Social Media Challenge – Final Post
Dec 23, 2009 Social Media & Network Challenge
If you have joined us over the last seven weeks you have been taken on a Social Media & Networking journey – learning some of the basics.
- Week 1 – BLOGS - Intro, how they are used, write your fist post, best uses of a blog, next steps
- Week 2 – RSS – Intro, using RSS, RSS at work, other uses
- Week 3 – Forums – What is it?
- Week 4 – Wikis – Intro, how they are used, privacy & adoption, overcoming bad stigmas,
- Week 5 – Facebook / LinkedIn - Intro, strategy, friending & connecting, updates & groups, why you should be using them at work
- Week 6 – Twitter / Yammer – Intro, following & tweeting, twitter language, professional uses, Yammer – sign up, a little Twitter fun
- Week 7 – Social Bookmarking
TO DO – FINAL POST
What have you learned? What has been of the most value? What benefits have you seen of these technologies? Have you changed any habits to incorporate them? I would love to hear from you.
Please write a blog post of your experience and add the link to the comments of this post so we can all learn from you.
If you work as NASA MSFC and would like to be in the drawing for a lunch with Center Director Robert Lightfoot, you must write a blog post and add the link to your post in the comments of this post by the end of the year, December 31st. Winners will be announced the first week of January.
Did you miss a week or two? These will always be available, so feel free to come back when you have the time.
Thanks for taking the Challenge!
This has been great exercise for me personally. A lot of people have given their input, which has shaped these posts. Thanks to all for your excellent feedback.
(And now, back to the regularly scheduled program…)
Social Bookmarking – Day 2 – The SOCIAL Behind Bookmarking
Dec 22, 2009 Social Media & Network Challenge
Let’s look at the SOCIAL part of social bookmarking.
First – a humorous story. I was presenting at a conference and my handout was a one pager with only my social bookmarking address. It just so happens that I often use the name of ‘Frank Ferter’ in many examples and sites. It wan’t until then that someone pointed out how funny it looked: http://delicious.com/frankferter
If you go to my bookmarks, you will find everything that I have added (except for the ones I have made private).
By looking at my bookmarks, you will be able to tell what my interests are. Why is that significant? Because if we are interested in the same things, it might be a good idea to continue to explore what I have because you will most likely find something useful for yourself.
Example. If I was a web designer and interested in color schemes I would do a search for that on Delicious and find that one of the links a lot of people have bookmarked was “COLOURlovers.”
Social Bookmarking – Day 1 – Intro
Dec 21, 2009 Social Media & Network Challenge
(This is the final week of the Social Media Challenge)
We all have bookmarks in our browser. Folders with bunches of bookmarks to help us get to sites we don’t want to forget about or those we go to often.
But there are a few limitations:
- Bookmarks do not cross computers – In other words, the bookmarks you have at work are not available at home, and via versa. If you find a great site at home that you will want to use at work you might have to email yourself to bookmark it there. PAIN.
- Bookmarks are hierarchical – If you were to bookmark Engaged Learning, which bookmark file would you put it in? ”Learning” or “E2.0″ or “Social media” or “Blogs” or … What if it could fit in all of those? How will you remember where you put it if the bookmarks grow in number?
- Bookmark horder! If you find a great web page, how will you share it? Email it to everyone? Tweet it (good idea). But if it isn’t easy, you probably won’t share the link with anyone else. In fact, I bet a large majority of the most useful websites you have not shared with everyone. What if we could share those? How much could we learn from each other?!
Enter Social Bookmarking.
Like other times, I am going to let our friends at Common Craft explain this.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: delicious, sharing, social bookmarking
Twitter – Day 5 – A Little Twitter Fun
Dec 18, 2009 Social Media & Network Challenge, Twitter
Now, what you have all been waiting for… A little Twitter fun.
Follow the llama
#f2f or #funtofollow
- @fakestevenwright – one of my favorite comedians.
- @dowhatItellyou – just do that the llama tells you. Good.
- @awkwardfamily – Awkward family photos – the name says it all.
- There are a TON more. Unfortunately, many can be pretty course or raw (read: inappropriate). My philosophy: there are so many great accounts out there, why follow these others?
#onlineapps
There are THOUSANDS of applications which pull information from and use the services of Twitter.
Read the rest of this entry »
Yammer – Day 4.5 – Sign up
Dec 18, 2009 Social Media & Network Challenge, Twitter
Just a little reminder – if you are a part of NASA, go sign up for Yammer.
Get the desktop app. Or the Firefox addon YammerFox.
If you are a part of ANY organization, see if there is an active Yammer group. If not, start one!
That’s all I’m say’n.
Twitter – Day 3 – Twitter Language
Dec 16, 2009 Social Media & Network Challenge
Yesterday I mentioned that “What are you doing” or “What’s happening” are bad questions to answer. These are the questions at the top of the ‘tweet box’ in Twitter, Yammer or others which are to help you come up with information to tweet about. Rather, you might want to answer these questions:
- What have you seen something online that would be interesting to your followers? Tweet the link.
- Have you had an AH-HA moment? What was it?
- Have you seen the ordinary in a different light?
- Did you take a picture or video you would like to share?
- Did someone else say something you thought was particularly interesting?
That should get you started. As you can tell, it is all about sharing useful information.
TWICTIONARY
But, Twitter today is not what it was when it started. In fact it was very different in the way it is being used. And guess what? Twitter had nothing to do with it! It was the users that morphed Twitter (unlike MS Word morphing you). They started using it in ways Twitter did not think of, and it grew. In fact, its use could almost have a dictionary dedicated to it. Here are a few:
- RT = Retweet. When you see another’s tweet you want to pass on, you retweet it. Example: “RT @ThisIsSethsBlog Seth’s Blog: What Matters Now: get the free ebook http://bit.ly/5Ta1lE”
- @ = Mention. When I want to get your attention or attribute something to a specific person, I will use “@yourtwittername”. For example, @kevindjones will let me know that either the tweet is for or about me in some way.
- DM = Direct Message. Yes, you can privately message one person only. This is a break from the traditional twitter model. To do this start your tweet with “d twittername’, replacing ‘twittername’ with the person you want to message. For example, someone would DM me like this, ” d kevindjones Shhhhh. Don’t tell anyone.” The catch? They have to be following you to DM them.
Twitter – Day 2 – Following & Tweeting
Dec 15, 2009 Social Media & Network Challenge, Twitter
Now that you are signed up, let’s figure out how to use this. Let’s talk about value, following and how to tweet.
VALUE
One of the first things you might notice as you log on to your home page is that it displays the number of people you follow and the number of followers you have.
First and foremost you must understand this principle: The value of Twitter comes in the number and quality of people you follow, not in the number who follow you. Why? In the end, Twitter is about learning. And here is my theory:
The opening question, “What’s Happening?” or “What are you doing” make very shallow conversations – on or off line. But if I were to share with you some bit of interesting information – that’s were things could get interesting and a real conversation can take place. But for that to happen, the information I share should be something you are interested in. If I tweet, “interesting diagram on intentionality & formality in learning http://is.gd/5n2ar via @csessums” as did @hjarche yesterday, and I was interested in the learning profession, that would be something I would want to check out. (As you can see, it is who you follow that gives you the most value.)
So, Twitter is turning into a medium allowing professionals or other like minded individuals on a topic to share useful information. This is why the highest demographic of users is between 18-35 (47% of users).
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Tags: apps, blackberry, iPhone, social media challenge, stats, Twitter, yammer
Twitter & Yammer – Day 1 – Introduction
Dec 14, 2009 Social Media & Network Challenge, Twitter
Week 7: Twitter & Yammer: Day 1
There is SO MUCH to talk about Twitter that it is hard to choose and condense into five posts. So, stay with me on this one…
First: TWITTER
Imagine this scenario: You go to a Christmas party at a friend’s home. When you enter you see many groups of people standing in circles talking to each other. You enjoy mingling so you join one group standing by the fireplace. Its the guys talking about the fishing trip one of them took. You are there for a few minutes, but are hungry. So you leave to grab some munchies. There are a group of ladies talking about the latest Twilight movie. You have not seen it yet, so you listen. Soon you make your way over to another group sitting in the living room. They are talking about monkeys. It was disturbing, so you walked out on the porch by yourself.
Notice – there were a lot of conversations going on and you missed most of them. And it was OK with you. You didn’t ask for a transcript of each after the party. What you missed you missed and you were fine with that.
Take that online and that is Twitter. It is so simple that you might think, “There has to be more to it than that.” Well, OK, if you MUST know. Read the rest of this entry »
Facebook / LinkedIn – Day 5 – Why you SHOULD be Using Them at Work
Dec 11, 2009 Social Media & Network Challenge
(Warning – this is a longer post – but it is worth it. I promise. It makes the case as to why we should use social networking sites not only inside of organizations, but also why we should not block employees from accessing outside sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.)
Before we get to the topic of using Facebook and LinkedIn at work, I want to tell a story which was prompted by the comment yesterday from @LisaMeece108. Hopefully this will give you one example of the many benefits of these social networking sites.
When I first joined Facebook I also joined my high school’s graduating class Group that one of my old classmates created. From that point on, I felt I was inundated with friend requests. Some were old friends I had lost contact with and I was excited I knew where they were. Others, to be honest, I barely remember or had not even thought about since the “good ol’ days.” If I accepted their friend requests, their updates started showing up in my “stream.” I started learning a lot about people I really didn’t know any more and I was skeptical about the value of these updates.
Fast forward to my beautiful cousin’s wedding.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: e2.0 Andrew McAfee, Facebook, LinkedIn, social media challenge, trust
Facebook / LinkedIn – Day 4 – Updates & Groups
Dec 10, 2009 Social Media & Network Challenge
STATUS UPDATES
A couple days ago I was in a meeting where a person said, ” I just don’t see the value of Facebook. I mean, seriously. I don’t care that someone ‘is waking up with a cup of coffee’ or is ’slowly recovering from yesterday’s surgery.’ What a waste of time.” He then grabbed someone’s iPhone with the Facebook app running and started reading off the updates. I must admit, some of them did sound silly. But let me give you a simple example of how something so mundane and initially inconsequential can help.
Photo by paulcole on Flickr
Every year our church likes to book a camping area for everyone to go camping together. It just so happened that I was flying in that Friday night and was going to make it just in time to leave with the family. But the last leg of my flight was delayed. I called my wife and let her know, then I jumped on Facebook and updated my status: “Flight is delayed. Can’t wait to see the fam after two weeks away and go camping. Hopefully I will be there in time to meet them.”
When my wife arrived at the campsite she suddenly had a number of people helping her out to set up the tent and get everything ready for her and the seven kids. Why? They saw the update, knew I would not be there with them and pitched in to help. She kept hearing, “I heard Kevin will be late.” How was that, my non-Facebook using wife thought? Did he call everyone? No, it was the Facebook status.
The other day I found out that my friend’ wife was coming home from the hospital after delivering a baby. Since we now live 2500 apart , I had not heard about the birth, and probably would not have until his wife was somewhat back to normal. But I found out early, thankfully!
Then, last week, I had an business acquaintance message me through LinkedIn. We have talked numerous times and had lunch together once. He is a great guy and I have been impressed with his work. Unfortunately, work is something he didn’t have any more and he let me know through LinkedIn. Now, I can have my eyes open for him.
Can the updates be abused? Sure, and some people are better at doing that than others. But other times, those small, seemingly insignificant updates can make a big difference.
GROUPS
Facebook and LinkedIn both have GROUPS which you can join (without giving away private information about yourself). Once in, there is usually a discussion on that topic. The Groups can be organized around causes, ideas, conspiracy theories, music artists, professional initiatives or goofy topics. Just about whatever you can think of, personal or professional, there will be a group for you to join. Some groups are VERY useful – sharing information and asking/answering questions. It becomes another set of people who have common passions to collaborate and connect with.
TO DO – Join some groups (Difficulty Level: EASY – Time: 15- minutes total)
- Go to both Facebook and LinkedIn and search groups for your favorite causes and professional interests.
- Join them and jump in on the conversations!
Tags: Facebook, groups, LinkedIn, social media challenge
