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The Marketing Edge, one of the longest running marketing and public relations podcasts.
Host Albert Maruggi weaves his 25 years of marketing and PR experience across business, technology and national public affairs in interviews with newsmakers, authors and business leaders.
Maruggi is a frequent speaker and conducts workshop sessions on new media. For more information or to discuss your business challenges and goals, e-mail him.
The idea of a group of people sharing information can apply to hobbyists (like whitewater,try KayakMind, a product launch team, or a global force of loyal fans. One of my current favorites is Natasha Bedingfield Many companies struggle with whether such a beneficial collaboration is a technology question. There are plenty of platforms that exist for significant sharing of multimedia, and text along with other features like blogging, and forums.
Today we speak with Gina Bianchini, the co-founder and CEO of an exceptional platform for creating and growing social networks, Ning. Provident Partners has a private network for listeners of the Marketing Edge podcast and readers of this blog on the Ning platform. To receive an invitation just email marketingedge AT providentpartners.net and put Sandbox in the subject line.
Bianchini said the Ning Creators social network, a network of thousands of Ning users, is an excellent place to develop new feature ideas, get feedback from users, and a central place to praise and vent.
It’s all about the interaction, the information, and the journey that the group goes on together. Jump on.
During a keynote session at the conference with Robert Scoble, I realized how new social media is for the majority of communication professionals. He asked how many people are familiar with Twitter and about 20 percent of the room of 600 (that might be generous) raised their hand. Then, on the fly he connected to the web, and took the audience on a journey of relationship building and technology that demonstrated how time and distance simply no longer matter in how individuals communicate. He highlighted Twitter, Tweetscan,(if memory serves me right) FriendFeed, Twittervision, and QIK.
After his keynote and panel, Scoble and I spent time talking about information overload and how to avoid that overwhelmed feeling people get when they see Twitter for the first time. His response surprised me because it wasn’t a technology solution. He uses a tactic called attention management with attribution to Linda Stone This is clearly different than time management and Scoble in our interview takes it to a logical conclusion about focusing on what’s important to you.
Test One
I applied this logic to how companies should evaluate Twitter as a communication tool and determined that the first place to undertake that evaluation is not Twitter at all but Tweetscan. This “google-like” search engine for Twitter posts will give a snapshot of whether the keywords important to your company are also important to any of the million plus users of Twitter. My suggestion, do 10 separate searches of keywords that are relevant to you, your company, profession, or industry.
For example, a search for Kimberly Clark revealed several tweets among them a blog post about CIO Ramon Baez, a representative from Mom Central tweeted that she was meeting with Kimberly Clark marketing folks in Appleton Wisconsin, links to a news release about the Boys and Girls clubs of America and Kimberly Clark, a tweet about drug testing for an employee candidate, and last but not least, this post – Llega info del Programa “Comienzos Compartidos” que realizan Kimberly Clark Argentina y la Fundación Leer, en San Luis y Quilmes. Twitter has a million people around the world so the post in Spanish was made by this Twitter user http://twitter.com/rseonline – I don’t speak Spanish so the translation is up to you.
My point is, searching Tweetscan before you going into Twitter allows you to focus on what is important to you before jumping into the raging river of Twitter. Once you know what is in the water, it makes the ride more productive.
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Test Two
I also traveled south from San Francisco to Palo Alto and the home of the social network company Ning. Ning is a web-based platform people, organizations, and companies use to build social networks that can be public (open to anyone on the web) or private (only accessible to those you invite). There I had a delightful conversation with CEO and co-founder Gina Bianchini about the value of a social network. This discussion was enlightening because Gina peeled away the current fashionable lexicon of “social media” and Web 2.0, to describe the core value of people communicating on a network.
In this case, the issue is creating a place, (specifically a Ning based website) where a group of people focused on, and responsible for, an objective can share ideas. It’s just a place to get things done and in most cases improve, which is the result of sharing ideas. Those ideas can come in the form of words, audio, video, images, dialogue, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. All of these formats can be shared on Ning.
As you’ll hear in Gina’s comments in this podcast, Ning found tremendous benefit in a forum called Ning Network Creators which is comprised of many customers using Ning’s platform to create sites that facilitate communication among group members. It’s kind of like communicators talking about how better to communicate, yeah that works for me. To get to these Ning based sites you’ll need to register with Ning in a simple form, well worth the tour of social networks. There are about 250,000 networks on Ning now and growing.
My observation here and in dealing with many company executives is that perhaps the word social, as in social network, throws off corporate executives as to the business value of such networks. I mean social may inadvertently imply to them not business. My suggestion, lose the term social, and build a quick “business communication website” for a focused project, say a sales meeting, product launch or customer feedback forum over a specific time period. Get a small group of team members to buy in to the concept and use the platform.
Using this space created at no cost on Ning will allow you to test the waters of social networking. If that is a bit too ambitious, then here’s the next best thing, explore this type of forum in the Provident Partners Sandbox. It is a private network, private meaning I have to invite you to join so that only listeners of the Marketing Edge podcast or readers of this blog are in the Sandbox. We created it as a place to ask any questions you like, upload videos, images, post blogs, just come on in and experiment. It will give you a first hand look at a business communication platform with little effort. Then your imagination will lead you to the ways this type of communication platform can be applied in your own world of business or “social” objectives. Just email me at marketingedge@providentpartners.net with Sandbox in the subject line.
Upcoming Events
Take a look at the NewComm Forum conference agenda. It’s a comprehensive three days where you can get detailed answers to our questions about all types of social media, as well as integrating into a mix of other marketing tactics. This conference covers a spectrum of uses in the corporate, profit, and government arenas.
Twitter is a social networking combination blogging site. It is where people can follow the quick thoughts of others throughout the day. Many people share ideas in a sentence or two then link to a long piece, video or audio file. You can even identify people that might be interesting to follow by using a search engine specifically designed for twitter, one of them is called www.tweetscan.com
My twitter follower @pchaney today tweeted (meaning wrote a message for others to see) Love to see a Top 10 Benefits to Using Social Networking with Your Business. You are my inspiration @pchaney, at least for this blog post.
For the purposes of answering @pchaney the definition of social networking I’ll use is, a group of like-minded individuals gathered digitally, in some cases you already know these people, in others they may not know anyone prior to meeting on the network. This may not be the Top 10, but they are ten and I’m sure readers will add more.
Expand knowledge of a topic – benefit: product improvement, market research
Extend your knowledge to others – benefit: increased web traffic or exposure to network
Efficient communications – benefit: speed to knowledge
Test ideas – benefit: reduce market research costs and time
Exponential reach – benefit: you’ll increase the chances of knowing what you don’t know and you never know the potential of that
Get new ideas – benefit: learning from others makes you innovative
Promote your stuff – benefit: drive traffic to your web or physical destinations
Create member style community, example employees – benefit: greater candid communications to improve organizational process, products, working environment yada yada yada.
Training and formalized learning – benefit: speed ways to fix problems or create more proficient customer reps, tech support, etc.
Monetize eyeballs – benefit: yes where there are people there is the potential for revenue
Oh yes, and there is the added benefit of using a social network for business of asking a question and getting a direct answer. Hope this helps? Probably the best place to learn about the variety and possibilities of social networking is to visit Ning. www.ning.com It’s the social network of social networks with thousands of communities using the technology platform.
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