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Forming Your Social Media Outlook for 2010

As social media evolves, the first major stage of social media for many organizations has been exploring its potential - understanding the community, the interactions that can occur (or are with our without you) and what it takes to engage and retain the community you attract or join.

As we near 2010, the outlook moves beyond exploration and now into clearly defined strategies to maximize the potential.

To get further perspective and consideration for the new year, check out these great posts:

Social Media: What's Next?
Where are the top sites headed? What trends are around the corner? Mashable’s Editor-in-Chief, Adam ostrow offers pointers future successes in social media.
(11/30/2009 - American Express, Small Business Open Forum - Social Media - What's Next? - PDF)

10 Ways Social Media Will Change In 2010
What will social Web bring next? What will "being connected" mean? What will the next experience be for the 2 two billion people who are connected to the Internet? Here are 10 ways what we've called social media will evolve in 2010.
(12/11/2009 Ravit Lichtenberg, Guest Post, ReadWriteWeb)

The Evolution of A New Trust Economy
The next stage in the evolution of new media is the trust economy. Whereas conversations served as the currency of social media, conviction credence, and value serve as the market for trust economics.
(Brian Solis, PR2.0 - 12/9/2009)

Social Media Is the New Mass Media
Social media and interactive consumers will take the lead in transforming the multi-screen media landscape in 2010. (12/14/2009 - MediaPost/Blog)

The Medium Is No Longer The Message,... You Are
We are witnessing a profound change in the media and advertising industries due to the emergence of social media.  Companies that did not exist ten years ago, like Facebook and Twitter, have captured significant share of the attention economy from traditional publishers.
(12/12/2009 - Seth Goldstein, Guest Post, TechCruch)

Best Buy Seeks to Become Part of the Conversation

Earlier this Fall, I was compelled to stop in front of the sliding doors of Best Buy to take this picture and tweet, Best Buy tells customers...

Now, watch this great video from Barry Judge, Chief Marketing Officer of Best Buy, to understand how this company seeks to be a part of the conversation online.

Our Voice, In a Tweet Cloud - "Feel. Love. Follow"

There's been a lot of discussion this year about how individuals and brands should represent themselves on the Social Web. Our philosophy has been if you are speaking on behalf of your organization or brand - be sure to represent yourself accordingly. Likewise, if you are true to your own personal brand, what you share online is both reflective and telling.

Thanks to @icodeforlove, you can view your tweets in a visual cloud of keywords in a month, six months, even over the course of a year.

I did a little experiment to see how the Viaspire team's personal Twitter accounts represent our personal brand and how it compares to our company brand, @Viaspire.

Feel. Love. Follow.

I was happy to see that my tweetcloud was consistent with my personality and my interests. I think as we round the corner for 2009, I think the last line of my tweet cloud reflects a new mantra... "feel, love, follow!"

For most of you who know us personally, you'll laugh as we did over Avery's personal twitterstream. If we are not working, we are eating! Like networking socially online, our offline social network, includes sitting around a table with family and friends talking about the day's events - even tweeting about them. Avery's tweetcloud reflects these conversations paired with good food from Sacramento.

Social. Policy. Experience.

For Viaspire, our firm's tweetcloud represents our focus and passion for technology and the user experience. We focused a lot this year on measuring social media and what it takes to engage people effectively and intuitively online. Every aspect of this tweetcloud is reminiscent of so many conversations, blog posts, presentations and shared resources we exchanged over the year. Naturally, the last line of our tweetcloud seems to be prophetic for next year's focus - more "social experiences" and more of a focus on social usage policies and standards.

What does your tweetcloud say about you?

Is it consistent with your thoughts and feelings conveyed this year? Do you see a pattern or a trend?

How will you use your voice next year? 

Will you share new thoughts and ideas more on Twitter than in email? Will you focus on your personal brand? Can you retain a personality within your Twitterstream or are you trying to "sell" too much of who you are or what company or product you are marketing? Is there a distinction? Should there be separation?

What can the cloud say about you?

Will there be new influencers that threaten your tweet authenticity? Are these open analytics that can be profiled and mined? What can the clouds say about each of us? This is something to consider and share to protect the integrity of the community, called Twitter.

Special thanks to @icodeforlove for creating new depth to the Twitter experience.

The Social Media Landscape for the Classroom 2.0

We mentioned last week that we spoke at the CASBO CBO Symposium on Social Media - Using new technology to deliver information to staff, students and the public.The session was very beneficial to school business officials who have opportunities and challenges presented with how and when to leverage social media to reach, inform and engage.

Much like we reported in our presentation, there are so many opportunities and tools available that understanding what tools and services are out there right now is a great first step alone.

Today, we learned of an excellent mind map created by teacher, Jesper Isaksson (@swedishteacher) E-Learning and Web 2.0 Tools for Schools, which organizationally displays what's available for teachers and digital learners in the realm of Classroom 2.0.

Special thanks to @web20classroom for raising awareness about yet another great mindmap of organized Web 2.0 tools for education.

If you are in education, tell us how you are using social media to help you in your job and in your professional development. Sharing with us, will help bring more awareness to the possibilities and opportunities many in education are looking for right now.

We are interested in your thoughts and findings. - Give us a shout on Twitter too - @Viaspire, #socmedfored, #education2_0, #ed20.

Leveraging Social Media in Education

We'll be presenting today at the CASBO CBO Symposium 2009 in a special breakout session on Social Media - Using new technolgoy to deliver information to staff, students and the public. In conducting some field research for our presentation, we came across a couple of videos, we think provide further insight on how digital learners and teachers today interact and engage in online communities, co-collaboration, user-generated content and constant conversation.

Digital World: Teachers Today

A Vision of K-12 Students Today

A Vision of Students Today
By Digital Enthnography at Kansas State University

Is Email Dead in the Era of Facebook, Twitter & the iPhone?

Clara Shih, author of "The Facebook Era," examines the question is email dead in the era of Facebook, Twitter and the iPhone? With eight billion minutes being spent on Facebook a day, people are not only logging in, they are engaged and communicating actively there. So what role does email play going forward? Watch this BNET video to learn more:

Also, be sure to take BNET's poll: What’s the Etiquette for Social Media and the Workplace? Give them your insight.

Twitter By the 100s - Information Is Beautiful

David McCandless, a London-based author, writer, designer and "visual & data journalist" has a fantastic post today with More Truth About Twitter.

McCandless, author of the blog, Information is Beautiful, takes a look at what would Twitter look like if the Twitter community was made up of 100 people. It's fascinating and provides interesting perspective.

Given our hectic day to day lives, I'm not sure I agree with the term for those who haven't tweeted in the last week as "lazy," but I love all the rest, particularly the "loud mouths."

I was also surprised at first to see the sexes broken down -- 55 female to 45 male within this community of 100.

The average 100 tweets are also a real tweet (eh hem, I mean treat):

 


Check out Information is Beautiful for more great visual data, graphs, charts and concepts. His work provides a visual perspective beyond the numbers and arrows. Well done!

Social Media - Fad or A Revolution?

Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics (the blog and the book) covers the latest trends in social media. Socialnomics, the book, looks at how social media transforms our lives and the way we do business.

In a recent post, Qualman reports Statistics Show Social Media Is Bigger Than You Think.

Citing over 30 statistics, Qualman reports:

1. By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
   
   
2. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
   
   
3. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
   
   
4. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
   
   
5. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia
   
   
6. Yet, some sources say China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services (Facebook’s ban in China plays into this)
   
   
7. comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network
   
   
8. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
   
   
9. 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
   
   
10. % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%

Check out this great video for more:

The Listener Is As Important As the Sender in Social Media

I stumbled upon a great article this weekend written in 2006 that tells the story of a man, John Francis, PhD, who "gave up speaking" and realized how much he hadn't been listening.

When I read this article it really made me think about where we are in the era of Social Media. Like any rush to be a part of something new, the push has been to PARTICIPATE, but I don't think there has been an equal push to honestly LISTEN. We are in an age of processing information, sending out information that can be syndicated to multiple sources, pushing "our words" out to the masses.

There's communication that spins off of that, even tremendous action, which can influence local and even global groundswells.

But, yesterday, on a quiet Sunday afternoon, as I read this article, the message for Social Media has been to  PARTICIPATE, CONVERSE, INTERACT, ENGAGE, but it strikes me that the passive notion of LISTENING has been under-valued. 

Francis, author of Planetwalker, said - "sometimes we forget that the listener is as important as the person sending the message. Communication is a shared responsibility."

In 2009, three years later, when there are so many ways to communicate via post, tweet, status, DM, text message and feed - we may need to take a step back and LISTEN.

In social media it is important to PARTICIPATE, but it is also our "shared responsibility" to LISTEN.

How can you LISTEN better on Twitter, on Facebook in your blog circles? You'll be surprised what you hear and how much clearer your response is when you really can really see what's being said.

"It's not so much that we get to where we're going, it's that we're on our way there." - John Francis

Being Proactive & Prepared for Response in Social Media - U.S. Air Force

There is an excellent business process workflow map published by the U.S. Air Force Public Affairs Agency - Emerging Technology Division addressing their standard of operations for reputation management and response in social media.

It's simple, clear and addresses the way in which the U.S. Air Force Public Affairs intends to engage online. For any organization assessing their level of engagement -- what it is or will be, this visual decision map may help create a framework for discussion and planning.

Special thanks to Joey deVilla for sharing this at Global Nerdy.