Tag Archives: Social media

My social media world

This past weekend I joined Facebook, and now my social media world is so complex and intertwined that it makes my head hurt. To help me make sense of it all, I drew this map:

My social media map

My social media map

(I used bubbl.us, which is a really intuitive, easy-to-use, free mind-mapping tool.)

This doesn’t show all my social media sites, just the ones I use most regularly. But it did help me organize my social media efforts, at least in my own head. The black lines show everything that feeds into FriendFeed, which is my nexus and the most complete view of what I’m doing online. The gray lines show which services are being automagically updated by which other services, usually via an RSS feed or FriendFeed’s automatic output to Twitter.

I organized my social media universe into four quadrants. My home quadrant (tan) — my blogs but also my Google Profile – are my home bases on the Web and also where the world finds me. My networks quadrant (green) have organized quite naturally into a professional network that I use only occasionally (LinkedIn), a network of friends and family I know in real life (Facebook) and an online network with many overlaps with the other two networks that I use most frequently and is the largest (Twitter).

My links quadrant (purple) are my tools for collecting and sharing links. I read blog posts and other articles via RSS feed in Google Reader every day, and share interesting finds out to my network. Delicious is where I permanently store links and do research. StumbleUpon is more of a historical record of links I’ve blogged about, plus a lot of random fun stuff I discover while surfing the web.

Finally, there are miscellaneous tools that reflect my hobbies in the pink quadrant. I’m an avid reader, so I have several tools for organizing and recording my reading and books (LibraryThing, Lists of Bests, All Consuming), which feed back to my books blog and sometimes Twitter. I also use tools to track my goals (43 Things) and travel (43 Places), and to upload my photos (Flickr).

Of course, not everything is on here. I didn’t include really miscellaneous places like my Amazon Wishlist or Bookmooch, or places I rarely visit like Digg or Technorati. But it is nice being able to visualize my little online universe and my place within it.

New social media integration in popular Web 2.0 tools

Image representing Google Alerts as depicted i...

Image via CrunchBase

There has been a flurry of improvements in integrating social media tools lately, which I wanted to tell you about. I’ve tried all of these new features. They all work great and offer a lot of value to users, particularly if you use more than one Web 2.0 tool.

First, if you use Google Alerts, you’ll see that they now support RSS feeds. No more having to clutter up your email inbox with alerts. Instead, you can read them at your leisure in your favorite RSS feed reader. But the RSS feed integration also makes it possible to integrate Google alerts into any application that can read and display the feeds, such as FriendFeed or your blog. Go to the Manage Your Alerts page to switch your alerts from email to RSS.

Second, LinkedIn profiles now support a lot of Web 2.0 tools, including WordPress and SlideShare. I’ve modified my LinkedIn profile to show the latest posts from this blog, for instance. It’s very easy to do; open your profile and click Add Application. These new features give you a lot of options for showing your professional network what you’re doing and helping them learn more about you.

There were some other applications that I haven’t tried but looked to be helpful if you use LinkedIn as a platform for browsing the Web and managing your Web content. For instance, you can create a reading list via Amazon and then get recommendations on similar books based on what your colleagues are reading. You can also monitor twittering about your organization or other keywords. There’s a lot of new stuff to explore, so if you haven’t dropped by LinkedIn lately, I think it’s worth a return visit.

Finally, FriendFeed has introduced backward integration with Twitter, so you can automatically tweet items from your FriendFeed. Fortunately, you can limit it to any one or more of the services in your FriendFeed, so you can choose not to tweet every Delicious bookmark or Netflix addition. But you can tweet your new blog posts, for example, without any extra effort on your part, which is what I am now doing. See this post to learn more.

The social media bandwagon…

With blogs and online communities sweeping the web, every organization wants to jump on the social media bandwagon. While I think social media tools can provide easy ways for organizations to get their message out and connect with people, they shouldn’t be too quick to dive in–not before they know what they’re getting into.

Here is a brief definition of social media from Wikipedia (a social media tool):

Social media use the “wisdom of crowds” to connect information in a collaborative manner. Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, message boards, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video.

The popularity of “Web 2.0″ destinations like Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter, plus the explosion of blogs, has taken off for a few simple reasons:

  • People find them fun and are willing to spend a lot of free time on these sites.
  • People are using them to connect with others like them, fulfilling a basic human need (and putting the “social” into social media).
  • These tools are relatively easy to start using, with very little help and training, even for non-techies.

Once organizations–whether companies, nonprofits or other self promoters–start getting into the act, it’s too easy for the fun and social parts to be taken out of the equation. Organizations like to control their message and their content, whereas social media tools thrive on openness. And organizations have a vested interest in promoting themselves rather than having fun with the tools. Once commercialization or PR efforts are suspected, it’s probably a big turnoff for many participants.

I would advise any organization wanting to take advantage of the popularity, ease of use and low cost of social media tools to tread carefully. It’s important that the employees assigned to this are already using these tools personally and are very familiar with the communities and their (often) unwritten rules of interaction. The organization needs to provide something of value to the community, something that the intended audience will naturally respond to and want to participate in; blatant commercialism or self promotion must be avoided. Finally, these efforts take time. It’s best to lurk, listen and learn before diving in.

Here are some good resources for organizations that are looking to capitalize on the social media phenomenon:

What are blogs? And how can we use them? Resources list

This is a list of resources I have collected to supplement a presentation I’m giving at work on the subjects: what are blogs, how can our nonprofit blog effectively, and what is Web 2.0 anyway? These resources include many of the examples in the actual presentation as well as supplementary reading materials.

View the presentation

About Web 2.0

Blogging Tools

Nonprofit Blogs

Blogs About Nonprofits Using Web 2.0 Technologies

The Blogosphere (finding blogs of interest)

Into Web 2.0

  • Tumblr – microblogging site
  • Twitter – microblogging site that integrates with text messaging and instant messaging (IM)
  • del.icio.us – Tag, organize and share bookmarks
  • Stumble Upon – review and rate web content
  • Digg – read and vote on web content
  • NGO Post – read and vote on web content discussing social welfare initiatives
  • Flickr – share, view and comment on photos
  • YouTube – share, view and comment on videos
  • SlideShare – share, view and comment on presentations
  • Wikipedia – world-famous collaboratively written encyclopedia built with a wiki
  • Wikibooks – collection of collaboratively written textbooks written using wikis
  • Facebook – well-known social networking site originally focusing on college students
  • LinkedIn – professional networking site
  • Dogster – social networking site for dogs
  • Causes on Facebook – nonprofits using Facebook to promote causes and raise money
  • IntraHealth Informatics’ Flickr site – nonprofits can share interesting photos to generate interest