Yesterday afternoon, I led a Blogging 101 presentation at an all-day seminar on social media, held by San Antonio Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).
Here are the slides from my presentation:
(RSS/e-mail readers: Click through to the original post if you don’t see them.)
Peter Kim is maintaining a running list of brands using — and being used by — social media marketing. As of today, that list includes 234 examples.
Have any brands you’d like to add to Peter’s list? Drop a note into the comments section of Peter’s original post.
As good fortune has it, Peter will be leading a discussion on social media marketing — namely: does it actually work? — next Tuesday at a Social Media Breakfast event in Austin that I’ve organized. Watch this space later next week for a report from Peter’s talk.
Here’s an interesting nugget from Mitch Joel’s recent post wrapping up the Shop.org Annual Summit: On customer ratings and reviews site, “a negative review converts more effectively into a sale than a positive review.”
At first, this might sound counter-intuitive, but think about it: If you’re looking to buy a new book, CD, or gadget (I confess that the Amazon Kindle is on my mind for the coming holiday season) and every piece of feedback is positively glowing, don’t you smell a rat and suspect that comment sanitizing is at work? I know I do.
But when customer reviews are balanced, as Mitch notes, you’re more likely to trust that feedback site and make a purchase from that site.
The same can be said of critical remarks by members in branded communities, too, and it’s the primary reason we advise our customers to adopt an inclusive commenting and posting policy.
“Originally, most clients will say, ‘No, no, no,’” to that recommendation, says Julia McDonald, LiveWorld’s senior manager of moderation services. “But we tell them, ‘Those comments are just as important as the positive ones.’ It lets [the companies] know what the issues are.”
Kristie Wells, the founder and president of the Social Media Club, has a similar take. “It shows a confident company, that they can take a little criticism,” Kristie says. “Allowing negative comments to stand could build a level of trust in the customer base that says, ‘This company is not trying to sugarcoat everyone.’”
On her own blog, Kristie is guided by her own “no-[expletive] policy.” As long as commenters are adding to the discussion at hand and not resorting to personal attacks or harassment in the process, their contributions stay.
As companies launch new communities, we exhort them to post community standards, or “rules of the road,” to a page that’s easy for members to find and refer back to. Good community standards make clear the kind of content, language, tone that is encouraged and allowed, and what isn’t acceptable. They should also note whether comments are moderated before or after they’re published (we generally recommend that latter, but every community is different).
Companies that advocate for and then actually embrace a full range of voices — complimentary and dissenting alike — are well on their way to building strong communities.
Peter Kim hits on an issue today that I alluded to in a SocialVoice post last week: the real definition of community.
It’s troubling — though not entirely surprising — to see that word thrown around so carelessly, as if a blog or a message board on its own is a community. It isn’t. Without people congregating, connecting, and building relationships around a shared interest on that forum or blog, there is no community — only an empty room (or a blogger talking to himself).
The distinction here is important — and it’s one that we continue to make in conversations with current and prospective clients.
Sessions are underway on Wednesday morning here at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City.
If you’re attending the event, I’d like to meet you and say hello. Here’s where and how you can connect with me — and my LiveWorld colleagues — over the next two days.
At LiveWorld booth 1429 on the Expo Floor
Our LiveWorld team (see all of our smiling faces at right) will in the booth from 11:00am-6:00pm on Wednesday and 10:00am-5:00pm on Thursday.
My scheduled shifts are 4:00-6:00pm on Wednesday and 1:00-3:00pm on Thursday.
At the Web2Open sessions
Web2Open is an unconference built into the larger Web 2.0 event. Several sessions have been pre-scheduled, while others, in true unconference style, will be created on the fly! I may try my hand at presenting, too.
On Twitter
Follow me from my @BryanPerson account and our company Tweets over at @LiveWorld.
In the hallways
Aren’t the best conference conversations the ones that happen in the hallways? I think so. If you see me walking by, grab me and we’ll talk.
In addition to turning on our new SocialVoice community today, we’re also launching a product called LiveBar™.
Jenna Woodul, chief community officer at LiveWorld (and my boss), offers her take on LiveBar, including its potential to bring a whole new crop of users into community conversations.
And while we’re truly excited to see just how communities will develop around sites using LiveBar, we also know this: true community isn’t about the tools. Instead, community is about people connecting and building relationships around shared interests/goals/values.
LiveBar makes it drop-dead easy for companies to provide gathering points around the compelling content on their sites. But turning those gatherings into genuine communities requires a commitment to the best practices of community management, too: serving as engaging hosts in the discussions, offering fresh content, recognizing and rewarding members for their contributions, welcoming new points of view, etc. We look forward to watching that happen.
Welcome to SocialVoice, LiveWorld’s new social media home on the web.
SocialVoice is the place where we’ll share our views on the comings and goings of the social networking/online community/interactive marketing industry, as well as mix in stories about our personal interests and hobbies (in my case, that could very well mean trying to entertain you with a little Boston Red Sox talk!).
So, let me say hello. I’m Bryan Person, LiveWorld’s new social media evangelist. I’ve been blogging, podcasting, and otherwise jumping into online and face-to-face discussions about social media since 2005, and I’ll be doing plenty more of that right here in the coming weeks and months.
Some of what you can expect on this blog:
Along the way, I’ll also be asking for your feedback. When you learn something new here, I encourage you to jump in with a comment. But when I’m all wet, make sure you tell me that, too.
Today, we put SocialVoice into overdrive. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
