Tony Uphoff runs UBM’s TechWeb (a sister company to my own) which runs Information Week and the Web 2.0 Expo co-produced with O’Reilly Media.
Tony is very active in social media with a blog Uphoff on Media and a Twitter. Here he talks about how he uses Facebook and Twitter to network before and during business-to-business events.
This is my sixth and last interview from the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and my second interview with Tony.
I will be travelling to or arrived in San Francisco when you read this, on my way to the Web 2.0 Expo, San Francisco. I’m really excited.
Several leading and up-and-coming social media experts have arranged to meet me. I wrote in an earlier post that I was going to use permission rather than assertive networking – that is only approach people if they made it clear they wanted to network. It has worked better than you could imagine.
So I’ll try and video, photo and record as many of the important ideas that they mention. So I’ve taken my digital kit with me.
When I was a traditional editor, I would have taken the lot to report with them ie broadcast from the event.
Today my goals are quite different. They are
The picture shows my
1 Dell laptop. I am hoping there is Wifi because I want to be able to follow Tweets about the event via the #w2e hashtag identifier on Twitter Search. It is also essential kit back in the hotel room to keep up with the office in London, process all the material I will be gathering and knock out a regular blogpost.
2 Flip video camera. I’m going to ask several of the people I meet the same five questions and record them.
Then I am going to upload the recording to my Vimeo profile before posting it on my blog as a post.
3 Blackberry Storm. I’m concerned whether the battery will last each day but otherwise Twitter on my Blackberry Storm is going to be an essential cog in keeping me networked throughout the day.
4 Keyfob. All these years later, I am still so excited to be able to sit at my work desktop wherever I am in the world. What will it be like working through the company Wiki for the first time?
5 Exilim digital camera. I cannot get the quality of pictures with my Blackberry Storm that I can with my trusted digital camera so I will put up with the inconvenience of downloading. It’s not in the picture above because I had to take this picture!
6 Shades by Cartier. Heh, it’s the Web 2.0 Expo.
You’ve heard of permission marketing, right? As defined by Seth Godin, it is the transformation wrought by social media encouraging people to opt-in to rather than opt-out of marketing.
Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.
What about permission networking? How does that work and what is the etiquette?
I’m off to the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco at the end of this month (disclosure: the conference is produced by O’Reilly Media and TechWeb, a sister company of mine in the US).
Last time I was in San Francisco, I had been writing this blog for barely two months. And I had scarcely got going on Twitter. I still had the habits of a traditional broadcast editor in me, thinking nothing of emailing directly a leading and high profile social media expert.
But it takes a lot more than an email to convert a social media relationship into a telephone conversation. This social media guru very politely suggested we could speak on Skype a month later.
Now I’m surprised he even bothered to reply.
Seven months later, nine months into this blog, five months into my Twitter profile, four months into my Google Reader and ten months into social media, I know better.
Just as social media has transformed push into pull marketing so it has transformed assertive into permission networking.
As I head to San Francisco this time round, I’m not going to be sending emails. I’m not even going to be picking up the phone.
What I am going to do is
But other that those few things I will wait. I wait until people come to me.
And if they don’t, I will know that I need to spend even longer investing in my community before I try to convert social media acquaintances into face-to-face meetings. I will need to contribute even more to people’s conversations on Twitter. And I will have to comment even harder and way more intelligently on their blogs.
I’ve got a dinner booked already and a meeting, both through permission networking.
I’ll let you know how the rest goes.
Photo credit: theogeo
We are all working so hard to identify and garden communities among our clients or websites users that we often overlook the community closest to us – our colleagues.
This is mad. And it misses a great opportunity to learn.
If your colleagues already have a strong network within their business sector, they will create very strong communities when they move online.
Each and every community will develop differently. Do not miss a bit of it.
You need observe how each community behaves, learn from their actions and pass on best practice.
Here are three ways to cultivate you community at work.
1 Set up a Twitter profile just for them.
The people I learn from/follow on my Twitter profile are exclusively social/new media. I find it really distracting when anyone makes any comments outside the subject.
Listening to my colleagues – working across 15 different business sectors – is impossible. Yet I want and need to listen to and learn from their conversations.
I have set up a new Twitter profile where I follow all my colleagues on Twitter.
I’m only just getting my head around. I get to see what kinds of Tweets they are sending out and can give permission feedback (ie only after asking if they want it). I circulate good Tweets by colleagues to spread best practice. And I reTweet one or two of the most appropriate Tweets from my social/new media profile. I congratulate them on their good ideas.
They certainly do not have to follow me – they might be so focused on their own communities that they might find me a distraction.
2 Ask you colleagues to write a guest post on your blog
Many of my colleagues have taken only one or two steps into social media – perhaps a fresh look at their Facebook profile and a stab at Twitter. A blog is just one step too far.
Ask them to write a guest post for you. What is their experience of social media so far - remember they are real practitioners not early adopters so their experience is key to further developments? There will be no shortage of subjects.
Get them to add links. Ask them to add a list. Encourage them to choose the picture.
Once you have pushed the “publish” button, show them the traffic on a daily basis. Send them links to blogs that have picked up on their post. Show them how to Tweet out a link to their guest post on their Twitter.
Watch them as they experience the excitement of blogging from the safety of your own blog.
3 Introduce your colleagues to the new contacts you meet
Inevitably you build new contacts through social media. They are different from you colleagues at work coming from outside the usual recruitment silos of our businesses.
Both sides have much to learn from eachother: the early adopters begin to understand some of the slowness of traditional companies; the corporates begin to see that the early adopters are actually just like them.
Invite them into the office. Ask them to give a talk to your colleagues. Suggest a work placement that they might find useful.
Picture credit: adele.turner
Posted in Communities
Tagged Blogs, Communities, Facebook profile, Guest post, Twitter, Twitter profile
I asked once whether early adopters in social media were ready for the arrival of a new wave of competitors. I predicted that, if they had traditional media experience, they would be quick learners and, if they worked within defined communities, that their followers would grow rapidly.
Today’s guest post is by Edward Welsh Programme Director, Media and Campaigns, at the UK’s Local Government Association. He has years of traditional media experience – having worked on national papers in the UK (disclosure: my brother). His current job places him in the midst of a defined community – communication experts working for government.
He set up a Twitter in December 2008. Two months later, his hashtag for a conference trended number three on Twitter Search. Not a bad learning curve.
This is his story.
My main audience is the 60 million people who live in the UK. I am responsible for enhancing and defending the reputation in the mass media of a sector with a budget of more than £100 billion a year, 20,000 councillors and which employs 1.6 million people. The LGA targets national newspapers, television and radio, proactively generating stories and rebutting negative coverage to influence the news agenda on behalf of more than 400 councils in England and Wales.
Why do I use Twitter?
1. To respond to a challenge from John Welsh (my brother and the man behind this blog) to familiarise myself with social media.
2. To see if and how news stories can be generated through Twitter.
3. To find out how councillors and councils are using Twitter.
4. To improve communications with our member councils.
5. To find out how private sector PR people are using Twitter.
What have I found out so far?
1 My brother was right. I needed to get up to speed. The following explains why.
2. I have not yet cracked how to generate news stories on Twitter but
3. Twitter is suddenly taking off in local government, admittedly from a very low base. The number of councillors Twittering has doubled in the past fortnight to 100 and growing. Perhaps 40 or 50 councils are using it, most recently to keep residents informed about how the heavy snowfalls have affected services.
4. Twitter could be a very useful way of complementing how we communicate with our member councils and, even more importantly, garner their views to feed back into what we do.
5. I have yet to work out exactly how private sector PR people are using Twitter. Clearly, they see it as a marketing tool but I need to explore further how their use could shape mine.
I’ll update you when I know more.
Photo credit: jurvetson
Posted in Communities, Guest post, Social media, Twitter
Tagged Edward Welsh, LGA, Local Government Association, Twitter
You work in a traditional business. You already make a little bit of digital revenue from a website. Now you’ve been asked to map out a digital strategy to increase your digital activity, and ultimately, revenue.
What do you say?
You’ve worked with websites for almost a decade so obviously you know everything there is to know. You don’t really like the web at all, if you were honest (but you definitely would not admit it). You think the web is a dull, unresponsive little thing. You hope it is a fad that will go away.
What do you do?
What you should do is to set about finding out how much you do not know. You probably won’t because you are not aware of what you do not know. You’ve managed to keep clear of new fangled things like Twitter (“what a silly name!”) and blogs (“no one ever comments on them anyway”). You think Facebook is for mooning teenagers and “online communities” means blasting out emails to an ever lengthening list of people.
What could you do?
You could give the web a try. You could sign up to some of these things with funny names that everyone is talking about. You might just find that, what you thought of as a dull, was actually quite interesting. More than that, you might just begin to glimpse the new world on the web. You might see how responsive it is, how you can network with people in very different ways and how you can conduct its rythmns and passions like a symphony.
What would you do then?
You would experience happiness from the clarity. You would be relieved that you had not taken any irreversible decisions during your earlier ignorance. You would now be aware of how much you did not know. Now you are ready to research your community and find out what they really want and what they already use. You would begin to be in the position that you could write that digital strategy you had been asked to do several weeks earlier. You would do it rather well.
If you think your followers/community on Twitter would be interested in this post, show them your value by reTweeting it to them!
Photo credit: Waponi
Earlier this week, I launched the first of my two part campaign to encourage people to master five online skills before they start a blog. I promised five more online skills. So here they are.
Once again, I make suggestions for both journalists who already write for websites but also for people who do not have access to a website.
Research
In the previous post, I encouraged you to identify a community.
You still need to find out all you can about that it through research.
You might find that your chosen community is overwhelmed with good blogs. What it actually wants is a closed group on a social network where it can discuss business issues. Without research, you might overlook the social network your community is already in. Why set up a LinkedIn group, for example, if your community is obsessed with Facebook.
If you are a journalist, a few questions on your website is one way to collect information.
If you do not have a website, why not use a social network? Join LinkedIn and write up your profile. Then join a group in a sector closest to your potential blogging community. Participate in the discussion areas. Why not ask a few questions yourself?
You don’t need a blog to do research.
Categories
One of the key questions in the research of your community for your blog might be “what information do you need?”.
Once you have the results, you could write a list of subjects in which your community is interested.
Whooa! Don’t let it become too long. Just as your blog will attract more users the more closely it focuses on your community, so those users will be more likely to return if you can keep the content within a narrow range.
Why not try to keep it within ten core subject areas?
Whether you are a journalist of not, visit some blogs and notice how the best blogs use few categories.
You don’t need a blog to work out the core subject areas for your community.
RSS feeds
Bloggers are, by the nature of the media they use, more likely to be web-savvy. Many of them sign up for RSS rather than email subscriptions. Whether you understand RSS feeds or not, find out before you start your blog.
Sign up to Google Reader. Sign up to some RSS subscriptions. Learn to manage you daily reading through RSS feeds.
You don’t need a blog to make yourself familiar with RSS feeds.
Optimise
Have you noticed how certain parts of this post have links, in bold, to other posts on this blog ? If you click through, do you notice how the same words appear in the original post’s headline? You need to do the same.
If you are a journalist, you have started to put links between stories, one of the five online skills to master before you start a blog that I mentioned in part one of this campaign. Try to use the same words as the previous post’s headline. It’s awkward at first – perhaps you need to rewrite the previous post’s headline – but you will get used to it. Over time, you will begin to notice how you write headlines ready for use as links in future posts.
If you do not write for a website, sign up to Twitter as soon as possible. The discipline of writing meaningful messages in 140 characters will improve the brevity and directness of your writing – all good practice for your future blog.
You don’t need a blog to learn how to write so that your content is more easily found.
Analyse
You’re going to be so proud of your blog when it takes off. But you are only going to be able to assess the success if you have learnt to understand the quantity and quality of your traffic. One way to do this is to get to know Alexa. It shows the traffic and ranking of any site.
If you are a journalist writing for a website, why not input your own site. Then input your competitors!
If you do not have a website you can access, why not log in your favourite site and see how it compares to others that you view.
You don’t need a blog to learn how to analyse traffic.
Are there an other online skills that you think are essential to acquire before starting a blog?
If you think your followers/community on Twitter would be interested in this post, show them your value by reTweeting it to them!
Photo credit: Leonard Low
Posted in Advertisements, Communities, Links, RSS feeds, Search
Tagged blogging, Blogs, LinkedIn, Online Communities, Online research, Online skills, Research
When did people mistake blogging as a platform from which to mouth off their opinions?
As a result of being asked to read one too many this week, I am launching a new two-part campaign. Five online skills you must master BEFORE you start a blog – community, commenting, connectivity, collaboration and content. The second part – Five more online skills you must master BEFORE you start a blog – will be published next.
Make sure you’ve mastered the Five Cs before you start a blog. When you do at last set up that blog, it will be so much better for the effort.
(I should know. I launched without a thought.)
If you are a journalist, you can use your website for practice.
If you aren’t a journalist and don’t have access to a website, I’ve added simple alternatives.
Don’t let me down.
1 Community
Have you identified a community for which to write? Can you refine your community even more? For example, if it is a blog for the commercial property sector, why not focus on agents. And why not those specialising in office rentals?
Go further still. Why not only the bosses?
Write for the commercial property sector and few of them will know your blog is for them (one post out of 10 might be of interest).
Write for the bosses of commercial property agencies specialising in office rentals and, by god, they will soon know that is worth coming back for more (since every post will be for them).
Now you’ve identified your target readers, use Twitter to help you develop skills to cultivate that community.
You don’t need a blog to spot a potential online community and start cultivating it.
2 Commenting
Your blog won’t attract comments unless you make the effort to comment on other blogs. Go and comment on newspaper websites and blogs in your sector. There are several ways to find blog about your chosen subject when starting from scratch.
Remember, the etiquette is to “join in the conversation”. So don’t barge in with a new argument. Use your experience and knowledge to take on the blogger’s subject.
When asked for a web address, leave the URL of an article from your website that adds something to the discussion. Don’t worry if the article is a few months old as long as it still brings something to the conversation.
Or, if you don’t have a website, leave the URL of your LinkedIn profile if it shows you bring professional expertise to the debate.
You don’t need a blog to learn how to comment on websites.
3 Connectivity
You don’t look at the navigation when you book a flight online. You click from one page to another, ending in a successful conclusion by actions embedded in a page.
The future readers of your blog will want to do the same, reading one post and clicking through to another. So, stop worrying about the navigation and start making links between your stories or other content on your site. Set yourself a goal of having made one link to a previous story by the second paragraph of every story you write.
If you don’t write for a website, go and comment on a blog that allows you to put in a link to another website. Better still, one that allows you to do so with simple HTML so you leave a word linked to a site (like this) rather than an ugly URL (like this http://johnwelsh.wordpress.com/about-you/).
You don’t need a blog to learn about connectivity between articles.
4 Collaboration
You would be amazed how much the web will help you with what you are doing. You can start with one question and receive so many responses that you soon have another idea for an article. But you will only receive that reward if you yourself have helped others.
Go and help people’s initiatives using collaboration to build communities. Add a name to someone building a list. Contribute to Wikipedia. Sign a petition.
You don’t need a blog to benefit from online collaboration.
5 Content
In print, only an editor gives his or her opinion in the leader. Everything else is supposed to be content that helps the reader. A blog should be no different.
Think what information might be useful for your community. Practise finding core information on other sites. Turn it into lists of tips.
If you are a journalist, try adding a list of tips with links to useful sites as the penultimate paragraph of the stories you write online.
If you don’t have a website, go and leave your tips on other people’s blogs or forums. See how people respond.
You don’t need a blog to learn how to create great online content.
In part two I will be writing about another five more online skills you must master before you start a blog. What skills do you think people need before setting up a blog?
If you think your followers/community on Twitter would be interested in this post, show them your value by reTweeting it to them!
Photo credit:crosathorian
Posted in Blogs, Communities, Links, New Media
Tagged Blogs, Collaborating, Commenting, Communities, Connectivity, Content, Online Communities
Do your RSS subscribers vary radically from one day to another? Does a sudden surge in subscribers indicate your blog posts are perfectly aligned with your community? Does a decline mean you are hopelessly mistaken in what you do ?
If your answer to the first is yes, the answers to the other questions are no and no.
Let me explain
I’ve only recently worked out how to manage my daily reading through RSS feeds. As a result, my former, half-hearted encouragement to sign up to my blog’s own RSS feed has been transformed. I have moved the RSS feed subscription icon to a far more prominent position.
Immediately subscriber numbers began to rise. Slowly, at first.
Then I wrote a post about six types of Tweets if you Twitter every day, my traffic shot up. At the same time, my subscribers doubled almost overnight.
Within a day or two, the subscribers numbers had halved. That’s it, halved!
What did it all mean?
At first, I told myself that there must have been a technical problem.
That was dumb.
My new habit of using RSS to suppply my daily reading has taught me just how easy it is to subscribe to AND unsubscribe from other people’s blogs. It also shows me that, however good one post might be, I just cannot sign up to every blog. If the next post is not for me, I quickly unsubscribe. I can only manage my reading if I keep the number of subscriptions to a minimum. Why would my blog perform any differently?
My blog’s post about Tweets obviously appealed. People subscribed. But, presumably, the majority of new subscribers were those interested in Twitter. When my next post arrived through RSS - a more general one about not overlooking the social network your community is already in - it did not meet their expectations. Those who only wanted to read about Twitter unsubscribed.
Why the surprise?
I am not sure why I was surprised. I have spent the last two months exploring the ways Twitter can help you to develop skills to cultivate a community. Twitter teaches you that the more narrowly you can identify your community and cultivate it with appropriate and quality Tweets, the faster your community will grow.
And my Twitter community has never been so robust. The number of my Twitter followers used to vary widely. Now the numbers continue to rise steadily. And only one person in the last month has decided to stop following me.
Like Twitter, like RSS feeds
My conclusion is this.
I will be using the number of my RSS subscribers in a far more sensitive manner from now on. No more rush for glory. Rather, I will look at it as a hypersensitive response mechanism influencing my posts from day to day.
By the way, my subscriber base has begun to go up again. Slowly, but surely!
If you think your followers/community on Twitter would be interested in this post, show them your value by reTweeting it to them!
Photo credit: Pandemia
A list of counterintuitive behaviour that will improve your use of the web
Success came about by
The more you get to use the web, the more you realise it works the opposite way.
Can you think of other web behaviour that is counterintuitive?
If you think your followers/community on Twitter would be interested in this post, show them your value by reTweeting it to them!
Photo credit: Payton Chung
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Posted in Blogs, Communities, Links, Marketing, New Media, Twitter, Usability, Web design
Tagged Blogs, Commenting, Links, Online behaviour, Online Communities, Online content, Online navigation, Web experience