Chatterbox : conversations

Managing an Online Reputation

Lindsey Robbins — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:43:00 GMT

A while back, Steve and I wrote a blog post about brand reputation and how to discover what people are saying about you. Therefore, I was excited today to read an excellent article from the New York Times on the same subject (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/business/smallbusiness/30reputation.html?_r=1). Check out the article for even more thoughts about how you manage the task of your brand reputation with social media tools. While the article is meant to help small businesses, many nonprofits are in the same position. How do you handle this important, yet growing responsibility? Hopefully, with more awareness more great articles like this can provide resources and ideas for getting started.

An Intro to Social Media

Lindsey Robbins — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:52:00 GMT

We talk about social media, just a little bit , on our Blackbaud blogs. But maybe you're wondering why you should care or you know what it is but need to know more. Where do you go to find more information? I had a friend/professional peer ask me that very question this morning. Where do you begin? Specifically she wanted to know..."if I'm looking for basic, very basic information on social media do you know of any good sites to start with?"

Here's how I responded:

Hmmm... I'm not really sure. Most of social media education is just immersing yourself in the different types of social media/networking websites. I would recommend dabbling on different websites like - Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Delicious, StumbeUpon, feed aggregators like Google Reader, Plaxo, a wiki site like one from Wetpaint, Hulu, Flixster, Last.fm, LinkedIn, and Digg. To learn social media is to observe how different mediums online encourage community participation. How does bringing the community into the content development process change websites, media, etc? And honestly, the best sites for reading about emerging social media right now are blogs.
Here's a couple good ones to get started with -
Chris Brogan http://www.chrisbrogan.com/ (you can spend a long time on his site, he's a prolific blogger)
Beth Kanter (she does social media for nonprofits) http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/

And like I told my friend, I hope this helps! Good luck getting started and like my friend, feel free to ask questions (of me) and of those you find to observe on social media websites. I find immersion in the practice of social media the best way to learn!

Geek Speak: Twitter Tools to Twind Tweeps to Twollow

Steve Pham — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:57:00 GMT

Try to say that title one time fast (yeah, don't even bother with three times fast)! Phew!

Why the alliteration? Well I recently signed up for Twitter a few months ago to see what it was all about, and it wasn’t until I understood the power of it that I began to really dive in. After a month or so, I began to get frustrated because I wanted to find people to follow, but not just anyone. I wanted to follow those who had something to say or those who I could potentially build a professional relationship. So naturally I turned to Google to solve my conundrum. My results? Well, that's what I'm hoping to share here in this blog post. Here's a list of tools that helped me.

Twitter Search – I used Twitter Search to see if anyone I knew was on Twitter. You can also use it to find a conversation about a particular topic. Great to use when you're just getting started.
Twellow – Twellow is definitely not the prettiest tool to use, but it contains a massive database of users that you can search by location or category. Great tool, just a bit clunky.
LocalTweeps – Local Tweeps is fairly new. However, the database is growing and the main focus of this is to find Tweeps (Twitter people) that are in the same locale as you. I found quite a few people to follow using this tool.
WhoShouldIFollow – Who Should Follow is an interesting site, you enter your Twitter name and it finds users that match what you have tweeted, your bio, and who you are already following. This tool didn't help me as much because lately my focus has been finding people in my locale because I just moved to the area.
TwitterLocal – Twitter Local is an Adobe Air application that is great. Basically you follow conversations that happen in specific areas - based on city, zip code, state, etc. It's great to see what is going on locally and to see who the big players are in the area.

Each of these tools helped me find more people to follow.

Other Helpful Hints -
It's also a good idea to see who the people you are following, who they themselves are following. Typically they are interested in the same people, so it's always good to check that out. Also, one of my favorite things to do is to check out the twitter user's ration. What's the ratio of who they follow to how many people follow them. I like to make sure its kind of close, however, if you are following a celebrity or a group or company, you cannot expect the ratio to be close. In addition, I also tend not to follow people without avatars, or a few quality updates. I do a quick twitter history check to verify quality and not just quantity. Sometimes those with quantity lack conciseness and worthwhile tweets.

These are just a few things to look out for when you are looking for more people to follow. Hope this helps and happy tweeting.

Feel Free to follow me @Phamtastik and Lindsey @lindseyrobbins

What are people saying about you?

Steve Pham — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:31:00 GMT

Your brand reputation (either personal or professional) is an important aspect of your business. Being "in the know" about what people are saying about your brand is important. Unfortunately, branding is not like the world of glitz and glamour where any publicity is good publicity.

For instance, you may be one of the top players in professional baseball, a role model for kids, and yet admit to taking steroids to gain a professional advantage. While when Alex Rodriguez took the drugs, they were not banned by Major League Baseball, he still tarnished his reputation and that of the sport. It's the same for organizations. If you are a financial institution and you require assistance to maintain your ability to do business, it does not project stability. You may scare your current and potential customers away. General Motors is the same. People are concerned about buying cars from a brand that may no longer exist in a few years. Branding is sensitive to public opinion. These examples show how your brand can be severely damaged or even ruined.

In the always competitive market of business, you may want to know what your competitors are doing. You may want to know what people have to say about your products and services. You may want to find out how you can improve. Or, you may just want the opportunity to reach out to your customers.

Enter Google Alerts! Google Alerts is a great tool that will send you an alert (you set up) whenever any of your search criteria is mentioned on the Internet. Pretty simple right? By being constantly vigilant about what is being said, you can stay current with damage control, be aware of what people like and dislike, improve your products, or maintain a close watch on your competitors. You can set up alerts for anything your heart desires including watching the news for when the iPhone goes open source (I can dream!).

Twitter is another great resource for monitoring your brand. With nearly six million unique visitors a month (according to compete.com), you can assume the number of active users is massive. Those active users represent current customers or potential customers. They also represent a powerful social network who can spread information instantly to a domino network. Reach out to them and be aware. Practice listening and responding to feedback even when it's bad. Acknowledge potential for improvement if needed. You don't have to be perfect, just transparent, honest, and willing to improve. Besides developing a network of followers, you can search Twitter for key information. As well, Monitter is a great site for seeing real time tweets of your key words. Enter in up to three key words on the page and see a live stream of what people are saying. A great resource if you want live feedback.

With Google Alerts and Twitter, why waste time crawling the web to see what people have to say. Instead, spend the time wisely listening and then use it to improve your brand, your products, and your services. Afterwards, you can reap in the praise and rewards. When that happens, you can come back and thank me.

Co-Authored By: Lindsey Robbins

How do you coordinate your profiles?

Lindsey Robbins — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:46:00 GMT

Sometimes when you experiment with social media and learn (like I do), you amass a ton of online profiles. For example, recently I remembered I had a yahoo profile and email address. Wow, wonder how long it’s been since I last checked that email?! I updated my profile and then my address book in yahoo with my gmail account - that seemed pretty easy. But it got me thinking, how do we keep up with all the profiles and sites we create online?

Sure, it’s pretty great we can create so many profiles and online presences especially when you need to be as creative as possible to reach and connect with your audience and peers, but still? When does it all become a little too confusing? After all, having so many profiles and presences can make updating information tedious and time-consuming if you do happen to change something about your life.

This is one post where I don’t really have an answer or suggestion for you, just a recommendation that you develop a strategy. I haven’t figured mine out yet, but I know it must be done because I’m floating all over the interwebs. I used to think it was cool to Google myself, now when I do it, I think about all the work it takes to maintain. But then again, I smile because it also means I’ve spent some good time researching and learning cool things about social media, technology, and the internet.
Okay, so now I just need to find some time to develop a strategy to tackle the online profiles. Do I sound like a Dilbert comic strip or what?

Can you Digg It?

Lindsey Robbins — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:35:00 GMT

I confess. I don’t Digg and I have no idea what to use it for. In fact, just the other day I submitted my first article. And it doesn’t even really count since it’s one of my own blog posts. I just wanted to test the process. Sadly, as of today, 6 days after posting, I still only have 1 digg (my own). I’m sure it’s because it was my own content and I have no idea what I’m doing. However, I wanted to see if I could make sense out of this tool everyone else seems to be using but me. Maybe I’m not really at the cool kids lunch table?...

In case you need an intro to Digg like I do, here’s an overview of the website:

Digg is a place for people to share with others their favorite content they find anywhere on the internet.
Once you post, others vote on your submissions. The more diggs, the better.
People, collectively, determine the value of content.
Most content people submit are news articles, videos, and images.
If your content really rocks - people will submit your content, you’ll get digg’d a lot, and then you’ll get published on their front page. And published on the front page means you are really awesome and will get a lot more publicity.
They make it pretty easy to comment and share the stuff you find on Digg.
And, you can even make friends because you might trust their opinion on good or bad content and want to follow what they digg. And if not, you can always digg for content by topic category (technology, science, gaming, entertainment, etc).

So what do you think? Should I Digg it and how should I use this site?

Flying Under the Radar at the Blackbaud Conference

Lindsey Robbins — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:04:00 GMT

It’s day two and so far, in my biased opinion, it’s been the best conference ever. Part of the reason I’m biased? I’ve had some wonderful conversations with our clients and listened in on some sessions that expanded and challenged my mind. We all have a lot of challenges facing us in the future but we’ve got some smart people on board and the heart to get it done. One nice thing I was telling one of my twitter friends (who I finally met *in person*) is that even though I’ve been ~~pushed~~ gently nudged onto the public spotlight of the Blackbaud blogs is that I still get to operate day to day under the radar. Being the regular ~~Joe~~ Jane allows me to still interact as my regular role, technical writer on Documentation team, and not in any kind of spotlight.

My conference highlights thus far:

Volunteering with Baud Squad! I had so much fun helping out Sunday and Monday night. Best of all, meeting and interacting with our clients. My favorites had to be conversations with Operation Smile and Spring Hill College! It always makes my day when I can share my passion for philanthropy and meet new, friendly people. I look forward to more conversations!
Sam Davidson from Cool People Care’s presentation on Communicating with the the Next Generation – He was entertaining, informative, and enthusiastic. I took two pages worth of notes (an upcoming blog post for sure)!
Andrew Mosawi’s session on Global Philanthropy – wow, the potential for global philanthropy growth is exponential and mind-blowing. Of course, I sat there thinking about how that will affect social media, documentation, and communication.
Shaun Sullivan’s session on the emerging technology at Blackbaud - Sure I knew a lot of it but there was some I didn’t and it was explained in new terms with some cool graphics and demos.
Working at the Service to Others booth – I always feel blessed to participate in so many philanthropic and service opportunities at Blackbaud. Just as fun, participating in a service project where we encourage our conference attendees to help out too. We’re making craft kits to deliver to the local children’s hospital so children will have something to do while they wait in the hospital. Giving back feels awesome!

I’m sure before it’s over I’ll have even more conference memories. If I could, I’d hang out and eat dessert with conference attendees all day long. The chocolate cake one was d’lish!

And, let me end by saying thanks to all the people I’ve met and the conversations we’ve started. I look forward to continuing our talks online with social media. In the meantime, it’s back under the radar to absorb all my new knowledge like a sponge.

Paring Down the Tweets

Lindsey Robbins — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:25:00 GMT

A week later and my experiment with paring down the number of people I follow has worked wonders (so far). I’m back to following people without as much anxiety and I can keep up without dedicating my every working moment to watching the stream of collective thought dumps.

Talk much?

My excessive tweeters somewhat followed the same people Joe Meehan mentioned in his comment:

"But as I've discovered, the excessive tweets I've experienced fall into two categories: One - from news orgs I follow (USA Today, LA Times Busines section, CNN Breaking News). A bit much at times - but it's news (at least to someone).
The other category is people who tweet their every action/thought/response to others. If I have to scroll though a full web page of tweets by the same person, it's the virtual equal to the guy at the party who doesn't know when to end a conversation.”

My addition to his two is a third category of people I felt I should follow but wasn’t learning anything particularly valuable from. Don’t we all have these people we keep around because someone else thought they were important yet you’re not really sure what to do with them once you start listening?

I still find tweets from people (I value and want to listen to) with links to relevant information particularly useful. In fact, now that I can find and read them much more quickly I’m able to follow their thoughts and links much more easily.

Who went and who stayed?

I don’t want to divulge too many specifics but here’s in general who I dropped.

Technical communication people in my field who weren’t contributing valuable information, tweeted too much, or weren’t tweeting at all.
People I find vaguely interesting because they have a huge following on Twitter but in general I don’t really care what they have to say on a day-to-day basis.
Large organizations I have no personal ties to and the government feeds I initially liked but had no use for after the general intrigue wore off.

I kept many people. In fact, I’m still following 82 people/orgs. Who and why?

I’m still following people I work with. I find it important to know what’s going on at work and we can feed each other great content (and sometimes funny fluff too).
I follow select technical communication people who I respect and can continue to develop a networking relationship.
Friends. You can’t drop your friends! Even if I use twitter mainly for work related items, I still find it comforting to see funny or meaningful things from non-work people.
Local organizations and organizations I have ties to. I kept the local news, local nonprofits, and even Clemson football feed (although the way they are playing, I might have to drop them than think about the season).

Going Forward

I still find it difficult on busy days to follow the thread of information thoughts floating on twitter. However, following only the people that can meaningfully contribute to my day makes it much easier. And I plan to hope, as Chad commented in my last post, that Twitter figures out the social filtering. I would have liked to follow many of the people and organizations I dropped, just not on a daily basis.

So my recommendation to those out there considering to tweet and considering who to follow, sometimes it’s okay to join the fray and make some mistakes. But, as you go along, watch the trends of what you like to see and what you don’t. And most importantly, don’t twitter everything!

Is Social Media Ruining My Attention Span?

Lindsey Robbins — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 20:56:00 GMT

I was a child who spent hours and sometimes days reading. I could actually sit still (in one place) and get absorbed in a story. Now, I can't sit still to read a book I know I will enjoy without bouncing up to check the news, sports, weather, friend updates, and messages (all on my computer). With social media, stories are broken up into tiny pieces. You either have to get the entire story out of a tiny bit of information or you absorb over time in fragments. Sometimes those fragments don't even come from the same people.

As a result, I bounce around from website to website, from social medium to social medium, collecting information all day long. I'm sure somewhere in there I'm making sense of what I'm reading and learning, right?

Alan Porter responded to our Documentation blog post on Google Chrome's Comic Book Documentation on twitter by sharing his thoughts from his own blog.

A point he made about why the comic book doesn't work got me thinking. He wrote… "There is no single voice and no narrative."

And for some reason his thought stuck in my mind and started weaving it's own weird interpretation in my head.

Social media is the opposite of single voice. Social media's narrative is not traditional. Alan is, of course, correct that all communication is about a story, a story told through a conversation (synchronous or asynchronous). However, I'm now thinking about how emerging forms of social media change the rules around stories and conversations.

Can we still read stories the "old way" or will social media in its friendly-sized chunking ruin our attention span?

Do you find yourself bouncing from screen to screen, sign to sign, and visual cue to visual cue (You might want to do a little self-examination at work and at home)? Does Google Chrome's comic also not work because it's just too dang long. I mean, who got beyond page 5 of the book? I did but only because I was just looking at the pretty pictures and not the text.

The question I have then is, how do you communicate and how do you teach when the rules around stories and conversations are changing?