Technical and Marketing Communication: Content for a Convergent World

Note From Peg: 
The following guest post, by Marie Ennis O’Connor, breast cancer survivor, and author of the Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer blog, is part of an ongoing series here, which focuses on using social media for good.

Last spring, I first met Marie online through a comment she left on my Mother’s Day weekend post, Links for Social Good, May 2009: Breast Cancer Awareness. I wrote the post as a tribute to my own mother, whom I lost to breast cancer, some twenty-five years ago, this winter.

Marie and I have continued to connect since our first online meeting, through both Twitter and Facebook. We share common professional interests in blogging and social media, as well as personal interests, such as cooking and poetry. Most importantly, Marie’s philosophy on using social networking to help others is one that resonates with my goals for this Live with Abundance series.  I especially appreciate Marie’s thoughts on the power of story-telling and compassion, in building and cementing our online communities.  

Marie’s example is both humbling and inspirational, and I’m very honored that she agreed to guest blog, in honor of Oct., National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. According to MedicineWorld.org, breast cancer is “the most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women in the United States.”

Mammography can detect breast cancer at its earliest, most treatable stage, as early as 3 years before lumps are detected during breast self-exams or clinical breast examinations.

And now, in her own words, Marie Ennis O’Connor offers support for all those who have survived breast cancer, and who are integrating this transformative experience, with the rest of their lives…

Marie Ennis O’Connor

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer five years ago, I relied on my circle of friends and family for emotional support. However, I often felt like I didn’t want to worry them with my fears and concerns, so the reality was, I kept most of it to myself. I found it easier to unburden myself at the cancer support center which I attended, but I still felt lonely and isolated at times, particularly as a younger woman with breast cancer in a predominately older environment.

Now, with the rise of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter and online discussion groups, the support landscape has changed greatly since I was diagnosed. Women with breast cancer have access to much wider networks to find support and get answers to their questions. We can now share our experiences online with others who understand and can support us – not just in our own localities, but in different states and even countries across the world.

Having successfully completed my treatment for breast cancer and returned to my “real life,” I was not prepared for the tsunami of emotions that hit me at times. I was filled alternately with relief and elation at being given a second chance and with anxiety, fear, and uncertainty in the months and years, after treatment ended. Finishing treatment can be a very unsettling time. You can feel cut adrift and alone – once the hectic round of hospital visits, treatment and check ups are over, what then? Often this is when the real psychological and emotional work starts.

I started a blog, Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer, about my personal journey to make sense of my cancer experience. I also wanted to connect with others struggling with the same questions and concerns as I had in this post treatment stage. Also, I hoped that in telling my story, others on the same path would find some resonance and the knowledge that they are not alone. I found that while there are many blogs, chat forums, and websites available for those newly diagnosed, or going through treatment, there is much less available on what it is like to have gone through the experience and how you integrate it with the rest of your life.

I have been surprised and delighted at how well the blog has been received and how many wonderful women I have connected with through writing it. I find a great sense of community and connectedness through the blog, so much so that I have recently expanded it into an online support community on Facebook.

It is comforting to know that there are others out there who truly understand what we are going through.  While family and friends can provide sympathy, it is really only those who are going through the same experience themselves who can truly understand us.  Then, there is the empathy and support we give each other – when I am feeling down, others lift me up.  And when those others are down, I am there to do the same for them.

One of my favorite quotes, which I have taken as a mission statement for our  community, is from writer, Barry Lopez:

Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.

Cancer strikes a severe blow at our sense of self and our sense of past, present and future. The apparent randomness of a cancer diagnosis shakes our sense of identity to its very core and nothing will ever feel certain again. I believe that as we tell our stories to each other, we rebuild our wounded selves, learning to integrate our past, present and futures selves. We tell our stories in order to heal; in listening to the stories of how others have walked their path, our own journey of discovery and healing is enriched.

I invite your readers to share their stories and thoughts at the Journeying Beyond Breast Cancer Blog and our group page on Facebook.  You don’t have to have experienced cancer to have something to contribute. While cancer was my personal catalyst for change, it can be any one of a myriad of life experiences, which may be your call to transformation. I write about universal themes of change and transformation and living an authentic life. We all have experienced pain, loss, joys and blessings in our lives in many different forms, and we can use those experiences to help others on their paths of recovery.

I leave you with one final quote from Nobel Prize Winner, Dr Albert Schweitzer, ( I have paraphrased it slightly by using the female pronoun) which beautifully sums up the philosophy behind my social networking:

Whoever among us has learned through personal experience what pain and anxiety really are must help to ensure that those out there who are in … need obtain the same help that once came to her.  She no longer belongs to herself alone; she has become the sister of all who suffer.

Welcome to the sisterhood!

(copyright Marie Ennis O’Connor)
——————–

Related Links

• Connecting to Others through Giving
• Can Twitter and Facebook Help Fight Breast Cancer?
• Catch the Wave: 3rd Annual Detroit Hydrocephalus WALK (Part I)

Can you bring 200 people together in a room? Are you interested in building trust in a connected world? Want online veterans Julien Smith, Chris Brogan, or Mitch Joel to guest-blog for your company?

Read more about how to have these best-selling authors, come to speak at your company:

Bringing Trust Agents and Six Pixels to You

Posted using ShareThis

Attention Technical Writers: Through Summit at a Click, The Society for Technical Communication is making the content—both the audio and visuals—of more than 90 sessions, available from the 2009 Summit in Atlanta. (Only progressions, keynote, and workshop sessions were excluded.)

Note: According to the STC site, “If you paid the conference registration fee, SUMMIT@aClick was included. STC Members who did not attend the Summit may purchase SUMMIT@aClick at an introductory price of $595. Nonmembers may purchase it for $895.”

Of special relevance here is Tom Johnson’s session, Blogging: A New Role for Technical Communicators, which the STC has made available for free to demonstrate SUMMIT@aClick.

In his session, Johnson, the well-known blogger at I’d Rather Be Writing: A Blog about the Latest Trends in Technical Communication, makes the following case for technical communicators, as natural corporate bloggers:

• Technical communicators often possess literary and creative writing skills, in addition to traditional technical communication skills. Most technical communicators are writing specialists.
• Typically, technical communicators focus on information, not hype. Information is what many searchers are looking for on the social web.
• Technical communicators have direct access to projects, including project managers, product managers, and technical subject matter experts.
• Technical communicators are well-accustomed to working reporter-style, already gathering and synthesizing information, as part of their day-to-day jobs. 
• Through indexing documentation deliverables and their attention to consistent terminology, technical communicators are used to paying attention to keywords, and are able to come up to speed quickly on SEO basics. 
• Again, natural writers at heart, many technical communicators would be easily incented to blog and to diversify their writing deliverables. 

Reporting on the results of an informal survey on Twitter, Johnson noted that the #1 perceived value of blogging is increased visibility for your brand, whether that brand is corporate or personal. From there, he provides a nice overview of basic search engine optimization techniques, including using the keywords people are searching for in the first few words of your title and first paragraph. Johnson further explains the importance of backlinks, and how Google trusts other people’s opinions of your site, more than your site’s own content.

For me, Johnson’s tips on using your own personal voice and transparency to tell the story of your brand were particularly helpful…”It’s the story that makes blogging appealing,” Johnson explains, citing as an example, a technical writing blog, where the author shares professional wisdom, via a series of stories drawn from his own career.

I listened to Johnson’s thoughts on bloggers as story tellers, right on the heels of my most successful blog entry to date: On Making Your Own Game: A Parable. In that post, I offered a loosely disguised metaphor for business and life, based on my daughter’s lessons learned, after a recent try-out for the part of Belle, in a children’s production of Beauty and the Beast. Through my most narrative blog post to date, I finally figured out what makes for succesful blogging. Successful blogging is the direct connection with your readers, via a compelling, coherent, and cumulative story about your brand, which most often rests on a combination of information and entertainment—in other words—bloggers are good story-tellers.    

Like Johnson, I agree that technical communicators are ideally positioned on cross functional teams to be highly effective bloggers, especially given their strong writing abilities, access to information, and reporter-like ability to synthesize content from a variety of sources. Where I believe technical communicators can learn a great deal from their more customer-facing and management colleagues, is from the relationship-building, and yes, business strategy, that we sometimes lose sight of, in the pure pursuit of information.

In my opinion, the blogger who can bring all those ingredients together—information, relationship-building, and strategy—within the framework of a story that represents what your brand is all about, in an engaging way—that’s who should be blogging for your company, no matter what the discipline. In all likelihood, “that person” is probably a combination of a few people in your company, who could work together collaboratively in a group blog format, which to me seems the most sustainable format, in a corporate setting.

Without further ado, make sure to double-click on the image below to hear Tom Johnson’s insightful thoughts on blogging and technical communication. Many parts of this STC session, especially the blog usability tips, apply to all bloggers, not just to technical communicators. 

Double-Click on This Image For Recorded Session on Blogging: A New Role for Technical Communicators

Related Links: Technical Writing Blogs

• Tom Johnson’s I’d Rather Be Writing
• STC’s Notebook: The Official Voice of STC and the Tech Comm Community
• Ellis Pratt’s Cherryleaf Blog
• Anne Gentle’s justwriteclick
• ffeathers — a technical writer’s blog
• Ugur Akinci’s Technical Communication Center
• Scott Abel’s The Content Wrangler
• Scriptorium Publishing

Attention Marketers: HubSpot’s Rebecca Corliss announces that the third session of Inbound Marketing University is available this Fall, with two new, free sessions, also available to Inbound Marketing University alumni:

• Advanced Marketing Analytics (AZ501): Tuesday, October 27 @ 1:00pm EDT 
• Passion-Inspired Video & Other Creative Content (GF502): Wednesday, October 28 @ 1:00pm EDT

Check out Corliss’ video, explaining more about the program.

I completed the first session of Inbound University this past summer and can not recommend the program highly enough, for an introduction to  Inbound Marketing principles and best practices, including blogging, social media, lead conversion, lead nurturing, and closed-loop analysis.

What is Inbound Marketing University (IMU)?

According to the program description, Inbound Marketing University (IMU) is “a free marketing retraining program for marketing professionals—as well as marketers between jobs—looking to gain new skills to get ahead in the competitive workforce.”

The IMU program includes 14 webinar classes and one review session.

Professors include: Chris Brogan (New Marketing Labs), Brian Carroll (InTouch), Mack Collier (MarketingProfs), Todd Defren (SHIFT Communications), Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz), Laura Fitton (Twitter for Dummies), Eric Groves (Constant Contact), Ann Handley (MarketingProfs), Jeanne Hopkins (MarketingExperiments), Avinash Kaushik (Web Analytics 2.0) Lee Odden (TopRank Online Marketing), David Meerman Scott (New Rules of Marketing & PR), Marshall Sponder (Monster.com), Elyse Tager, (Silicon Valley American Marketing Association), Gary Vaynerchuck (Wine Library TV) and Mike Volpe (HubSpot).  

Inbound Marketing Certification Exam

My Inbound Marketing Certificate

The university program concludes with the inbound marketing certification exam. Those who will complete IMU and pass the exam will become Inbound Marketing Certified Professionals and will receive a certificate. 

If you have any questions about what it was like participating in the program or studying for the exam, please feel free to ask me here. Tip: Do make sure to pay special attention to HubSpotter Mike Volpe’s wrap-up review session, for the first ten sessions.

For me, another great benefit of the program is the community of inbound marketers that belong to the Inbound Marketing University Alumni group on LinkedIn as well as the opportunity to participate in the Inbound Marketing University Forum.

How To Register and Exam Date

Here are the dates to remember:

Registration Deadline: October 28, 2009 at 4:00pm EDT
Exam Opens: October 29, 2009 at 11:00am EDT
Exam Closes: November 12, 2009 at 5:00pm EDT

Related Links

• Inbound Marketing University: Kudos to HubSpot
• Inbound Marketing University: Stats of Note

The Audition

At the end of August, my ten-year-old daughter and a group of her friends auditioned together for a youth production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. On the application, where it asked what part she was trying out for, I started to write, “Comes with some theater camp, and lots of dance experience, with a big personality, and real stage presence. Wants to play Belle, but would accept any appropriate part.”

I tried filling out the application without my daughter seeing, because I knew she wouldn’t like to entertain the possibility that she might not get the lead, and because I didn’t want to jinx her audition. But her child radar was as sharp as ever that day, and after she questioned me closely about what I was writing on the application, she flatly declared, “But I want to be Belle; I don’t want to accept any other part.”

“Well,” I explained to her, in words to this effect, “the competition is really stiff here, and a lot of the girls are older than you are and have already performed in a few productions. Maybe we should keep the door open on this application, so that just in case you don’t get the lead, you can still be in the play, with your other friends.”

Big Dreams 

She didn’t seem to like what I said much, but mostly shrugged off my advice, because there was no doubt in her mind that she already had the part of Belle, in the bag. Later that day, she slammed out her singing rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” (her audition piece), without a trace of nerves, and with a strong, clear voice. I thought that she had as good a chance as any other brown-haired, brown-eyed girl, who had been dreaming of playing Belle, since she was very small, in her first Disney dress-up costume.

Reality-Check

Then, she got the news. She won the part of “Milk Maid,” and her other friends were playing opposite Gaston, as “Silly Girls.” She was pretty disappointed.

To encourage her, I explained, as her acting coach had to all the girls, that there had been at least a dozen girls who could have played the part of Belle, and that the decision was a hard one. I also told her that the girls who came back each season seemed to move up the acting ranks, and that if she did a good job with Milk Maid and liked acting, then maybe she would get a higher part next time. She still didn’t like it, but went along with things. “Maybe someone will drop out,” she wished out loud.

After the first practice, she found out that her friends, “the Silly Girls” were “Supporting Leads,” and that as “Milk Maid,” she was only a member of the regular cast. “Well, isn’t it kind of cool that you have the only Milk Maid role and don’t have to share the spotlight with anyone else?” I encouraged. “There’s another Milk Maid,” she shot back,” and “the Silly Girls have more lines and songs than we do,” she added. “Well, please don’t repeat this to your friends, but would you really want your stage debut to be as a “Silly Girl?”  I asked, still trying to make her feel better.”They’ll probably have prettier costumes than we will, too,” she dramatically sighed.

Straight Talk

The next practice she was still obviously unhappy.  I talked straight with her. “Look, we’re investing a lot of family time in all these rehearsals. If you’re not happy and really want to quit, please do it now, not later, when it will be even harder to fill your role. But realize that if you really love something, you’ll keep on doing it, and you’re willing to work at it, for its own sake. Remember the teenage girl in Disney’s Ice Princess? Remember how she had to learn how to figure skate in the little kids’ class? And how she worked all those hours to pay for her lessons? And one of the Silly Girls is your best friend, by the way, and she would have been the first to congratulate you, if it had been the other way. You can be sad for yourself, but happy for her at the same time. Now, what’s it going to be? Do you want to quit?” “No,” she finally conceded, with a slight sniff, and a sulk. 

A Second Chance

The next week she came home from practice, transfigured with excitement. “The acting coach asked me to try out for an extra part that came up.” “Oh?” I asked. “Yes, she wants me to try out for the part of Enchantress.” ”That’s exciting. Is anyone else trying out?” I probed, with silent apprehension. “Yes, all the Silly Girls are trying out, too, and there is a dance we’ll all do together as fairies, and then only one of us will be the Enchantress, who turns the Prince into a Beast.”

Oh, God, I thought to myself. She better get this, or I’m going to hear about it. 

Success

I remember seeing her at the Enchantress audition. There was this peanut of a girl (my daughter is petite for her age and about a year younger than the other kids), standing in the middle of the stage, brimming over with excitement and confidence. She didn’t doubt for a moment that she would get this part. And when the phone call came, and she found out that she was selected Enchantress, she told me later, “Now, I’m in a Supporting Lead, too, and I get to wear the most costumes, because the Enchantress has the old hag costume, and the beautiful Enchantress costume, plus I still have the Milk Maid costume.” “That’s nice,” I congratulated her. “Plus, there would be no Beauty and the Beast, without the Enchantress. She places the spell on the beast in the first place.” “That’s a very important role,” I agreed.

Not Settling

But the story of my daughter’s faith in herself doesn’t end here. At the mall one night, we were walking past the Disney Store, when she dragged me in and asked me to buy her a Belle costume to wear this Halloween. “Isn’t she a little old to play dress up?” my seven-year-old asked me, in a conspiratorial whisper. “I think she’s still working through something…” I agreed with my younger daughter, “but let’s not take this away from her,” I suggested.

At theater practice that week, by chance my older daughter’s acting coach heard that she was going to be Belle for Halloween and asked if she would like to march in the city’s annual Halloween Kids’ Parade, passing out brochures about the upcoming Beauty and the Beast performances. My daughter was only too glad to volunteer for the parade.

Making Her Own Game

And so it was, about a week ago, that she walked through the streets of Salem, MA, decked out as Belle, marching past hundreds of people. Only a handful of other kids (most of them older), from the theater program had showed up to march. Even though the older girl who was playing the part of Belle was there, my daughter was one of the few kids dressed up, and she was the only girl, wearing a Belle costume. For all purposes, she was Belle that night.

My husband and I watched her amidst the other kids, in all her Belle glory, and looked at each other at the same time, with the same thought. “There she is, being Belle, and not caring at all, if she’s the only one who knows it,” my husband observed. 

As the Milk Maid and Enchantress, she is still learning how to be a team player, and how important it is sometimes to pay dues in life. But she never stopped being Belle. The next day, when the phone calls started rolling in from family members, and we learned that our little Belle was on local television’s coverage of the parade, I felt more proud of her than if she had received the actual part. For you see, she wasn’t playing make believe anymore. As Chris Brogan, best-selling co-author of Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust would probably agree, she was making her own game.

Postscript

After the parade, my daughter had a bunch of extra promotional flyers. On her own initiative, she started walking up and down lines of parked cars in a restaurant lot, on the way back to our own. What a small, determined figure, she looked to me, all bedecked as Belle, placing flyers on cars. I laughed when she startled a man, who was sitting in the driver’s seat, just minding his own business, and probably not expecting a visit at his window, from a miniature princess that night. “Mom,” she explained afterwards very seriously, “I’m advertising.”

Photo Credit, Loren Javier

If you couldn’t' make the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston this week, Awareness, Inc., with some help from moderator Mike Lewis and PermissionTV, made virtual attendance possible, through a streaming live session, featuring a panel discussion, with some of the top leaders in the social media space.   

During this session, panel members, including Chris Brogan (President, New Marketing Labs), C.C. Chapman (Creative Director, Campfire), Paul Gillin (Principal, Gillin Communications), Jason Falls (Principal, Social Media Explorer), and Brian Solis (Principal, Futureworks) sifted through the hype of social media, discussing case studies and anecdotes of companies—large and small—that are using social media to get business results.

Are the “Experts” Ruining Social Media?

Lewis opened the session, with a satyrical clip from the SocialMediaGuru video, which is making the rounds on YouTube. (Disclaimer: The video contains some strong language, but makes its point.) After the video, Lewis asked how much harm self-proclaimed social media “experts” are doing to more established social media consultants. Though some panelists expressed concerns that the self-proclaimed social media experts are damaging the perception of social media in general, others maintained that clients are able to see through those who do not have the experience to back up their claims. 

Measuring Social Media’s ROI

Lewis moved on to ask the panel about the measurability of social media’s ROI, which led to a lively exchange on whether it’s possible to standardize social media metrics. Jason Falls kicked off the discussion, saying that using social media represents a long-term investment in the life of your customer, and that there are no simple answers. C.C. Chapman responded that ”if you have not figured out how to measure sucess, you have already failed.” Several panel members, including Brian Solis, cited KD Paine’s metrics, as a starting point for determining social media ROI.

Paul Gillan responded that social media is the most measurable medium ever invented, as business decisions with these tools almost always result in a click. “All that’s necessary is tracking the click backwards and seeing where it originated,” he said.

According to Solis, 86% of companies are not measuring ROI at all, though he belongs to the remaining 14% who measure ROI, based on criteria defined up-front, such as ”clicks, views, referrals, or retweets on Twitter….” Solis explained that measurement criteria must be part of your overall marketing strategy, when defining a site’s call to action.

Chapman interjected that companies must get their own respective houses in order, before asking consultants to measure results for data to which they do not necessarily have access. As an example, he offered that it’s possible to track where leads are coming from for a particular download, through Salesforce.com or other ERP systems. 

Standardizing Metrics for Social Media

The panel further discussed whether it’s possible to standardize metrics for social media, with Brian Solis taking the position that is, while Chris Brogan, best-selling co-author of Trust Agents, maintained it’s not. Brogan said, “…the old standards are a lot of voo doo…” and by implication do not apply to new media. Gillan offered that while we can measure the ROI of content on particular platforms like YouTube or Twitter, it’s not possible to measure the ROI of social media, as a whole, across all platforms. 

According to Gillan, the whole question of standardized metrics for social media is a bit bogus, as ”we don’t have standardized metrics for PR or advertising.” However, he added, …”we have just been doing PR and advertising for so long, we have confidence that we will get a certain return”… ”Will we continue to pour money into old channels that don’t work?” he asked. For Gillan, it’s not a question of  “if social media works, but when.”

Case Studies

When pressed for examples of companies that are using and measuring social media the right way, the panel declared Cisco as the big winner, because according to Brain Solis, Cisco does its homework upfront, planning out its approach to social media. After providing Solis keywords, Cisco asked Solis to identify where conversation related to those keywords was happening. Solis found that most conversations about Cisco were occurring on message boards. This information helped Cisco set social media goals accordingly.

Other panelists pointed to Microsoft’s Channel 9, IBM’s use of video on YouTube, and the Spiceworks community as succesful examples of social media in action.

Business to Business: Still People

As far as business to business, as opposed to business to consumer companies, moderator Mike Lewis asked the panel how different their approach to social media is in settings where it is not one person, but usually a group of people in a decision-making role. Chris Brogan responded that “Social media is about connecting with people, and they are still people.”  

Too Much Transparency?

Another question raised by Mike Lewis was, “Is there ever too much transparency?” Gillan replied that we are in the middle of a shift in which everything was locked down, to the opposite, where people are sometimes going too far, jeopardzing even personal safety or their home’s security, announcing for example, their vacation plans and whereabouts in advance. In a business setting, Gillan stated that transparency doesn’t necessarily mean laying out your entire strategy. “What it does mean is being honest with your customers.” ”If you can’t be honest, then that’s a different problem with your business,” he explained. Citing Google’s beta model, Gillan expressed that social media helps companies make their process transparent. 

Have a Community. Now What?

Chapman provided advice for those who have already formed communities. “Give your communities something to do,” he advised, whether it’s a contest, developing your own Facebook application, or sharing photos.” In general, he recommends finding ways to entertain or educate your communities. ”If you are stumped what to do with your community, then ask them,” Chapman concluded. 

Getting Started

Wrapping up, Lewis asked each panelist to provide one piece of advice to someone just starting out in social media.  Here were the concluding takeaways:

• Brian Solis: Have a strategy outlined upfront. Social media affects every outward-facing part of an organization. Every team needs to figure out what to socialize.
• C.C. Chapman: Be human. Be yourself. Don’t speak in corporate-speak.
• Jason Falls: Don’t be afraid to be human. Our imperfections make us more marketable.
• Paul Gillan: Be passionate.
• Chris Brogan: Be helpful. If you are not helpful, you are not giving others a reason to come back for more.

Related Links

• Awareness Inc. Webinar: Using Online Communities to Create a World Wide Rave, featuring David Meerman Scott  ~ Takeaways
• Awareness Inc. Webinar: Building Digital Communities on the Social Web, featuring Larry Weber ~ Takeaways
• New Marketing Labs Webinar: How To Use Inbound Marketing to Get More Leads at Lower Cost ~ Takeaways
• MarketingProfs B2B Forum 2009: Measuring Social Media’s Value (with KD Paine)
   

MarketingProfs Social Media Summer Series

No reflections on the summer that just flew by would be complete, without mentioning MarketingProfs Social Media Summer Series. As a contributor to MarketingProfs newsletters on search engine marketing, I am also a Premium Plus member, who often takes advantage of MarketingProfs online seminars, including this most recent, content-rich series, which serves as a social media toolkit for any organization, just dipping its toe into the social media waters, or for those more social media savvy, who are ready for specifics on tactics. 

I began the summer faithfully tuning in to more than half the series, reporting on Charlene Li’s kick-off seminar, back in my Aug. post, Marketing Profs Summer Social Series:  Charlene Li  on the Art of Social Media. Towards the end of summer with planned vacations, as well the inevitable back to school madness this past Sept., I must admit that I wasn’t able to continue attending the seminars, despite my good intentions.

…so, I was happy to hear from MarketingProfs’ Shelley Ryan, who in an e-mail wrap-up of the series, recommended the best way to view the Web recordings, which are still available to all Premium Plus members. Here, I jot down the recommended viewing path, as much as a reminder to myself, as well as a recommendation to anyone looking for actionable advice on how to get started using social media, from some of the most well-respected practitioners in digital marketing. This fall, I am especially looking forward to viewing on demand, Beth Harte’s Getting Buy-in with Social Media Measurement: Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, as well as IBM’s Sandy Carter’s perspective on Social Media in the B2B Universe: What’s Working Now.

In the meantime, here is the MarketingProfs roadmap, again courtesy of Shelley Ryan, for viewing the web recordings.

Gaining Buy-In

According to Ryan, “if you want to get others in your organization to drink the Kool-Aid, start with John Gerzema’s presentation on consumer trends and be sure to stick through the Q&A portion.” Next, Ryan recommends, ”Follow that with Charlene Li’s wonderfully brainy, strategic perspective.”

Planning

Ryan then suggests “you’ll want to get into planning. Jason Baer helps you get focused by suggesting a process that ties neatly into the Forrester data that Charlene cited earlier. Also listen to Beth Harte’s take on social media ROI.”

B2B-centric View

For a B2B-centric view, Ryan advises “don’t miss IBM’s Sandy Carter talking about things she learned the hard way. It’s true, hindsight is 20/20!”

Tactical Guidance

According to Ryan, after watching the earlier suggested seminars, “you should have an idea where you’re heading with social media and you’re ready for some tactical guidance. It’s time for you to see one (or ALL!) of these three topics: C.C. Chapman on spreadable content, Brian Solis on PR, and Amber Naslund on building brand communities.”

Case Studies

For a final dose of inspiration, Ryan recommends “the rapid-fire delivery of Chris Brogan’s case studies,” as well as listening in to the full 90 minutes, as the informative and engaging Q&A between Brogan and Ann Handley, resonated highly with the audience that day.

Peg’s Note: Long live summer! For Premium Plus members, it’s not too late to to view this excellent series of seminars. If you are interested in more insights from MarketingProfs, including the latest on search marketing, email marketing, and social media, there’s still time to register for the upcoming Digital Marketing Mixer in Chicago, Oct. 21-22nd. 

 Photo credit, Stepheye

Related Links

• MarketingProfs Grapevine Marketing Seminar Series
• MarketingProfs B2B Forum 2009 ~ re:invent, re:charge, re:engage
• Links of Note: Search Engine Marketing (Get to the Point Newsletters from MarketingProfs, Summer 09)
  

Summer of Social Good, in review…

I’m just back from our last weekend get-away for the season, in our family camper. What a difference since our visit from more than a month ago, at the height of summer’s ease. Now, the days are crisp, the colors vivid even as the mood turns somber, and the shadows, of course, continue to lengthen. In this reflective spirit, I’m recalling one of the summer’s most buzzed about social media events—Summer of Social Good, presented by Mashable ~  The Social Media Guide, and Social Media for Social Good. Here, I’m hoping to preserve and carry on the energy and commitment from that worthwhile initiative.  

To me, summer’s lasting gift is the sense of renewal that invigorates and sustains our efforts throughout the rest of the year. Though one commentator points out that the $55,000 raised for the four chosen causes may not have matched the expectations of the fundraiser’s ambitious announcement, or possibly the stature of its sponsors, we would do well to remember that the seeds planted from this milestone event are still bearing fruit, and that any awareness or funds raised during these hard times is that much more significant. As presenter Beth Kanter noted at the Social Good Conference in New York, “Small actions online and offline add up to make a difference.”

One Fund—Four Charities

According to Mashable’s announcement, the Summer of Social Good (which ran from June 1st till August 28th 2009) represents “the first large scale online charitable campaign to raise funds strictly online through the power of Social Media and the Internet over an extended period.”

The goal is to use the power of “Social Influence” via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, blogs and other online media to raise an unprecedented amount for our fund, benefiting The Humane Society, LIVESTRONG, Oxfam America, and WWF. We are very excited to engage and encourage online communities to truly do something remarkable.

The Social Good Conference

The Social Good Conference, a one-day educational event celebrating the finale of the Summer of Social Good charitable campaign, was held at the prestigious 92nd Street Y in New York City, on August 28th. Mashable’s sponsors, Zappos and MailChimp, donated 100% of all ticket sales to the Summer of Social Good non-profit fund.

The conference featured presentations from well known and respected organizations and professionals within the space focused on “Social Media for Social Good,” including keynotes from Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg and All For Good’s Jonathan Greenblatt. Thanks to Livestream, if you couldn’t make it to New York City, you can still view the conference videos. 

How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

According to the conference bio, presenter Beth Kanter, is “the author of Beth’s Blog, one of the longest running and most popular blogs for nonprofits. In 2009, she was named by Fast Company Magazine as one of the most influential women in technology and one of Business Week’s ‘Voices of Innovation for Social Media.’ She is the 2009 Scholar in Residence for Social Media and Nonprofits for the Packard Foundation.”

Kanter describes the Social Good Conference, in her excellent post, Reflections from the Mashable Conference. Especially helpful is Kanter’s summary of keypoints from Randi Zuckerberg’s opening keynote, on how people are using Facebook for online activism, as well as how nonprofits are using it for fundraising.

In her own presentation on how nonprofits can use social media, Kanter describes how she uses her passion for blogging and teaching to raise money online to help children in Cambodia. Specifically, she describes how her blog, a related wiki, the ChipIn Widget, and Twitter help her to fundraise. “Twitter is amazing fertilizer, and our tweets are seeds,” she explains.

The slides below summarize Kanter’s inspiring presentation. ”Tools come and go,” but according to Kanter, ”the 3 Rs remain the same: Relationship-building, Rewards, and Reciprocity.” She also refers to leveraging your social graph, according to the Archimedes Principle, described in New York Times bestseller, Trust Agents (see Kanter’s related post, Using Chris Brogan’s Archimedes Principle To Leverage Nonprofits on Twitter Suggested User List).

Related Links

• Catch the Wave: 3rd Annual Detroit Hydrocephalus WALK (Part I)
• Social Media for Good: Can Twitter and Facebook Help Fight Breast Cancer? 
  

E-Learning

It’s back to school time, here in Boston, and what a busy month it has been, settling the young Mulligans into the new school year, and as for myself, starting a new tech writing contract assignment. So, with these disclaimers, I belatedly present my Sept. post for this “Linkworthy” series,  featuring this month a round-up of links on social learning.

Despite concerns to the contrary, a few recent studies conclude that social learning may in fact be more valuable than traditional learning and teaching methods, especially for today’s students, known as Millennial Learners and Digital Natives. However, others continue to link online networking and computer games to a host of health risks, from cancer to autism.

Whether its impact is positive or negative, or a situational somewhere in between, it’s clear to me that social media is changing the way we think. What say you?

Learning Styles

• Understanding the Three Learning Styles: The Visual Learner,  The Auditory Learner, and The Kinesthetic Learner.
• From eLearning Guild’s Learning Solutions e-Magazine: Understanding Today’s Learner (PDF doc) by Jane Hart.  This link represents a highly informative essay, with a focus on management strategies, based on learning styles in the work-place. In the introduction, Hart provides a nice break-down of characteristics for the various generational cohorts, describing Veterans, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y.

More on Millennial, Digital, and Visual Learners

• Millennial Learners: This link provides online instructional resources from Michigan State University, including descriptions of Millennial Learners and methods for meeting their needs in the classroom.
• Visual Learners Convert Words To Pictures In The Brain And Vice Versa, Says Psychology Study: “According to A University of Pennsylvania psychology study, using functional magnetic resonance imaging technology to scan the brain, reveals that people who consider themselves visual learners, as opposed to verbal learners, have a tendency to convert linguistically presented information into a visual mental representation.”
• Trends, Education, Technology: Digital Natives, Visual Learners, Future Medical Students: This link represents an insightful commentary on how the Milleniums’ digital learning experiences are not always matching up, with the Analog teaching experiences of their teachers.
  (A must-read for parents of K-12 students.)

Social Media’s Effect on Learning

• Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom: A recent 93-page report on online education (including Web-based video, instant messaging, and collaboration tools), conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education, concluded, “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.” The real promise of online education, experts say, is providing learning experiences that are more tailored to individual students than is possible in classrooms. That enables more “learning by doing,” which many students find more engaging and useful.
• Social Media’s Effect on Learning: This Wall Street Journal post reports on the results of a recent study on social learning, by Patricia Kuhl, a University of Washington professor.  After studying bilingual Japanese-English speakers, the researchers concluded that brains of bilingual speakers are constantly adapting and reshuffling data as they translate. “Bilingual people aren’t cognitively smarter, but they are more cognitively flexible,” Kuhl explains. “Practice at constant switching improves an aspect of their cognitive abilities. They become more facile at adjusting to new situations and inventing new situations.” According to the researchers, this cognitive flexibility is much like what people do when they’re updating their Twitter status, instant-messaging friends, or answering text messages and emails, while they’re doing something else. Dr. Kuhl said this multitasking, where people are stimulating new patterns of sequential processing, could then reap the same benefits as bilingualism.
• Psychologist: Facebook Makes You Smarter, Twitter Makes You Dumber: Twitter and Facebook are very different beasts when it comes to improving your “working memory,” which relates to “the structures and processes used for temporarily storing and manipulating information in short-term memory.” Dr. Alloway has developed a working memory training program for slow-learning children, aged 11 to 14 at a school in Durham, and she found out that Facebook did wonders for working memory, improving the kids’ IQ scores, while YouTube and Twitter’s steady stream of information was not healthy for working memory. Also, playing video games, especially those that involve planning and strategy, can also be beneficial.
• Online Risks: from Cancer to Autism? Susan Greenfield, the eminent neuroscientist and head of the Royal Institution, is the latest to weigh into an ongoing debate, warning that young people’s brains may be fundamentally altered by internet activity. “While concerns about children and computers have usually focused on their forging inappropriate relationships online, or failing to get enough exercise as a result of being glued to a screen, the baroness suggested the consequences may be more profound.” “She told peers in the House of Lords it would be worth considering whether the rise in autism – a condition marked by difficulties forming attachments – was linked to the increasing prevalence of screen relationships.”
• Social Websites: Bad for Kids’ Brains? Dr Aric Sigman has claimed that sites such as Facebook and Bebo could harm people’s health. He joins Jeremy Paxman and Ben Goldacre, author of Bad Science and the Guardian column of the same name, to discuss Baroness Greenfield’s claims.
• Mind Games: Many brands have devised games that specifically aim to develop mental agility in people of all ages. It is not just older people who are being targeted. The education system has long been aware of the potential use of computer games and a survey last year suggested about a third of teachers used gaming in the classroom, to sharpen motor and cognitive skills. Research done on animals has linked stimulation from visual tasks to the strengthening of neuron connections in the brain, says Professor David Moore, the neuroscientist who founded MindWeavers. Stronger connections between neurons have not been demonstrated directly in humans because a test would require putting an electrode into the brain, he says, but neuro-imaging of whole human brains shows activity in the same areas when people play these games.

Social Learning in the Classroom and WorkPlace

• Twenty-Seven Interesting Ways to use Twitter in the Classroom: Tom Barrett provides innovative ways to use Twitter in the classroom. (Check out his professional blog, ICT in my Classroom, on using educational technology in the classroom.)
• Learning Gets Social: According to Tony Bingham, a recent survey on informal learning shows that 36 percent of surveyed organizations dedicate no money to informal learning, and 78 percent dedicate 10 percent or less of the training budget to it. Bingham notes that between 70 and 90 percent of learning occurring in organizations is informal, but most of the money is allocated to formal learning. “This must change if we are to be successful in the future,” he cautions.
• Informal Learning Reading List: The Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies provides helpful resources for implementing Informal Learning 2.0 in the workplace.

Photo credit, Sarah M Stewart

Related Links

• How Social Media Is Changing the Way I Think
• What Is It Like to Be A Student Today? ~ Generation Y, Social Learning, & User Assistance