Technology in Communications

Updates below as the morning goes along. ***

I'm spending the morning today at the US Chambe of Commerce at the "Online Strategies for Grassroots Advocacy" workshop being put up by our friends at Adfero Group. (http://www.adferogroup.com/)

I'll be live blogging my own notes as each speaker shares their strategies, tips, and techniques for using social networking, and viral marketing for grassroots advocacy.

Right now, Chris Kelly, Vice President of Corp. Development at Facebook.com is speaking about how Facebook has been a tool for political or advocacy campaigns.

Whats important:

1. User Control
2. Authenticity: Ability to interact with others as themselves
3. Accesability: Facebook is becoming part of people's daily life.

Their users are encouraged to connect with a group.

9:25AM: The next speaker is Tim Fullerton from Oxfam America, and International relief organization.

He answers the qestion, "Why use social networks?"

1. Inexpensive way to reach and engage a broader audience (low cost)
2. People like to feel they are part of a community
3. your supporters are using it, and so are their friends.
4. ...I didn't catch the last one.

He is showcasing the Oxfam MySpace page. They are embeding videos, and they have had more than 1000 people sign up for emails from their sign up box in MySpace!! Wow.

From experience, Tim says MySpace doesn't seem to be effective for fund-raising. The other panelists seem to agree.

They are using Flickr.com to post pictures that link back to their main website. This is specially effective when you have pictures of a celebrity, since it will be higher on the search frequency. An interesting and valuable tip.

Tim gives some tips on where to begin:

1. Pick one social network site that works best for your work
2. Promote to your supporters
3. Update, update, update (at least once a week, if not more!)
4. Be patient.
   

9:34AM: Jamie Riehle, from Lycos.com is next on the panel.

He's going to talk some about web 2.0, about what lycos is doing, and provide 5 tips for your organization to best use the web to support your message.

In case you have been wondering what Web 2.0 is, its basicly a web site that grows and improves as a direct result of user's contributions and participation. Usually, it entails the use of technologies like Ajax, RSS, and video embeding. But, the key factor is the user interaction and involvement in the key features of a website.

9:44AM: He's showing a video from "CitySessions" to demonstrate Lycos Cinema. Lycos can host your organization's PSA or other video, and it could be a good way to drive traffic back to your website at no cost.

Five Tips for Winning in a Web World:

1. Identify your audience. Who are you trying to reach and what do you want them to do?
2. Use viral friendly content. Photos, wallpaper, SHORT videos, songs, or audio, quizzes, anything that makes it easy to share your message.
3. Keep it fresh. Update. Staleness will kill your social networking program or campaign.
4. Re-circulate your own traffic, and utilize a number of different sites. Link, link link...send people around your whole netowkr.
5. Easy of use, high level of ineractivity, build your site to be easy to navigate and get around. Usability.
   

He's done...now the panel is going to answer questions from the moderator. (I won't write the names, just share the tips and ideas that come out...)

A messaging tools must NOT turn into a spamming tool. Any messaging system has to be carefull about not being to aggresive.

The key is to find people of like-mind, and work to form them into a group.

Take pictures and videos of your offline events (videos: fun and edgy), and upload it to a MySpace profile, Facebook, or Flickr.

Manage the campaign. You have to keep going back to the people that came by your social network page, visit their profiles and their pages, and leave comments on their pages. This brings in their friends, and is a sort of "link farming" to increase awareness and visibility of your campaign.

Following up with people is one of the weaknesses of many non-profits. You have to cultivate the relationship, and work at it each level of the relationship. It takes work.

How much time or money do I need to invest? Its fairly easy to re-purpose content. If you already have a blog, you can include it in your Facebook profile using RSS. Facebook will push this content out to your friends network. There are easy ways to get out re-purposed content.

Levaraging your assets, your networks of friends you have recruited, to get your message out.

Use interns. They are usually more tech savy, and its a great way for them to learn, while providing low-cost help to a non-profit.

Blogs form a network online, and are essential to spreading a message.

Reaching out to blogs: Find blogs that will be supportive of your cause. Don't just send press releases, but instead cultivate relationships.

You have to be prepared to lose control when it comes to user generated content, and online advocacy.

The risk or challenge is in the accountability that results from having everything in your past recorded, and can and probably will be brought up. An example that keeps getting mentioned is Allan's "Makaka" incident.

10:00AM: Ok. Most of the answers seem to be re-hashs of what has been said.... I'll ad more notes as I hear noteworthy stuff.

I'm running out of baterries, so I'll try to keep good notes and blog more about it later.

Posted by Josue Sierra at 7:27 AM | Permalink | Comments

YouTube finaly took a step to prevent Revver from stealing its members. With YouTube's announced decision to share revenue with it's users, it can hopefully maintain its position over the countless of competitors that have cropped up a dime a dozen.

In October 2005, Revver -- which like YouTube offers video clips online -- announced plans to attach advertising to user-submitted videos and give their creators a cut of the profit.

Considering large-audience shows like LonelyGirl15 are based out of Revver because of the revenue sharing, this should have the intended effects--increase quality video products being shared or published through the YouTube video sharing system.

Hurley said that when YouTube started, he and the site's co-founders -- Steve Chen and Jawed Karim -- thought revenue sharing would build a community of users motivated by making money rather a love of videos.

But, he said, as the site has grown, executives have come to see remuneration as a way of improving content.

The Washington Post has the full article.

Posted by Josue Sierra at 6:25 PM | Permalink | Comments

As some of you may have noticed, I am doing a redesign of the template. Its a work in progress, but I hope the new look will beter reflect what I hope this blog will be -- a showcase of articles, case studies and personal expertise.

Just an FYI.

Posted by Josue Sierra at 2:08 PM | Permalink | Comments

I've been invited to give a workshop or training session on Internet marketing to the state chapter leadership of a national MBA association, NSHMBA.

The event is being held at the Pizza Hut headquarters in Dallas, which should be interestnig. I'm looking forward to doing some networking there. I will be participating in some training myself, as I am also part of NSHMBA and on the board of the Denver chapter.

I keep a Business blog for them, focused on the MBA academic community and the business community in the greater Denver metro area. You can read more of that here.

Posted by Josue Sierra at 8:45 AM | Permalink | Comments

I just confirmed a training session in Miami, FL where I will be working with the staff at Great Commission Latin America in improving their internal and external communications processes.

Since it is the middle of the winter, I've decided to bring my lovely bride along, and spend the weekend warming up my bones.

They have requested some help in setting up some tools that will help them stay accountable to internal and external stakeholders, such as ministry partners, donors, staff, and volunteers. I'm thinking that besides the email system I am installing, I'm thinking a blog in English for external stakeholders, with an image gallery and a calendar, and then a Spanish language blog for internal stakeholders and on-the-field volunteers (in Latin America) would be valuable tools. Still evaluating their needs, so I'll have to fine tune my suggestions accordingly.

Posted by Josue Sierra at 7:21 AM | Permalink | Comments

My recommendations to all my clients has always been and continues to be for the .com domain. There are several technical and usability reasons for these.

1. Technical: Some servers, when set up properly, will send a user who forgets to type a domain to the .com domain automatically (on browsers that have this capability).
   
   So, for example, if you had mycompany.net, and a user types "mycompany" -- some browsers would be sending these users to a potential competitor.
   
   
2. Usability: .Com is the most common and well-known domain. You don't want to force your customers and users to remember yours because its different.
   
   Unless you manage to secure a STELLAR and MEMORABLE domain, going with the .com works best. Its possible to be successful without a .com domain -- del.icio.us is one example. But, some of this is subject to luck and other factors.
   
   
3. I would not advice using a dash or hyphen.
   

Usually, the challenge to choosing a domain only comes when the company name is not available in the .com domain. For these cases, I would suggest going with slogan, or catch phrase, that best brands your company.

For example, a missions nonprofit (I've mentioned before) targeting Latin America could not find their domain "www.gcla.com", so they went with "www.reachinglatinos.com."

This is the key for domain selection:

1. Easy to spell.
2. Easy to understand over the radio (when you don't know how to spell it). This means no numerals.
   
3. Catchy, memorable, or short and easy to remember.
4. Ads value to the brand.
   

The corporate initials might be well known internally, but unless you are using it on your marketing collateral, will not ad any value to your brand. Keep it it focused and integrated with larger marketing strategy.

About using a .net, I would say it only makes sense when it ads value to the brand. For example, if your company provides networking services, or something of that sort. Otherwise, you are faced with the same challenge of users possibly forgetting the domain.

Hope this helps in your brainstorming process as you figure out the best domain for your company.

Posted by Josue Sierra at 3:28 PM | Permalink | Comments

LinkedIn has a new Question & Answers feature, so I thought I would post some of the answers I have shared within my LinkedIn network. Here is one on using free tools for business.

I provide pro-bono consulting for a really small relief charity. This has really forced me to think carefully about the best possible sollution at the lowest cost.

Recently, I was able to set them up with a full list management system, including sign up pages, list segmentation, auto-unsubscribe, subscribe-confirmation rule-based emails, etc. all for free. The software was included on their Linux based web hosting package.

Now days, most hosting services using the CPANEL client admin set up include a huge list of open-source web-based tools that are EASY to install (literally, two or three clicks) and with some technical skills, easy to customize.

They now have a fully functional direct-email tool that cost them $0 beyond what they already paid for hosting. So, while it may not give them profits, it certainly will strengthen their existing constituent and donor relationships, and potentially increase donation revenue.

You can find the full list of available software for free and read more at http://cpanel-host.com/fantastico/ It may not be enterprise level tools, but more than adequate for any small business or non-profit.

Most use databases that are compatible with industry standard MySQL or other databases, making upgrades easy, and customization possible with the right technical skills.

Feel free to post your own questions -- I would be glad to get to them as time permits.

Posted by Josue Sierra at 3:24 PM | Permalink | Comments

Sobering reality of the challenges of parenting:

Researchers continue to document just how deeply social networking Web sites have impacted American youth culture. The latest assessment from the Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that 55% of all American adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 have a profile on MySpace, Facebook, Xanga or another similar site.

For 15- to 17-year-old girls, that figure rises to 70%, compared to 54% of boys in the same age group. Of those, most teens use these sites to stay in touch with nearby friends (91%) or those whom they don't often see in person (82%). A strong majority (72%) utilize them to make social plans, while just under half (49%) report meeting new friends as a main motivation.

MySpace easily outdistances its competitors as the most popular social networking destination, attracting 85% of those teens who've created a personal profile. It's followed in popularity by Facebook (7%) and Xanga (1%). Other sites, such as Yahoo, Piczo, Gaia Online and Tagged, each garner less than 1% of the remaining social networking pie.

[pewresearch.org, 1/7/07; publications.mediapost.com, 1/8/07 stats]

I'm waiting for the fad to fade, and see what's left behind. There is great value in this technology, and helping teens find their next date is not one of the life-changing uses for tagging, RSS, and social networking.

Posted by Josue Sierra at 6:16 PM | Permalink | Comments