Meet Joseph Mwakima, a fellow busy activating his community and inspiring change in Kenya’s Kasigau Corrdidor REDD+ Project area through word of mouth.
There is a movement about how to monetize individual blogger and online personality influence. Influencers considering monetization of their online trust should also weigh how such strategies can lessen trust within a community, and hurt search rank. This old debate goes back to paid blogging and affiliate marketing. As in those past cases, every influencer today needs to weigh how […]
Long time readers have probably noticed a metamorphosis. Even more personal, focusing on life and issues outside of marketing, this has become much more of a writer’s blog than a professional marketer’s vehicle. Along the way over the past four months, I shed about 50% of my traffic! One could say I sabotaged my own blog. Certainly if you are […]
Image by Camera Obscura 1975 The other day Caitlin told Soleil they would visit the library for story time. Their conversation unleashed a well of hope within me. I had come to believe that libraries were dying, just like the traditional publishing business that fills their shelves. I remembered reading that libraries were dwindling, and just wrote them off. Like […]
Hold Back Time, Plate 2 by Thomas Hawk Well, it’s pretty much over now. The rain of negativity landed upon you. I don’t care whether your post is right or wrong about the best age for community managers. The vitriol expressed by many of the dissenting voices in comments and responses was reprehensible. Some have been measured in tone, but […]
Klout only gives President Barack Obama an Influence Score of 48 It’s been an interesting week with all the news and ensuing hub bub about Klout’s new formula. Beyond the curiosity of the moment there’s not much to talk about, though. See, people that waste their time on Klout, determining influence on it, debating its merits, etc., are wasting time. […]
Many folks have reviewed Google+. Certainly the launch went well with pundits acknowledging the significant improvement over past Google efforts and the serious competition it may offer Facebook. However, while Google+ adds to the game, it subtracts from the dwindling pool of time dedicated to social networks. If you have the opportunity, it’s worth a try. The Circles add a […]
The Fifth Estate Applied: Facebook Strategy There is a running joke about clients demanding a Facebook strategy. But in reality, beyond demanding a strategy for a tool, their requests are not unreasonable. Facebook owns half of U.S. social network traffic, and one half of the U.S. population has an account on the social network. Using this tool within the context […]
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” –Aristotle Sustaining social media communities over years is one of the primary topics in Welcome to the Fifth Estate. Given how much time and financial investment goes into building a successful community, it only makes sense for enterprises to stay in touch and sustain critical […]
Image by Alex Qin As the echo chamber buzz about Empire Avenue rises, perhaps we should ask questions about what these “influence” tools actually accomplish. From Klout to Empire Avenue, we are literally assigning numbers and now stock values to people’s social network activity, creating a specific metric of influence. Beyond the increasing ethical issues that these games and tools […]
by Heidi Sullivan Stage actors have an old, if somewhat crude, joke. When they read a script it looks something like this: “BS BS BS BS … I enter … BS BS … My line … BS BS BS … Another line … BS BS … My last line … annnnnnnnnnnnd exit.” Image purchased from iStockPhoto As Geoff discussed here […]
The influencer hype bubble overvalues the role of popular digital voices in an online marketing program. Influencer attention can’t sustain a community over the long term, and using them often fails to produce strength of online community and actual business measurements. Rather than producing another post deconstructing the influence model, let’s try to take an objective look at what influencers […]
(image by the Bilerco Project) Much has been said about the decline of blogging, and why now is a great time to start creating content. The latter arguments are sound. Now that the rush to play with the latest shiny object is over and marketing folks have moved to social networks, good writers will find it easier to rise above […]
Image by Annie Siegal With the current overfocus on influence metrics, companies and nonprofits are left to wonder at the digeratti’s navel gazing via participation scores. While influencers play a role in social media, for a company or nonprofit that role is ultimately very small. After the influencer “graces” everyone with their presence, the organization’s community remains. After a sales […]
Watch an organization successfully strike the balance between community and return on investment. The artful dance between fantastic people skills and good business sense demonstrates strong professional competence. The two needs intertwine in irrevocable necessity. Organizations need community, and they need to create results from their online efforts. This duopoly can be summed up in two statements: 1) To build […]
Organizations can experience success within their social communities, and feel like they have arrived (colors image by cjnzja). They have mastered the crowd. Given how difficult building a community can be, it’s easy to fall into this trap. Consider how Nokia built the very successful Mosh social community for third party phone platform development. Then Mosh became a community for […]
A written narrative of my #NextLevel Hawaii Keynote… There’s nothing worse than performing before an empty venue. Yet isn’t that what most nonprofits and companies do on the social web? The rush to play with new tools in this scary Brave New World has been the focus. We’ve seen the many, many successes, and yet organizations find they rarely succeed. […]
Social media continues to impact businesses and nonprofits in unforeseen ways. Perhaps the greatest trend of the moment is the fusion of corporate and philanthropic interests, which in turn is producing growing pains and change. It’s likely that the requirements of online transparency will demand a new era of authenticity in corporate community investment efforts. This trend results from demands […]
Brian Solis and I began a series of podcasts to discuss the seven principles of community engagement uncovered in the book Now Is Gone (only 14 days until it’s released). The first podcast focuses on Audiences versus Communities (approx. 12 minutes in length). We discuss: One-way communications to audiences versus two-way conversational marketing within communities The social media release as […]
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