at…" (and then provide the Web or email address).
More:
• Link your new social network to your blog or website.
• Include your URL in your signature on blogs, your MySpace page, or discussion forums.
• Advertise on other websites geared towards the same interest.
• Take videos and photo slideshows from your new social network, add your own logo, and put them to your blog or any website in general.
• Search engine optimization is also important.
Remember: You are building an ONLINE COMMUNITY: As the owner, leader, and/or community evangelist, it's your job to attract users. The standard promotional approaches (search engines, word of mouth, submitting links to other sites) apply. This is the easy part. Making sure the right people stick around is harder. In a healthy community, that's not your job.
The community itself is not the only draw, in most cases, but it is a primary attractor.

5. MORE READING>>>

http://www.cnet.com/4520-6033_1-6240543-1.html

A-Z of Social Media
http://socialmedia.wikispaces.com/A-Z+of+social+media

Friends, Friendsters and Top 8: Writing Community into being on social network sites
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_12/boyd/

The Cluetrain Manifesto
http://www.cluetrain.com/

ON LINE FORUM ONLINE NETWORKS
http://www.techsoup.org/fb/index.cfm?fuseaction=forums.showSingleTopic&forum=2033&id=63317&cid=117

PROFESSIONAL NETWORKING
www.linkedin.com
www.ryze.com

GENERAL SOCIAL NETWORKS
www.facebook.com
www.tribe.net
www.friendster.com
www.orkut.com

ROLL YOUR OWN
www.ning.com
An online service to create, customize, and share a social network.

PRIMARILY YOUTH AUDIENCE
www.myspace.com
www.tagged.com ;
www.tagworld.com

COMMUNITIES FOCUSED AROUND IMAGES
www.flickr.com
www.textamerica.com
www.yafro.com

VALUES ORIENTED
www.care2connect.com - Progressive-value and activist focused.
www.gather.com - Public Radio and social issue focused.
www.xianz.com – Christian focused

OTHER
www.prx.org - Public Radio Exchange
www.last.fm - Music-oriented OSN
www.facebook.com – College-oriented OSN
www.everyonesconnected.com – British-based OSN

Recommended OnlineSites from Ruby - One of the important aspects of online social networking is that individuals can create and manage their own identity with which to interact with the community.

1. del.icio.us bookmarks
Save and organize bookmarks with tags, and browse the tags of others. (example)

2. flickr photo & album sharing
Upload and tag photos and add them to groups. Browse photos by personal contacts, tag, date, or "interestingness." (example)

3. bloglines aggregator
Collect and organize RSS feeds. See how many other users subscribe to each feed. Now you can read (or at least skim) lots of blogs and other sites with feeds. (example)

4. friendster the original social networking site
Make your own profile, connect to friends, browse by connections, interests, geography, etc. Send announcements to your network, make matches between friends and colleagues. tribe net, orkut, linked in, and my space are also popular with different communities. (example)

5. last.fm show off your great musical taste
Track the music you play to generate charts and recommendations. Tag music, and listen to radio stations based on tags or similar artists. Connect to friends, join interest groups, converse in forums. Use RSS feeds to publish your listening data on your own blog. (example)

6. wikipedia collaborative wisdom
This is a great place to find information, on everything from global politics to new technology. You can contribute your own knowledge for public benefit, and even create new pages for topics you think are missing. (example - "nonprofit technology" entry)

7. 43things sharing and supporting goals
List your personal goals, find people with common goals and support each other. See also 43people, and 43places. (example)

8. blogging
There are so many tools, and the right just depends on what your needs are. The most social one is Live Journal, the absolutely simplest is Blogger, the most powerful is Drupal. MovableType and it's hosted version TypePad are also popular. I usually recommend Wordpress because it is powerful and flexible without being difficult to use. Free hosted blogs are available at Wordpress.com (example - one of my wordpress blogs)

When you blog, your posts go into a standardized feed (see #3 above), which can be understood by other sites. You can automatically 'ping' sites like Technorati when you publish so that more people will be able to find your blog.

9. instant messaging - Twitter and Mobile Active - See Review on Use of Twitter!
As with blogging, there are many viable choices. For IM (instant messaging), get a multi-protocol client so you can use different systems with one application (Windows: Trillian, Mac: Adium or Fire). The different protocols or networks include: AOL, Yahoo, Google Talk.
See Twitter for Organizations by Nate Ritter, http://mobileactive.org/twitter-organizations-1-guest-blogger-nate-ritter
What is Twitter and What can a Nonprofit do with It? by Beth Kanter http://www.fundraising123.org/article/what-twitter-and-what-can-nonprofit-do-it

See also: http://www.soup.io/ - aggregator for all kinds of postings.
10. Internet phone
Skype is the most widely adopted, but Gizmo is also a good option.
VOIP (voice over IP) not only allows you to talk person-to-person for free, it allows for conference calling and other features.

Social Network for Nonprofits
http://www.netsquared.org/blog/eweinb04/social-networking-for-nonprofits
http://www.myspace.com/oxfam
http://www.myspace.com/gpus
http://www.myspace.com/saveouroceans
http://www.myspace.com/worthycausesfoundation

Ning Featured Projects:
http://brooklynartproject.ning.com/
http://www.dosomething.org/

Change.org – Social Network for hundreds of social causes and nonprofit organizations. http://www.change.org/

Forums - http://slashdot.org/
See: Five Rules http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/060831miller/
Also: http://www.violinist.com/

http://www.javaranch.com/ - A friendly place for Java Greenhorns
See: Creating Passionate Users
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/06/building_a_succ.html
- Be Friendly (uses the dinner party analogy)
- Common culture community will start moderating itself

A word a day:
http://wordsmith.org/

Without reader-to-reader conversations, an online forum is nothing but a giant "letters to the editor" page.