Blogs | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

ALI Social Media Summit Discounts

I will be presenting at the “Social Media Summit: How To Use Blogging, Podcasting & the Latest Web 2.0 Technologies To Engage Your Employees, Reach Your Customers & Build Your Brand,” June 9-12, 2008 in Chicago, IL. My session topic will be: “Integrating New Media With Traditional Media To Multiply Results.”

This looks like it will be another strong event. I’m part of Day 1, just after Michael Rudnick’s address. Andy Sernovitz of GasPedal will deliver the afternoon keynote, and Duncan Wardle from Disney Parks will keynote Day 2 (here are some highlights of a presentation I heard him give earlier this month.) I know you’ll enjoy Chris Heuer from the Social Media Club, Paula Berg from Southwest Airlines and the Best Buy guys. The other case studies should be interesting, too.

Here are two ways you can save on registration:

If you register by May 1, you save $400.
Since I am one of the speakers, you can save another $200 by using the code “SPK” when registering.

Advanced Learning Institute is sponsoring the event. I’ve attended and presented (and blogged) at several of their previous conferences. Knowing or having heard several of the speakers, I’m confident you will find it worthwhile. I hope to see you there!

Social Media Motto

In a discussion yesterday with a couple of colleagues at work, I think I may have stumbled upon (if you’ll pardon the social bookmarking pun) an official motto for SMUG:

It’s not that hard.

I was talking with these co-workers (let’s call them “Karen” and “Cory”… since those are their names) about an exciting new blogging project that’s part of an internal communications program Karen is leading, and as we began the conversation I heard myself saying something I hadn’t planned but that really resonated with Karen. I’m not sure I can reproduce exactly what led to the magic phrase, but it was something like this:

You’ve got just a few weeks to get this blog launched, and that may seem like a short time compared to some of the projects you’ve done, but I just want to you to remember one thing: it’s not that hard. We launched the health policy blog in less than a week, and we also got a tile developed to bring a feed of the latest posts into this static page. That doesn’t mean it’s not work (how’s that for a double negative?); but it does mean you can do this. We’ve got a talented team that has done elements of everything you need to accomplish here, from the web video to customizing the blog’s look and feel to developing the RSS widget for the static page. It’s just a matter of pulling it together. It’s not effortless, but it’s not that hard.

I realized pretty quickly I was on to something with that phrase, when as we were discussing elements that needed to be completed between now and May 1 or so, Karen repeatedly chimed back: “But it’s not that hard, right?” “No, it’s not that hard,” I reassured her. I know we all left that planning meeting feeling that we had developed the start of a good game plan, and now we just needed to execute.

As I reflected on this, I thought those four words accidentally uttered do a great job of encapsulating what Social Media University, Global is all about: It’s not that hard. My mission with SMUG is to encourage people to learn about and experiment with social media tools to improve their lives. Maybe the applications for your are avocational, such as a blog or a Facebook group for a club or amateur sports team. Possibly you’d like to recruit and organize people for your non-profit cause. Perhaps you see social media as a way to engage employees in a large organization. Or you see potential “marketing” benefits, not in the traditional “push” sense of sending our your messages, but providing an opportunity to connect in a meaningful way with current and potential customers or clients.

Whatever your situation, the SMUG motto holds: It’s not that hard. It’s not get-rich-quick internet secrets (like the one I saw on the infomercial at 4:45 this morning.) It’s real work, not auto-pilot. But it’s not that hard.

Welcome Frost & Sullivan eBulletin Readers

A few weeks ago I got a Facebook message from Caryn Brown from Frost & Sullivan, saying that she wanted to feature my blog as a “Recommended Read” in the eBulletin, a quarterly electronic publication for past participants in Sales and Marketing: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange. (I guess they ordinarily feature a book in this section.) I asked Caryn to let me know when the eBulletin would be distributed, so I could welcome you properly and share links to some of the posts I’ve done about Frost & Sullivan events. She kindly obliged, so here’s a quick intro to Social Media University, Global — or SMUG.

SMUG is the University of Phoenix without the football stadium…or the tuition…or the accreditation. It’s a place for lifelong learners to get hands-on experience with social media tools, which are changing the way people communicate.

With well over 100 million blogs and upwards of 68 million active users of Facebook, I’ve said previously that for PR professionals, unfamiliarity with these tools borders on malpractice. The same is true for those involved in sales and marketing.

Especially when you can learn about them for free!

Continue reading “Welcome Frost & Sullivan eBulletin Readers”

SMUG Week in Review 2-24-08

It was a full week for Social Media University, Global (SMUG) students, of whom there are now 49 (up from 34 just a week ago!)

The Facebook Hacker Challenge was updated and expanded. Then a commenter raised the issue of whether encouraging someone to try to hack the group would constitute a violation of Facebook’s Terms of Service. Your Chancellor decided it may be worth up to $200 to find out how secure Facebook’s secret groups are, but it’s not worth getting his Facebook account suspended, so I brought the challenge to an end.

Which is, I guess, a way of saying Facebook (even though it’s free), is worth more than $200 to me. That got me thinking that maybe a $15 billion valuation for Facebook isn’t all that outlandish; if you multiply 65 million active users by $200 each, that’s $13 billion. I may not be typical; there may be lots of users who would walk away from Facebook forever if you offered them five bucks. But I suspect many others wouldn’t trade their access to Facebook for $500 or even $1,000.

In one way, this back-of-the-envelope calculation doesn’t mean much. The fact that I perceive Facebook as being worth more than $200 to me doesn’t directly put money in Mark Zuckerberg’s pockets. But it does suggest that there will be a reasonable tolerance for Facebook trying to monetize its service, even if it means some minor annoyances, because users find Facebook so personally valuable anyway. Of course, the best scenario is one in which the targeting of relevant advertising actually enhances Facebook’s perceived value to users.

In other developments this week, SMUG got a great new URL: social-media-university-global.org. This is part of growing up from a blog that started on a whim about 19 months ago to an on-line higher education institution (even if it’s not accredited). The process was pretty painless on my end, and the total cost was $19 (although I did spend another $10 for the .com version of the domain, too.) I hope it’s not too painful for those who had subscribed to the original feed from leeaase.wordpress.com, or the one that had been burned through Feedburner. I would appreciate any feedback from anyone for whom this has caused a problem (but then, if it has cut off their feed they wouldn’t know about this request, would they?)

We also added two new courses, for which there are homework assignments:

Remember, SMUG is built on the principle of self-paced, hands-on learning. Don’t worry if you get behind. The Curriculum section will always have an up-to-date listing of available courses in sequential order. Complete the coursework as you have the time and inclination.

Unlike traditional colleges and universities that offer degree completion through cohort programs, you don’t have to work at the same pace as everyone else. The SMUG cohort is always growing and accepting new students (15 in the last week alone). So you can’t get behind, because there’s no pace you’re expected to match.

Of course the other major difference between SMUG and other universities is they actually give you a real, accredited degree. And even the cheapest public universities charge tens of thousands of dollars for it.

At SMUG, the B.S. degree you earn has a double meaning. But since it’s free, and since you’ll be gaining a lot of practical knowledge and experience through the process, I’m confident you will find it an exceptional value.

Happy studies!

Blogging 102: Blog Search Engines

Blogs are great tools for news and conversations. So how do you find out what people are saying in blogs, so you can join the discussion?

If you want to monitor blog mentions of a topic (or your company’s name), you have numerous paid options. But I recommend that you start with the free ones, such as:

Technorati,
BlogPulse, and
IceRocket
And of course you also can sign up for Google News alerts, too.

For any of these, it’s easy to get automatic, up-to-date alerts via RSS feeds or e-mail, so you can be aware of what is being said about topics that matter to you. Here are the steps, using Technorati as an example:

Go to Technorati.com and enter your term of interest into the search box. In my case, I’m interested in health policy reform, so I entered health reform in the search box.

You can narrow the scope by taking advantage of what Technorati has defined as “authority.” In essence, this is a count of how many other blogs have linked to a given blog in the last six months. This tells you that some other people have found the information useful or interesting. The next two graphics show what happens when you search for posts with “some authority” or “a lot of authority” (and in the latter the search term was put in quotes, “health reform” to narrow further.)

Another way to narrow the scope is to search for posts that are tagged as being about your topic. (For background about tagging, read this post.) Here are the results for posts tagged “health reform”:

Your next step should be to sign up for automatic alerts from Technorati about new posts that fit your search term or that are tagged with your term. Click this button…

…and (provided you have completed Social Media 102: Intro to RSS or its equivalent) you will be taken to your RSS aggregator or feed reader, where you will have an opportunity to suscribe to a feed of this search.

After you’ve subscribed to the Technorati feed, your next step should be to visit some of the blogs that came up with “some authority” or “a lot of authority” in your original search. These blogs may write about your topic regularly. If so, you will want to become a regular reader. But instead of having to visit them each day, you can just subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed.

Also, in Technorati, you can search for blogs that are tagged as being about your topic, not just that have some posts relating to it. Here are the results for blogs about health reform:

After you’re done with your Technorati search, you can follow much of the same process with BlogPulse and IceRocket.

Homework Assignments:

Go to Technorati and search for key words that are of interest to you, such as your company name. Subscribe to the feeds for those terms.
Find at least five blogs that are “about” your key terms, and subscribe to those blogs’ feeds in your RSS feed reader.
Repeat the process using at least two other search engines, choosing from BlogPulse, IceRocket and Google News.

This post is part of the Blogging curriculum for Social Media University, Global (SMUG). For information about enrolling in SMUG, click here.