Web 2.0

Where I get my pretty pictures

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pretty by Halima Ahkdar
Give Each Blog Post a Pretty Face With Flickr:
[Via chrisbrogan.com]

I was asked by a friend on Twitter where I got all the pictures that I use for my blog posts (like the one you see in the top left of this post). The answer is that I get them off Flickr. But there’s more to it than that. Here’s a quick run-through of how I use photos on this site, and some more about Flickr.

First, A Note About Creative Commons

The photos that I use on Flickr for this blog are licensed to be used under Creative Commons. That means there are some rules to using them, but if you abide by the rules, you can use them. (More on Creative Commons.). There are multiple rules for these photos. I use the least restrictive photos, found by searching using this link, which will give you any photos posted by people who simply want credit attributed to them for their work.

Attribution

First off, this post by Steve Garfield should be required reading. He’s right that Flickr’s system needs some tidying up. That said, I’ll write from the perspective of how I’ve been using photos and how I attribute them.

The word “attribution” in this case means giving credit to a person for their work. The photo above was taken (or at least posted) by someone who goes by the name M@rg. If you note above, I’ve made the photo clickable, such that it takes you directly to the person’s Flickr page. Further, skip down to the bottom of this post, and you’ll see an italicized area where I point out the photo credit.

The best way to give credit would be to have the text of “photo by” or something directly under the photo, but I’ve yet to figure out the proper html syntax to accomplish that neatly for my blog. (You’re welcome to recommend how, in comments). That aside, I’ve at least give two ways for you to realize who snapped the photo, and how to find more about him or her.

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This is one of the great examples of how Web 2.0 tools can be repurposed to become even more valuable. I have been doing this for quite some time. It may take a little bit of searching to find a good, appropriate picture but it sure is easy.

And the results are sweet.

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Web 2.0

Lessons for profit-making enterprises also

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What’s your social media elevator pitch for your nonprofit’s executive director or board?:
[Via Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media]

Photo by Marco Wessel

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending one of NTEN’s “Ask the Expert” calls and chats with Wendy Harman who is the professional listener for the Red Cross. She has a social media elevator pitch just in case she runs into one of the senior managers. It goes something like this: “I’m the social media lady who builds relationships with our stakeholders online.”

I bet she also extends that pitch to include the phrase “that results in increased goodwill, improves our reputation, and donations.”


You have to be able to explain social media, Web 2.0, etc. in terms that people can quickly understand. ‘Social media is about connecting online.’ ‘Web 2.0 is all about online conversations.’

As Jeremiah Owyang noted in a post the other day, measurement of social media is key because when marketing dollars are stretched, marketers are under pressure to prove their programs. With social media being largely experimental, it is imperative to measure quickly and make real time course corrections and to figure out what is working. This underscores the importance of listen, learn, and adapt.

But when you’re just starting out, organizational culture can get in the way of embracing social media. Wendy Harman shared some insights that Wendy shared parallel what has worked in the corporate sector. (See this IBM Social Media/Corporate Culture Case Study). What’s important is a social media policy

In order to measure something, you have to know what it is and why you do it. While the touch-feely stuff may make people feel good, measurables will be what makes it successful.

A couple of takeaways from Wendy:

  • First thing every morning, she spends a couple of hours listening – reviewing hundreds of mentions that have been captured in their monitoring radar using a variety of free and professional tools, including Radian 6. Wendy estimates it’s about 1/4 of her time presently. I suspect it took more of time in the beginning as she developed her work flow and got over the learning curve – and of course was able to upgrade her tool set.
  • Senior management is not turned off by the term listening. She often writes social media manifestos, filled with examples, pros/cons, and shows tangible, measurable results from their social media strategy.
  • She has a social media elevator pitch in case she encounters one of the senior people at the organization in the elevator: “I’m the social media lady who builds relationships with our community online.” Perhaps she extends that to include “that results in increased goodwill, improves our reputation, and donations.”
  • She and the others on staff are no longer afraid of negative comments or posts. “The opposite of hate is indifference, if someone bothers to post a negative comment it means they care.” She was also pleasantly surprised about how much was positive. Negative comments are an opportunity to educate and improve what they are doing. “It is about being polite and honest.”

Concerns of content and concerns of negative comments are big in most organizations with respect to Web 2.0 But, as Wendy says, hate can actually be more useful than indifference. Engagement and conversation can deal with hate, perhaps ameliorating it. Indifference will not respond to engagement.

People hate faceless organizations. They very seldom actually hate an individual who has a name and is trying to help. Listening is a very important aspect of Web 2.0 tools.

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General, Web 2.0

A resilient company

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coinsby Joe Geranio
Social People and The Big Conversation:
[Via A Journey In Social Media]

Sometimes you get things right. Whether you’re smart, or lucky, or a bit of both — it should be a moment for rejoicing since it doesn’t happen as often as you’d like :-)

It’s struck me that when we put our overall corporate social media strategy together, there were two big themes: encouraging social media skills and applying them to ever-wider conversations.

Looks like that was the right thing to do …

The Germ Of An Idea

David Spencer offered up a telling comment to my last post that confirmed my thinking here.

“At EMC we didn’t tell people where to go, what to play with or what not to play with.

We have smart, social people who feel empowered to represent our brand and themselves at the same time all over the place, and the payoff is nearly automatic.

There are certainly other approaches to take, but I really enjoy the organic growth that our approach has led to.”

He’s absolutely spot-on. That’s exactly what we did.

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By empowering its employees, by letting them volunteer rather than be chosen, this company has positioned itself to be able to rapidly deal with the unexpected forces the world throws at a community. Because their online social networks so effectively map real-life social networks (something rarely seen in corporate organizations), they have an added ability other companies lack.

Humans evolved social networks to help them cope with a complex world. The most successful cultures are those with resilience, that allow the entire community to help solve problems. The most fragile are those with a leader at the top, who controls all actions, but who is unable to cope with a changing world.

We have had many years of calm, a Pax Financialis. That is breaking down now, just like the Pax Romana eventually did. We will see more companies like this because they will be the ones who flourish in the coming years. Those following the older models will break and fall away.

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Open Access, Science, Web 2.0

Not such a killer, perhaps

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tubes by Hey Paul
Why article tagging doesn’t work:
[Via Bench Marks]

Reading William Gunn’s recent blog posting, Could this be the Science Social Networking killer app? got me thinking more about the many online scientific reference list repositories like Connotea, CiteULike and 2Collab, and why they are failing to catch on. William is suggesting a Pandora-like system of expert reviewers tagging papers to set up a recommendation system. I’m not sure this would be really helpful–what you get from a scientific paper is very different from what you get from listening to a song, and their interconnectedness works in very different ways. And it brings to mind the failings of organizing your references by tags.

If you’ve ever dealt with any of these social bookmarking sites, you know how incredibly tedious they are to use. Even for journals like CSH Protocols, where we have buttons on every article to add it directly to these sites, you still end up jumping through hoops, filling out forms, writing summaries, adding tags. You’re on the spot at that moment to come up with a list of tags that will remind you about the content of that paper. As your worldview changes over time, and with it your research priorities, you’re probably going to want to revisit many papers and add additional tags. Even with all this time-consuming work, you still may not have added an appropriate tag to let you find what you want to find at a given moment. Did you add a tag for every method used in the paper? Every conclusion, every subject referenced? That band on the gel in figure 3 that you’re ignoring today might be very important to you tomorrow. How are you going to tag the paper in case you need to find it again?

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I totally agree with David. There are two kinds of list-making people in the world – those that make lists and those that don’t. Applying tags to articles works well for the list-makers but many, many scientists are just too time-deprived to fill in boxes or check off squares.

But the real problem, as notes, is that in research the semantics change very rapidly. A paper that was really useful for a its description of a new cell surface marker may, at a later date, become important for a particular technique. How are you supposed to know beforehand which tags to use.

And in many cases since the research is at the cutting edge, there are no appropriate tags. So I make up one – call it IL-99. But someone else working on the same protein, adds a new tag called EDFWR. How in the world to the tags properly link these papers?

And, finally, no researcher gets any credit for really annotating a paper. Taking the time to do this, or to recommend a paper, is time they can be focussing on getting tenure, getting a grant in or writing a paper. Where is the payoff to the individual scientist?

Tagging research is not an easy problem to fix. We may all agree that it is worthwhile but we are a long way from any reasonable solution.

Web 2.0

Begin at the beginning

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A Model for Applying Common Craft Videos:
[Via Common Craft – Explanations In Plain English –]

People often ask how our presentation quality videos are used in professional and educational settings. From talking to educators and influencers, we’ve learned that our videos are often used to introduce a subject – to get everyone on the same page at the beginning of a class, workshop, etc. Recently, as part of our planning for 2009, we came up with a model that helps tell this story. We call it the A-to-Z Scale.

NEW AtoZ by you.

The scale represents the path to learning a subject. On the left side are the basic, fundamental ideas. On the right, the details and applications of the ideas.

For example, let's consider the subject of biology. We might find topics like these at corresponding parts of the scale:

CC atozbiology by you.

As you can see, the scale goes from big, fundamental ideas to specific details.

When we think about our videos and how they can be applied, we think about the scale and what parts of it represent the biggest opportunities for us to have a positive impact.

The Problem We See:

We believe that one of the real problems in explaining subjects is that people assume too much about what people already know. Their explanation doesn’t account for people who are new to the ideas and have major knowledge gaps. They start in the middle of the scale:

NEW AtoZ by you.

When this happens, people feel lost. They don’t have context for what is being taught or how the idea fits into the big picture. They’re forced to build on an insufficient foundation.

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When anyone starts a conversation, it is a good idea to move as far backward as possible. Normally when we speak, we can gauge how well it is going. Online, however, it is really easy for us to start in the middle, and speak to the already engaged, not knowing that the majority may not have a clue.

Common Craft gives some nice insights into how to undo this approach.

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Non-Profits, Web 2.0

Online listening

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ROI (Results on Insights): Nonprofit Examples of How Listening Returns Value:
[Via Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media]

Click to see larger image

This is a really handy flowchart detailing the proper responses to many of the conversations happening on the Web. It reflects a lot of thought and understanding of just how many Web 2.0 approaches work.

I’m very tempted to start using Results On Insights for ROI thanks to Barb Chamberlain’s comment in yesterday’s post “What Are The Best I-Words For Nonprofits To Think About Social Media and ROI?”

But what does that really mean?

A few days ago, I asked for some stories “What is the value of listening through social media channels for your organization?” I wanted to see examples from nonprofit organizations engaged in listening and conversation and the value it has to their missions, programs, or marketing efforts. And you shared them! Thanks.

Here’s what I learned.

Observations

  • Listening may happen at the personal, staff level as a best practice for doing their job whether or not it is embedded in the organization’s culture.
  • For listening to become an organization wide activity and more impact, it needs to be part of the organization’s culture. That happens when leaders model and encourage it.
  • Listening is typically used by nonprofits to provide better customer service, correct misconceptions, and other ways to support external audiences. Nonprofits are also using listening to support improved program implementation.
  • Organizations use both hard data points and qualitative data to listen and learn.
  • Having a structured way to collect and analyze qualitative insights can not only help with designing a social media engagement policy, but also harvest insights.
  • Effective listening through social media channels means that individuals and organizations need to identify why they are listening and how they will apply what they hear.
  • The value of listening is not in the act of listening in and of itself, but when an organization or individual uses the information to improve programs or marketing. This requires engaging in a conversation.

Web 2.0 involves a conversation. A large part of any conversation is listening something that there have been little metrics for. ROI is a poor choice at the moment since simply because no one has measured listening previously does not mean it is not important. ROI is fine for measuring all the ‘talking’ that happens but not so much for all the ‘listening.’


Correcting Misconceptions and Improving Customer/Stakeholder Relations

The AirForce Blog:

The image above is of the US Air Force Blog Assessment and Engagement process. It is an excellent example of working through how an organization might respond to comments on a blog, but even better it is map for insight harvesting.

As David Meerman Scott notes in his analysis of their social media strategy, the goal is “to use current and developing Web 2.0 applications as a way to actively engage conversations between Airmen and the general public.” If you were still thinking about ROI as Return on Investment you’d never be able to make a case! With such a clear policy for response, it is obvious that the blog generates valuable information to shape and improve a marketing strategy.

As Pudding Relations suggests “Take a look and see if you can use it to enhance your own thinking around social media with, ahem, military precision.”

Listening is very important. It will tell you what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong. It will allow the organization to gain wisdom much more rapidly. Beth gives some great examples but here is one I really liked.

Improving Program and Service Delivery

Green Media Toolshed;

Founder Marty Kearns says that listening is something that is done on an individual staff level, but for it to become an organizational process leaders need to build a culture of listening. He encourages staff to listen on many different channels and to blog what they learn in order to share with members. He notes that they have a 80% retention rate with members and “you can’t do that without listening.” Listening by using rss feeds helps refine their services and help stay sharp and connected to experts in the field. A lot of their listening is through filtering information from friends on social networks which saves them a lot of time and helps the organization “work smarter.”

The purpose of the organization is to help create conversations so it is not surprising that is listens very intently to what is being discussed. This is a group that lives what it preaches.

The tools we have today are creating connections that have not easily been measured before. But those connections are what help make everything work. Applying ROI arguments to only one side of the conversation will result in poorly managed connections.

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Web 2.0

Small is better

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The right (or wrong) size for a committee: less than 20 but not equal to 8:
[Via Effect Measure]

New Scientist reporter Mark Buchanan has a fascinating article this week on “the curse of work.” The title might be the least satisfactory thing about this examination of a new mathematical article that attempts to explain the inexplicable:

Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…


There has been a lot of empirical data indicating that the best group have less than 20 members. One not mentioned here are sports teams. Most competitive sports are made up of groups that are 9-15 members in size. This fits with the ability to reach agreement, to follow a single focus.

When the goal consists of winning, having small groups makes sense. Now we have some modeling data to suggest why this is.

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Web 2.0

Charts to use

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Visualizing Your Social Media Analytics Data Can Trigger Insights:
[Via Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media]

See Larger Version here from Labnol’s Flickr Account

I’ve been thinking about reflections that you need to ask as you harvest your hard data and metrics for insights about your social media. When you get to your grand synthesis, you need to create visuals to convey the key points.

Charting and graphing your data helps you see patterns and trends more easily and articulate them to decision-makers. Digital Inspiration found this terrific visual field guide to selecting the right chart or graph or graph format. After you select your desired chart format, use the Chart Chooser to generate a PowerPoint or Excel template.

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Presenting information requires a useful style to accurately display the data. This is a useful little chart to accomplish this. As you notice, bullet points are not included.