Successful Blog

Social Networking: User Generated Content and Community

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Guest Post by Richard Reeve

Social media intrigues me on many levels, especially as it relates to those platforms which have chosen to publish publicly. The poet Charles Olson predicted a day would come “when the private would be public.” I think that day is dawning.

International Space Station

If you are doing business within social media, what I have to share should be useful. If you think you’re not doing business in social media, I’d like to challenge that notion. I know, I know: “where’s the profit? show me the ROI.” Coming as I do from an arts background, I’m quite comfortable seeing engaged and talented folks not turning a dime from their activity. None the less, to call their work a hobby is both disrespectful and untrue. They are producers. No matter what you might take away from your social media experience, including the dollars that many are already realizing, you are also a producer contributing to the front edge of the largest data bloom in history. It’s a collective business you’re engaged in, and whether you realize it or not, you’re playing your role quite nicely.

Then you might protest: “But isn’t social media just today’s version of the chat room?” Unlike the proto-social media chat room experiences, your activity across platforms like blogs, twitter, and friendfeed allows for public access, and at least in theory, forever. You’re never replying solely to the person you are replying to, nor even to those currently in your network, nor to those currently on-line. Take for example this post I shared about a NASA website. It guides you to locate the space shuttle going overhead from wherever you live. Now I posted this over a month ago and through search it remains both fully functioning and as useful as the day I wrote it.

My experience has been that communities arise around content clusters emerging in the data bloom. While these clusters often have a personality shepherding the interest, it’s the shared interest in the content that aligns everybody. And shared interest eventually creates opportunity for the liquidation of social capital. That being the case, it’s through contributing to the data surrounding your interests that you are building the potential for your business.

The poet Robert Creeley wrote that “form is never more than an extension of content.” Social Media allows content to extend in previously unimagined ways, carrying the details of our commonplace lives, our deepest interest and our wildest aspirations into digitalized perpetuity. And that’s serious business, no?

—Richard Reeve
Image: flickr –International Space Station
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Richard, aspiration means breathing toward. I hope that’s where we’re headed.
Thank you for this and everything you contribute.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

If you haven’t had a chance yet, add your $500 wish to the list. I hope you win!

Not Every Town Square Needs to Be a Coliseum – Small Communities Grow

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Last week at lunch, Patrick Rooney and I were talking about the digital divide between the social media culture and the companies looking for ways to join it. We discussed how the lovely social media landscape can look a little unfriendly when you consider it from that perspective. We’ve all seen what social media backlash can do.

The expectation that a company will adapt immediately and seamlessly without error to new culture is unrealistic. You and I didn’t. Did we? What a business moving into social media needs is a way for people get to know them.

Not Every Town Square Needs to Be a Coliseum

The first time I went to London, I didn’t know much beyond the language. Luckily my friend, Richard, met me at the airport that morning. We went to a local eatery — a pub really — and he gave me a quick rundown on the currency and the “rules.” As a saloonkeeper’s daughter, my favorite was Don’t you dare tip in a pub that makes you get your own drink.

Culture. We learn it by sharing it. We pass it along to each other. As communities we build it and shape it together by talking about who we are, what we believe, where we’re going, what we do for a living, what we buy and sell, and what we need, want, and desire.

Piazza, Plaza, Commons, a Town Square, a Quad, the Food Court in a mall, a water cooler, a pub … almost every culture has theirs — a space where people gather for conversations like those.

In Mexico, these ubiquitous areas are called Zócalos. They are just as important today as ever – serving as a home for leisurely chats, special celebrations and neighborhood connectivity. While the most prominent Zócalo is located in Mexico City, smaller Zócalos exist in just about every Mexican community. –Zócalo Group

Not every town square needs to be a Coliseum or an Epcot Center. People meet on the stoops of a side street in New York City.

The biggest worries to companies coming online are fear of negative response, time investment, and skepticism of return. In a culture where the value shift has gone from one-size fits all to one at a time always, every business might try thinking small — smaller starts, smaller steps — but more of them.

Listen and make relationships. Then build something small. Small communities are investments. Small communities grow and as they grow, the business can build a unique culture with them.

Small Communities Grow

A great example of a business that’s doing this well is a client of mine. The core business is a seamless system of integrating human and technological translation for WordPress blogs and CMS.

To offer value and build community, ICanLocalize has build a sister site, ICanLocalize for Developers and Designers a content site that has grown out of the work on the plugin that drives the translations. I asked Amir Helzer, the owner, why he developed this second site. He said,

I wanted to create a multilingual resource and an active community for people who are using WordPress to build complex websites. So I built Baripedia on a WordPress CMS and ICanLocalize for Developers and Designers.

Here’s the beauty of building by, for, and with the community.

  • The proof of his credibility and commitment to the community is in Baripedia, a tourist site about Bariloche, Argentina. Whether they care about WordPress or their next visit to Argentina, the site has value. People can interact with site immediately.

  • As the site grows, visitors will be invited to add content, developers will be invited to participate in redesigns, and both communities can be invited to review what has been changed or added over time. The site will grow as the communities grow with it. The questions that arise with managing user-generated content can be staged and considered on their own.
  • At the same time, the multilingual site ICanLocalize for Developers and Designers will be built out on WordPressMU. A truly international WordPress discussion on CMS, plugins, design, and development will be available throughout the domain. Again the community will help form and shape the content as it grows.

Everything that ICanLocalize is doing builds the community and the business simultaneously. The community has a compelling reason to participate because the value is there, yet the invitation to add more is always open. And both community sites will bring interest back to the original business site by the way that they naturally feature the skills and expertise of the business that built them for the communities.

As they say, Bariloche wasn’t built in a … few lines of code.

Any business can do this. It’s building a business like we write a blog post. Leaving room for people to come in and add their own ideas, not tying it up with a bow so that all visitors can comment is “good job!”

Twitter. It began with a question, What are you doing? Look at it now. The community interaction made most of that.

Zócalos, Plaza, Piazza
a place where all traffic stops for coffee, conversation, community

How might you add a small community to a business site? What ideas would have for a business like Motrin, or Walmart, or maybe your local book store?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

What Do You Want to Contribute as Social Media Community Member?

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Building a Community

The irony is that so many of us work alone, yet we build communities. That thought struck me boldly when this week I heard three people say how much they were looking forward to working in an office with people.

That got me thinking that an essential part of knowing how to built a community is understanding what it means to be a community member.

On Monday when we were talking about how social media can help us build a better business, Richard Reeve beautifully wrote this post for me. He described his contribution to a community “barn raising.” He said …

When asked to come and help raise these boards, it means:

    1. I realize that I need to bring along a team of five other folks I can count on to handle our given task. Wood is heavy.

    2. Ask clear questions not only of what our team will do, but how it will fit into the overall scheme of the raising, so as to maximize the remaining sunlight.

    3. While staying focused on the assigned task, realize that things seldom go as planned, so keep a flexible attitude and be willing to lend a hand when and where needed. The overall goal is more important than the parts.

    4. The only result that matters, that every participant can take pride in the resulting structure…

    oh…and:
    5. Bring your own tool belt. Who has fifty hammers?

Who wouldn’t want those values and motives in every community member … ?

When a business, a non-profit, or an organization builds a space for us and makes all of the decisions without us, it’s like moving into a house that doesn’t have any of our stuff. We don’t own it. We’ll always be visitors. If that business, non-profit, or organization lets us contribute as the house goes up, we become a part of the process and feel ownership. Of course we don’t have time to contribute building to every space in which we participate, but when we do, it changes the the way experience that community in profoundly personal way.

What do you want to contribute as a social media community member? What can we expect from community members before we start?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

How Social Media Can Help You Build a Better Business

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Why Didn’t the People Come?

When people ask my help, it’s often to avoid or to remedy a situation like this one.

He had a dream, an idea, for a new business. It was a product and a service. He saw it in its glory. It was part store, part community bustling with transactions. He saw the people coming — they knew they couldnn’t wait for it.

So he got busy building that dream. He invested time, money, and enthusiasm in something …

  • that he thought was cool.
  • that was costly, but “worth” it.
  • that was harder to use than he realized.
  • that he didn’t know how to sell.
  • that he imagined would get people change how they do what they do
  • that someone else had already built — better, faster, less expensively.

Nothing happened. No one lined us. No bustling community developed. The dream was built and no one lined up. No one has noticed it. Why?

He didn’t remember to talk to the people who were supposed to come.

Get the People to Come Before You Build It

Suppose, instead of building that business and offering it to them, we invited the people we want to serve build the business with us? The culture of social media and social networking offer huge opportunities to build a business with a community rather than for them.

In the 18th and 19th rural North America, building a barn — the most important structure of farm — required many hands and many skills. Time was often short and funds could be tight. Barn raising was the work of an interdependent community that saw barns as an important part of life.

A barn raising used to be a one- or two-day event. Materials were purchased and plans were finished ahead. When the community came able-bodied and quick-minded members could start right in. Barn raisings were lead a barn raiser who with a well-thought plan who was paid to identify and manage crew chiefs, specialists, and volunteers for “pitching in.” New barn raisers were expected to watch before they took up their work.

A barn raising is the ultimate community collaboration to complete a common, organized goal.

Barn raising a business in the social media culture offers the business and the community members who participate clear benefits. Here’s why your social media business building should be a barn raising.

  • A community needs a plan and organization to build. We can’t fool a community by building parts that don’t work together. We can’t get stuck or be moved to fall in love with our own ideas.
  • Enlisting a barn raiser and crew chiefs keeps your plan organized and on schedule.
  • Ideas and costs get questioned.
  • We have to be able to explain how things will work, what makes them useful, and why they’re worth building
  • We all gain skills and relationships from participating in the process.
  • The final business reflects the needs and values of the community that built it.
  • Participants showcase their best work in a short-term commitment
  • The process provides a product or service has proven its worth by the community support.

Barn raising builds the community at the same time that it builds the business that will serve us. Everyone who has participated is invested in its success. Don’t just think … do.

Ever been part of a project that worked like a barn raising?

What would be the first step in helping some get a social media barn raising started for their business idea?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want to build barn? Work with Liz!!
Image: Haussler Cluster Raising in CA

Thanks to Week 162 SOBs

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muddy teal strip A

Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

muddy teal strip A

They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

deep purple strip

Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

The Art of a Personal Thanksgiving and Thanks Receiving

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Don’t Let the Words Throw You

Change the World!

How good it is that people made a tradition — a day for giving thanks. Life too easily becomes getting to the next sunrise, through the next problem, onto the next goal.

Days of thanksgiving are important. We need days to remember what we’ve already received. It’s easier to have faith in a future when we value what’s here — when we gather, thank all who have given to us and give back in whatever ways we can.

The list of people who have changed my life grows daily. I thank every one of you with my head, heart, and fingers on the keys. I hope I live that gratitude visibly.

Gratitude has the power to change the world.

The Art of a Personal Thanksgiving and Thanks Receiving

It’s easy to care for a world that gives. It’s even easier to love the friends who turn the world by helping each other. We’re grateful for so many people and things. We look for every way to say so.

We write a thank you. We offer flowers. We pay it forward. We give because we’ve been given.

But are we receiving?

When someone offers those flowers, that thank you, that gift paid forward, it takes open hands, open minds, and open hearts to accept. Openness completes the transaction with honor. It’s a gift in return.

A personal thanksgiving is answered best with a personal thanks receiving. “I heard you. Thank you, I value your gift.” The art of personal thanks receiving is knowing it’s about the the giver. Receiving gratitude hears people, values them, and builds relationships.

Don’t let the grateful words throw you. Hear the person. Answer with relationship.

We can change the world — just like that!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Image: sxc.hu
Work with Liz!!