Blog & Free Advice: Online Communities
How to Find Your Audience on Twitter
Photo by Auntie P Whether you’re new to an industry or simply new to online marketing, it’s often difficult to find your target audience online. Understanding who your audience is and what they talk about is a key component in developing an effective online marketing strategy. Here are some tips for finding your audience on Twitter. 3 Ways to Find Your Target Audience on Twitter 1. Advanced Twitter Search
3 Ways To Grow Your Business With LinkedIn
Photo by Kevin Dooley CC BY2.0 Now that you’ve built your profile and company page on LinkedIn, you’re ready to start using LinkedIn for business. Unlike social networks like Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn is a social platform built specifically for business, so it’s ideal for networking and building business connections. 1. Develop Your Network To start building your network, import your contacts from your email account. LinkedIn allows you to...
Tips for Managing LinkedIn Groups
Creating your own LinkedIn Group increases your profile and gives you control over the group’s content and reach. The goal with a group is to engage your audience and leverage your company’s thought leadership. From our experience, it’s best to have a more wide-ranging group for sharing ideas and making connections with people from a variety of backgrounds. If needed, you can create a subgroup later on that is...
How to Opt Out of Facebook’s New Instant Personalization
Revised April 26th with reader suggestions. If you’ve signed into Facebook in the last couple of days, you’ve probably seen this message It seems innocent enough, but as this librarian found out, it’s more complicated (and, in our opinion, invasive) than it seems. There are two parts to this new feature. One, is that Facebook’s “Like” button is now available across the web. This means...
Julien Smith at Third Tuesday Vancouver
Julien Smith, co-author of Trust Agents with Chris Brogan, spoke at Third Tuesday Vancouver this week about the nature of social capital and building tribes. While I was expecting a bland presentation on the importance of building community within social networks, I was pleasantly surprised. The talk was less on why online communities are important and more about how now is the time to take control, get over our own fears and become leaders of...
Pitfalls and Best Practices for Building Online Communities
Building successful online communities isn’t easy. To help us out, Powered recently held a webinar on the Pitfalls and Best Practices for Building Online Communities. Below is what they had to say. Just because you built it, doesn’t mean they’ll come. Community: an interactive group of people connected by a common interest. Marketer’s Sins * Thinking that you know it all already - Tropicana changed their ‘look...
Guest Post on TechVibes: Is Pottermania Dead?
My guest post is live on TechVibes: “Is Pottermania Dead?” July 10-13, 2008, I was invited to Portus 2008: A Harry Potter Symposium for academics, educators, students and fans. Dr. Henry Jenkins of MIT and I gave the two luncheon keynotes. From TechVibes: When it comes to Harry Potter, the big question among the media is whether Pottermania is dead. Among booksellers and publishers, the question is who will be the next JK Rowling?...
ChangeEverything.ca Nominated for a Webby
ChangeEverything.ca, the online community developed by our good friends at Social Signal and built for Vancity, has been nominated for a Webby Award. Huge congratulations for Social Signal, Change Everything and Vancity! The competition in the social networking category is really steep: * Bebo: “a social media network where friends share their lives and explore great entertainment” * Facebook: “a social utility that connects you with the people around you” * Flock: &ldquo...
The Return on Investment (ROI) of Online Communities
I’m often in the position of being an advocate of online communities. I think that when they’re well conceived and executed they work incredibly well to connect people across roles and organizational constraints. But it can be a hard slog to prove it. (Not that I really believe in proving things with numbers. I believe marketing is practice of faith, not reason. Yet I have to be able to discuss numbers with some...
Change Everything starts with small steps close to home
Congratulations to Kate and the team at Change Everything for the fine mention of their efforts to help the homeless with toques and warm clothes in the Globe and Mail. The harsh winter weather has also brought an outpouring of support for those who live on the streets. It took Kate Dugas only 24 hours on her weblog to organize a drive for clothing for the homeless. The site, launched by VanCity Credit Union, is called...