From the Horse’s Mouth: Tremors and Fandom Courtesy of Twitter

Why Tweet?

There are many things I love about this microblogging platform and the way it enhances my business life and various hobbies. In business I can count on Twitter for an endless stream of recommended blog posts, white papers, and other social media, cloud computing, and learning content that the people I follow post all day, every day.

My music hashtags always manage to point out some new fantastic group, music video, or preview of a new track from a band that dominates my playlist. It's nearly as useful as reddit (If you reddit, you know what I mean, and you should check out r/listentothis)

It's also fantastic to see instant updates around the world the moment news occurs. For example, on August 23rd 2011, there was an earthquake along the East Coast of the United States. It originated in Virginia with a magnitude 5.8 and there were no reported injuries or deaths, though there was some damage to buildings in the area. There was so little fallout, that the initial panic became a bit of a running joke.

In the Saba Lexington office, it translated to this: I was working away and slowly noticed this shaking sensation. I thought someone near me was having a caffeine attack and thrumming their foot against my wall. Eventually it seemed odd enough that I stood up, and saw dozens of other people standing all over the office looking around, perplexed.

What was that?

I turned to my twitter stream on Tweetdeck, which is always open on my desktop, and saw dozen of tweets popping up immediately from across the east coast. Dozens of people in New York reported feeling it. Even more Bostonians were throttling the stream with confused updates – Was that an earthquake in Cambridge? My DC friends were much more sure – evacuating – but not before reaching for their smartphones. I added to the conversations, reporting shakes in Lexington. Thanks to Matt Malczewski, a community manager that I met at Enterprise 2.0 2011 in Boston, I found out that the shaking extended all the way to Toronto, Canada.

Thanks to twitter, I knew immediately what was happening before any major news site had broken the news. Yes, they probably released articles a few minutes later, but there is something so exciting about hearing it from the horse’s mouth. Industry peers and friends around the world that are posting their experiences and perspectives with no filter. It’s an extremely subjective but fantastic knowledge exchange. That’s just one moment when I saw the unique value that Twitter offers.

Oh and I also got retweeted by Paul Pierce once. Talk about twitter-related shakes. As a massive Celtics fan, that was pretty freaking unbelievable! I immediately started telling my Boston friends my amazing news, many of whom responded – What’s a retweet?

How is twitter useful for you in your day to day life? And how do you use it to enhance your business knowledge? What’s your best twitter experience?

Shakes? Shivers?

The Benefits of Activity Streams and their Implications for UI and Customer Care

I wanted to share a very interesting article that I read this week on the Software Advice blog about Activity Streams. Activity streams are a list of recent activities on a website, that provides direct links to the most up-to-date content and contributors in a social site. An activity stream is a feature made most famous by public social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and they are are quickly becoming prominent in enterprise software.

Blog author, Derek Singleton, points out some benefits of activity streams in a manufacturing organization. He lists ways that activity streams can improve manufacturing software UIs including their potential to:

1. Automate reminders to keep projects flowing;

2. Stream educational information along with project tasks; and,

3. Indicate which projects are most important and require immediate action

Read Derek’s fantastic post and join the conversation about use cases for activity streams for your business!

Derek has pointed out some key benefits to the activity stream. I would like to point out another way the activity stream can enable a extended enterprise community.

This topic is close to my heart, because microblogging and activity feed features are so prominent in the Saba Online Community. Powered by the Saba People Cloud, our homepage features the activity feed function and I can see where activity feeds often foster conversations between our members that would otherwise not occur.

For example, today the activity feed helped to shape and promote an upcoming user conference.

See the way it appeared on the homepage - with links for many options. You can:

*Enter the discussion forum

*See only the first response (while remaining on the homepage)

*Scroll through all responses

*Find out more about the community member who posted the question

A conference track owner posted a question asked for feedback from our LMS customers. This was posted in the LMS group, and notifications only went out to the group members.

Of course he wouldn’t have wanted to notify all community members, so that he wouldn’t be spamming customers who are not interested in the LMS, and who haven’t opted-in to be notified about LMS conversations.

After his post, I saw responses from many LMS customers and partners, but also members who were not members of the LMS Group. They offered their advice for session topics. I also saw an influx of new subscribers for our conference page. Because of the easy to expand listing on the public activity feed, his content reached a larger audience on their own terms, allowing all community members to provide feedback on the presentations in our upcoming user event without annoying them with unsolicited emails, and promoting the event at the same time.

What are some benefits of the activity stream?

What are some drawbacks?

How does your organization foster conversation using social media functionality?

Overeager Super Users: Tips from a Community Manager

Keep Your Community Diverse and Inclusive

Last week at Enterprise 2.0 Santa Clara, Saba and the Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) announced the Management 2.0 Hackathon that will connect people from around the world interested in “harnessing management innovation and principles of the Web to build organizations that are fit for the future.”

Some pictures from the Boston E2.0 Conference, where I showed off our community with my colleagues, Aly Kline, Milind Pansare, and Ingrid Stabb.

This summer I had the opportunity to participate in the MIX’s Hackathon Pilot. Along with 60 other contributors, from organizations across six continents, I participated in the Community of Passion Hackathon. The topic, “how to enable and support communities of passion,” was close to my heart, as my day-to-day projects as the Community Manager for the Saba Online Community revolve around empowering community members. The hackathon was structured into different sprints, with all members brainstorming around communities of passion and the “barriers” that impede these communities. After determining barriers, the group collaborated together to create hacks (innovative ideas or solutions). The barrier I submitted was about the possible detriments of overeager “super users,” which was a challenge that we at Saba had identified and addressed within our own online community in the past.

It takes a village.

In any sizable organization, there is no single individual who alone can act as an information clearinghouse and support resource for every question or issue a customer, partner or employee might raise.

It is important for a community manager to encourage all types of users to participate; which was a challenge when we built our community. In early

days of the Saba Online Community, when a customer posted a question, a group of internal employees jumped all over it, giving full, detailed (and correct) responses. I noticed that when a question was immediately addressed with a “perfect” response, the more casual, anecdotal answers from other customers did not often follow. I realized that once someone reached 'expert' status - in this instance, an expert because they are part of the team that made the product - their fast and comprehensive response stifled all others.

This is not the way it works

The dominance of “super users” can leave others too intimidated to post their own experiences and suggestions. When people are collaborating on a specific issue, “super users” can sometimes scare away other contributors, making the pool of knowledge less diverse and the final product less well rounded.

Now that we had identified the issue, we were able to structure the community around a culture of inclusion.

Tactics

• Encouraging new members to introduce themselves.
• Incorporating surveys that allow our members to contribute anonymously and see instant results of their participation.
• osting discussion prompts that asked about very specific use cases and scenarios.
• Web 2.0 functionalities built into Saba Social allow for easy feedback, and members can bookmark, share, rate, or comment on content in 30 seconds.
• Video Channels are a very dynamic way for lurkers (community members who read content, but have never participated in online conversations) to participate, adding youtube videos, TED Talks, and other videos to enrich the space.

The Saba Online Community endeavors to open up conversation, collaboration, and networking between customers, partners, and Saba employees across all regions and roles. We built the community to replicate the vitality and excitement of our in-person user group meetings by applying Saba Social’s capabilities to create a virtual community. Members are encouraged to share business experiences, ideas and best practices; and the exchange of relevant documents, presentations, videos, and more.

• How do you engage the lurkers and more timid community members?
• How do you tailor your community guidelines to different audience types?
• How do you keep your community participation and content diverse?

Facebook today for professional networking: Unblur your Personal and Professional

Facebook is constantly in the social media news, with good reason. Around 2008, it surpassed Myspace as the biggest social network, and has continued to grow by leaps and bounds. Even the recent Google+ beta program doesn't come close to the hype and hot stories around Mark Zuckerberg's college project. Most recently, the country of Germany has declared Facebook's new facial recognition software violates German data protection laws and in Columbus, Missouri a new law may restrict teacher/student interactions on Facebook. Just more drama from the collassal social network.

How many businesses have had a critically acclaimed movie made about their inception? (Even if Mark Zuckerberg hates it) In fact, I think I'm going to have to add The Social Network's trailer here, as one of the best movie trailers I've seen in a long time.

Facebook themselves will be the first to tout their amazing adoption rate. Click here to their impressive statistics. Some of the more stand-out numbers include:

• More than 750 million active users


• 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day


• People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook


• There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages)

In addition, the demographics on Facebook have changed drastically in the last 3 years. Gone are the days where facebook was just a college student's party guide. The majority or recent user expansion has been with more mature age groups and it is a rare person that I meet who doesn't have a facebook page. I personally am friends with my great-aunt living in Killkenny, Ireland and my 12 year old cousin in Arizona. Since we are friends, of course, they have complete access to my profile, posts, pictures, and anything my friends put on my wall,

Being aware of your information's visability is key to avoiding blunders in the Facebook arena.

How does your profile page look?

Do you really want to 'share' that with every one of your 500 friends?

And with that in mind, do you want to be friends with your boss? Your customers? That analyst?

It's a tricky, sticky thing you are doing when you use Facebook for professional networking, but done with care, it can produce fantastic results. This blog post is about the first step you should take to keep your personal personal and still use Facebook for making connections in your professional life.

Rule #1 Seperate your Professional Friends and your other friends

Most people don't overshare on Linkedin. They connect to people based on education and past and present employments, and thus don't need to tell themselves not to share their bowling plans that night, or their pictures from their nephew's bar mitzvah. If you want to get traction with your professional contacts, it's best to take them out of the pool for all your everyday- interesting to your sister, not your former colleague-items. To do this easily, you just need to create a list that seperates out your professional contacts.

1. Click Friends from the left column

2. Click Manage Friend Lists

3. Click Create a List

4. Select all of your Professional Contacts to put them in the list

Here you see I am creating a list of Professional Contacts, and making it so my default sharing excludes them. For the inane items that I assume only my friends really care about.

1. Creating the List

2. Customizing my Post Settings

3. Excluding my Professional Contact

4. Posting my beach pictures for friends, not all my business contacts!

That is my #1 rule in using my personal Facebook account for business. Of course there are many other techniques to making the most of it. Most businesses have set up a Facebook Fan page, which can be a huge advantage and a great way to connect to customers. Also Facebook groups, searchable by industry can be a great way to connect and promote yourself. Before I leave you, I want to cite a great example of Facebook networking.

A friend of mine (and a Facebook friend!) works for a production company in London. He always has to keep up with local, entertainment, political, and cultural news for his role. He also has to produce original content based on his connections in London. Here's an example of him using Facebook to secure great leads from his 800+ contacts with a few quick posts.

Tweet Chats: A Guide for Joining Twitter Conversations

Are you on Twitter?

It's pretty unsurprising that Twitter can be really useful for the topics I am interested in. When I want to talk social media, communities, networking, and collaboration, Twitter is a perfect place to find like-minded professionals. Using Twitter to discuss Twitter. I know, it is all very meta. I also find nuggets of information on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and other social media tools. Not to mention enterprise social media tools and topics, social business news, and valuable professional connections.

If you are interested in talking about engaging communities, navigating the social media world, and making technologies work for you, you might want to join me in a Tweet Chat.

What is a Tweet Chat?

A Twitter tweet chat is a pre-arranged global conversation that happens on Twitter through the use of Twitter updates (aka tweets: tweet tweet) that include a predefined hashtag to link those tweets together in a virtual conversation.

Formal Twitter tweet chats are arranged in advance and occur at a specific time. They may include a formal agenda with a specific leader or "speaker", or they might involve a free flowing discussion between all participants.

Here are some good ones.

• #smbiz: A chat where small business owners can get answers from experts and other SMB owners. Takes place every Tuesday from 8 to 9pm.
• #blogchat: Offers advice on how to better your blog. Takes place on Sunday nights from 8 to 9pm CT.
• #cmgrchat: Conversations about community management, a different topic each week. Takes place every Wednesday at 2 PM EST.
• #SMOchat: Social Media Optimization Chat: Every Tuesday at 3pm EST
• #SMmanners: Social Media Manners - A think tank on what is proper, acceptable, and not advisable in Social Media. Takes place every Tuesday at 10 PM EST

Each of those links takes you to a page for that chat using TweetChat, a fast, free tool to gather tweets in a tweetchat. I'll be on the #SMmanners chat tonight to pick up some social ettiquette tips!

If you are interested, check out a tweetchat and then come back here to let me know what you thought!

Do you use tweetchats? What are your favorites?