Tagged with 'twitter'

I attended the Avvo “Advanced Social Media Training for Lawyers” conference in Seattle last week. It was excellent. There were many topic-relevant highpoints. What I’m about to share was not one of them.

Like many well-organized conferences our broadband-enabled conference room included an active Twitter community of attendees. Non-attendees were also chiming in at #avvo. As a best practice, the Twitter stream was also displayed in a Twitterfall on the podium. That is, the Twitter-enabled backchannel of commentary and opinion was brought forward to complement each presentation. I find this kind of total immersion Presenter – Twitter environment works well to stimulate my active engagement with others based on the presenter’s material. Except this time I experienced a new twist.

In the midst of the topic-relevant Tweets, non-attendee @ScottGreenfield scolds, “This #avvo used car salesman conference is deeply disturbing.” @btannenbaum @btannebaum added, “Remember something you avvocating maniacs, if you’re not a good lawyer, people will find out, despite your blogs and online garbage #avvo.” @ScottGreenfield continues, “We’re twitting about the #avvo conf in Seattle. We are living it via twitter. It’s very ugly.”

Ironically, the essence of what these two harassers were saying was not incorrect. In fact, they had some great points about abuse of social media, thoughtless blogging and even the alleged “social media gurus” (SMG) who industrialize the process of building real human networks.  However, as one who was present, what was clear was there was a mis-match between their sterotype of the interests of the attendees and the reality of what people were focused on learning and being taught. The flamers were flinging mud but they had the wrong target.

In the end, the rogue Tweeters were not effective but simply annoying, prompting @kaitlinjanusz to respond, “no one wants to hire attorneys who are malicious to other attorneys via social media. The avvocating conference is wonderful.” I, too, elected to offer my two cents, observing with some tongue in cheek, “Most diminished brand of the day: @ScottGreenfield. Forget it. I’m not referring any of my criminal friends for you to defend. #avvo.”  After a few more insults directed at the conference organizers, the attendees and me, the squabblers went away – hopefully to do some legal business and not editorialize by remote.

Without being too doting, I credit the Avvo conference organizers to unflinchingly maintain their commitment to the public Twitter feed and stoically ignore the Twitter flames. Reality is an adventure and Avvo seemed to be up for the experience in this, their first social media conference. Howsoever it was structured, an engaging conversation emerged among attendees as well as several not present. In the end, the conference was a richer experience for everyone. And the flamers were simply noted for being jackass.

I’m a big fan of bookmarklet bit.ly, a simple url shortener.

About the same time I became more active with Twitter I was also becoming aware of frequent references to website domains with prefixes such as TinyUrl, Is.gd, Tiny.pl, Rurl.org, bit.ly. and more. Turns out these little sprites of letters and dots are just more internet magic that can turn an ungratefully long website domain into something short and, if not memorable, well, at least, uh, short.

Of course, if you Tweet, a short website reference is beautiful because it leaves the balance of Twitter’s 140 characters to pontificate. But recently I inserted a short bit.ly link into a Facebook post where I had all kinds of space to post a big ugly web domain. I did this because bit.ly offers me two very cool advantages that go beyond merely being short.

Custom domain
When you post your ugly long domain into a domain-shortening tool, usually you get back something like http://bit.ly/161Efn. Although short, it is still kind of ugly. But bit.ly lets you customize your domain. So when I moved my Facebook group over to the new page I gave them the simple domain, http://bit.ly/IllinoisAudubon to get them to a location that would have looked like this: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Illinois-Audubon-Society/81846041882

Tracking
If you establish a free account with bit.ly, you can sign in and view the domains you create and the click activity on the link. So if you want to measure activity on a link you place in an environment you might not otherwise be able to measure, bit.ly can cough up that metric.

bit.ly Preview
Although not specifically part of the short domain tool, bit.ly also offers a plug in for your Mozilla Firefox browser that permits you to hover over a bit.ly url and confirm the true location to which your click will take you. This plug-in also work with many of the other popular domain shorteners.

I’m not shilling for bit.ly. And, even as I write this I’m aware of similar as well as different features from other domain-shortening tools.  So if there is any single take-away from these comments, simply be aware that bit.ly and some others provide you additional management and usability features that go beyond permitting you to squeeze your brilliant thoughts into a 140 character-limiting tool. Look beyond the obvious.

As I write this, nothing can really hold a candle to the significance of online social media influencing the events in Iran.  But then most of us are observers, not participants, in this particular social media event. Every day, however, some of us are either traveling to industry conferences. Or, as the case may be in today’s business environment, we aren’t funded for that trip out of town or even out of the office.

In the last several months I’ve attended two conferences in which Twitter factored in as revolutionary in the conference experience. In each case, a hash tag (#) preceded a few characters to help me hone in on Tweets from each particular event. For example,

our Web Content Conference last week was Tweeted with #wc09. Instantly a community of publishers sprouted to both report the very uttering of the conference session presenters as well as to editorialize contemporaneously with great zeal like kids in the back of a classroom exchanging notes.

It may sound chaotic – some might even say idiotic. But the impact of all this chatter is jaw-dropping. Here are just some of the immediate impacts of this behavior.

• Content is memorialized – Dozens of note takers stream their 140 character thought nuggets onto Twitter where they are easily corralled for re-assembly and review.  All those interesting links and references are captured for post event recall.
• Content is shared among non-attendees – Can’t make the conference? That doesn’t mean you can’t be involved by reading the published stream. And don’t stop there. Add your own comments or questions back to the attendees or other non-attendees.  In essence, be part of the conference community really or virtually.
• Content is shared among attendees in different breakout sessions – Torn between two simultaneous breakout sessions? Attend one in person and the other virtually by following the Twitter feeds from the other session(s). Why wait to find out the other session was great. Some have been known to get up and move to the other breakout session based on the Twitter feeds.
• Content is shared among attendees at other similar-topic conferences – You’re at the marketing conference in DC but the Tech show is happening in Chicago at the same time. Now you can go to one and tune in to the other.
• Attention level & interest is apparent from Tweet activity – Was the Tweet stream active during your presentation? If not, perhaps its time to revisit your material.

I have experienced all of the above during my conference participation as attendee, presenter and long distance lurker. The impact is electric and riveting.  The engagement level is intense and, in the end, you make contact with a lot more people than you might without the tool. Only one admonition to meeting planners: Your conference venue better have wireless connectivity. Or we’ll Tweet about you.

Download most current list of Tweeters attending the LMA Conference right here (will update document as names are added).

One (of the many) unscheduled activities at this year’s Legal Marketing Association 2009 Annual Conference is a TweetUp to be held Wednesday, April 1 at 5 PM EDT in the courtyard just outside the exhibition hall. As an exhibitor with access to the pre-conference attendee list, I promoted the TweetUp and offered to compile a list which I would distribute.  I wasn’t thinking beyond the paper the list might be printed on. I wasn’t thinking. But I’m glad others were.

The Power of Community

I didn’t propose the TweetUp.  I just had convenient access to the list. This good idea, which has already built great excitement which will carry over into the Conference, emanated from Lance Godard @lancegodard and @22twts and was given momentum by other Twitter users as they passed the word.

Lance then suggested that I make the list available sooner than later by posting it to our company blog. Duh. So here it is.  Thanks, Lance, for reminding me that information wants to be free (of its non-digital constraints).

At the moment I’m very wrapped up in tactical implementation. But if one takes a step back and reflects for a moment, there are a lot of cool things happening here.  Yes, the jury is out on Twitter. But, as we head into a marketing conference, a couple things are already being realized starting with the Twitter interface including:

• Creation of community – strangers become friends; warm intros
• Crowdsourcing good ideas – great ideas come from everyone
• Attendee value generation – interaction insures communication of new ideas
• Exhibitor promotion opportunity – help standing out in a crowded field

I suspect this is just a start. And I’m looking forward to exploring it with others who have already proven they have ideas better than my own.  Add yours below.

Earth Hour Takes Affect in Toronto at 8:30 PM EDT March 28, 2009

You may or may not have been privy to the non-event on Saturday night, March 28, known as EarthHour. Quite simply, EarthHour was intended to draw attention to overall planetary energy consumption by making a token effort of turning off one’s lights for 1 hour. You know, the Power of One, etc. Now if you don’t know what to do on a Saturday night with the lights off for one hour, I’m not going to tell you. But what many did was sit down at their computer and opine in social media forums about EarthHour. And in doing so, communities came together to discuss, debate, bicker, ridicule and commiserate. There was no shortage of opinion.  And there was no shortage of community either.

I used as my barometer the search tool in Twitter. In the course of the one hour that I sat in the dark, there were over 3000 “Tweets” about #earthhour and the sides were quickly drawn. @antiidiots let us know, “Turning On my Dry Washer, Lights and Ironing all my shirts, #earthhour Sux”. @BrianMcDaniel spouted, “If you want to live in the dark, then move to North Korea.” And @ianessling informed, “And so it begins. That Trace Adkins song is now playing and my place is buzzing like a ComEd substation.”  From the Greenie side, we learned about dinners being eaten or games of Uno being played to candlelight. How some people are afraid of the dark. Or my personal favorite from @apieceofquiche: If nothing else #earthhour has helped me realize how badly i am in need of candles. lol!

Mentions about the Vegas strip planning to go dark or the iconic Citgo sign in Boston that was turned off and other anecdotal experiences were viral-ly forwarded from one Tweeter to another. Perhaps @siobhand said it best with, “ i love the @earthhour tweets. makes me really feel connected across the globe” In sum, thousands of stories, opinions and responses to the issue of energy conservation shared 140 characters at a time among a lot of independent thinkers drawn together online for a brief moment in time.

” . . . technology is moving so fast that it’s difficult for the legal world to keep up.”

That statement, spoken to ABC News by Greg Brown, attorney for plaintiffs in a multimillion dollar investment scam trial, is getting harder to dispute in the light of two unrelated cases in the news this week. Both cases are high profile, and both involve jurors tweeting and wall-posting while serving duty.  Attorneys for the defendants in each case have filed appeals after juries found both defendants guilty of fraud (among other things), and in one case a hefty settlement was awarded.

In the case of Russell Wright and his company, Stoam Holdings, the jury awarded investors Mark Deihl and William Nystrom 12.6 million dollars even after lawyers for the defendant alleged a juror’s tweets showed bias against his client. He has filed a motion for a new trial.

“I just gave away TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS of somebody else’s money.”

And another:

According to the motion, one posting listed the company’s Web address and read in part: “oh and nobody buy Stoam. Its bad mojo and they’ll probably cease to Exist, now that their wallet is 12m lighter.”

In the case of former Pennsylvania state senator Vincent Fumo who was charged with using state-employed staff to work on his homes, farm and political campaigns, lawyers filed an emergency motion last weekend asking that at least one juror be removed because he was posting messages to both Facebook and Twitter, but on Monday Fumo was found guilty on 137 counts.

In the Fumo case, attorneys argue that the juror “discussed the case” by posting those messages:

“Stay tuned for a big announcement on Monday everyone!”
He then sent out a Twitter message, or “tweet,” that said, “This is it … no looking back now!”
He also posted other comments, such as “Day 1 has come to a close.”

I certainly hope new technology isn’t creating another way for criminals to avoid convictions. Though the jurors claim they never read anything from the outside but only posted, can we ever really be sure?  But its interesting to see how these tools are being used by regular people ( the Stoam juror was a Wal-Mart photo dept manager) who are being heard by millions of other regular people.

I'm sorry, you must have me confused with someone else.

Could all the noise over this be that people are taking power back from the sources that have frustrated them for so long, and the tyrants who have inflicted the domination don’t like it very much? The news is full of irate physicians, lawyers, and municipalities threatening to sue over sites like RateMDs.com, RateMyCop, and Avvo.com, because of user comments. And boy are they mad! Even trying lame tactics like copyright infringement as a basis.

So maybe technology is turning out to be the great leveler we all hoped it would be. Like-minded people are finding information and support in weird ways we never would have imagined, and someone is finally listening to the voice of the little guy.  It’s only too bad the little guy needs a $300 phone to be heard.

When the social media groundswell turns altruistic, the results can be amazing. Here are two examples of both large and small differences made with a few simple connections. Connections made all the more quickly and with a higher rate of trust with the use of social media tools like social networks and Twitter.

Wanted: Good Home for Good Dog

Photo credit: Jim Sneddon on Flickr found using Flickr-Storm.

Scott Abel recently moved from the midwest to the west coast, and the move meant a change of housing that prevented him from bringing his four-legged companion with him. He says,

I recently posted a brief note to Smaller Indiana (a social network for people in Indiana) indicating I was looking for a loving home for my dog. As I was moving from Indiana to California (and could not take my dog with me) I wanted to see if I could find a local family to adopt her. One brief post was all it took. A member of the community with which I had previously interacted had a dog like mine who they thought would enjoy a companion of the same age. As it turned out, the dogs got along swimmingly and the family adopted my dog. The adopted family’s father, Doug, had previously met me online and I interviewed him for an article I wrote on data centers. Because we had previously interacted, Doug felt comfortable reaching out to me. Without a social network like Smaller Indiana I would have had to rely on traditional newspaper advertising, flyers and word of mouth. It was a great use of a tool that is gaining in popularity.

New home found! The new dog’s family posted the story to Smaller Indiana showing the two dogs, Bailey and Cricket, having a grand time together. Powerful beyond the reach of a newspaper’s want ads, these kinds of stories help the community members realize that there’s more to the community than just trying to market products to each other. The goodwill goes on and on.

Now, danah boyd would say that social networking is simply modeling and maintaining your pre-existing networks, but today’s online social networking tools make it easier to model and maintain a large network. There is less paper to print and legwork to do when all the efforts – posting a “Wanted: Home for Good Dog” poster, receiving communications about candidate homes, and even keeping up with your dog after he goes to a new home – can be done online.

Twitter plus Festival = Twestival?

A Twestival is a global event organized by people on Twitter for others on Twitter. Their tagline is “Connecting amazing people on one night for a great cause: charity:water” In Austin, Texas, Michelle Greer helped raise nearly $9,000 in a single evening event in mid-Februrary. She’s still offering t-shirts in Austin for $10 with all proceeds going to charity:water. The Twestival group as a whole ain’t foolin’ – they’ve raised more $250,000 with only eight weeks of planning.

Making a difference in the life of one dog and two families, or collecting donations upwards of a quarter million dollars – it’s all good.

Chelsea Winkel needed a job. A recent Chicago transplant, the interaction designer wasn’t having much success. Advice from others mostly fell along the lines of, in her words: “I got my first job in Chicago through a recommendation of someone already working in Chicago.” After applying to yet another job and barely receiving a response, she decided to take her search public- and direct. Although she originally created a Twitter account (under the name hirechelsea) for social purposes, the transition from pleasure to business was an easy one. Within hours of Tweeting “Who do I have to schmooze to get a job in this joint?” she received three direct messages, a much better (and as it would turn out, more substantial) turnout than anything else she’d tried so far.

One of those messages was from Jeff Kenny, a veteran interaction designer for Duo. After attending the IDEA 2008 conference, Jeff noticed Jason Fried, founder of 37signals, thank another Twitter user for a write-up of the conference: Chelsea had also attended, but she and Jeff had not crossed paths. After reading her updates, jeffkenny and hirechelsea began chatting back and forth, and eventually “I started following her and ended up replying to one of her questions and then she started following me.” From her Twitter account Jeff found her website, and noticed she had worked for Pearson, for whom he’d done freelance work for in the past. After following each other for about a month and exchanging numerous Tweets, he saw she was looking for work. After a few direct Twitter messages, Jeff sent Chelsea’s resume to the head of Duo’s design department, and the rest is history. Interestingly enough, word may have spread: after Chelsea was hired, Jeff experienced a brief surge of followers.

Was Chelsea’s success a fluke, or does Twitter have applications beyond what its name would suggest? “Apparently, being less formal and little more public worked,” said Chelsea of her job-finding strategy. She credits the application’s almost innately informal style with helping land her current position: “People can see your personality.” Jeff’s reasoning supported these sentiments: “I clicked her name to see what kind of stuff she tweeted about,” he said, “and it seemed mostly in line with my thinking.” Twitter heightens the chance of serendipitous meetings, allowing those with a few degrees of separation to find each other and connect in ways they might not have otherwise. It allows users to customize their level of involvement, and as Jeff put it “just throw something out there and it goes to the public timeline, not just followers- which allows you to reach a potentially wider audience.”

Both seemed to agree that despite the fortunate accident that brought them together, the key to making Twitter work for you is being proactive. Chelsea put her skills and desire out to a network of thousands, and was rewarded with Jeff’s interest and eventually, a job. “Along with a hefty campaign to brand myself and the name ‘hirechelsea’,” she said, “what it comes down to is I asked.”

Jeff and Chelsea’s conversation is archived here.

Bling is usually characterized as offering a special extra “punch” to an ensemble or outfit. Bling is an accessory, which is how I would describe sidebar widgets on your website or blog. Accessories can enhance the main site but can also offer eye candy or a shiny bauble to help the main site gain more attention at the social web party. Coco Chanel is quoted as saying, “Before leaving the house, look in the mirror and remove one accessory.”  Do you need to examine your website to see if it has one or two too many widgets that may detract from your site’s main messaging?

Can widgets sell?

If your site is for online commerce, selling products, services, or event registrations, think of how handy the related items lists can be for someone shopping online. Better yet, let your online catalog show “read wear” to others online. A well-browsed print catalog might show dog eared corners or coffee-mug circles on favorite pages. Similarly, your popular online catalog can remain neat but feature widgets that display related popular choices of prior visitors. Take this example from the Eagle Optics web site, which supplies birdwatching optical tools.

Are there authoritative widgets?

If your site exists mostly as an informational or authoritative source of information, you might want to show your experts’ comments or punditry in other areas of the web, such as a Twitter RSS feed with their latest “between the blog posts” micro-posts, or report web visitor or authoring statistics.

What about lead generation widgets?

If your site assists in lead generation, you can use widgets to draw visitors’ attention to the best ways to contact you. There may be metadata you can report to your visitors to help convince them to get in touch. Also consider the mobile phone user and make a widget that makes their lives easier when getting in touch with you through your site.

What does your website offer visitors visually?

I’ve been reading “The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures” and something that stuck with me was the use of our “mind’s eye” – that we all have images we carry around with us. Also, apply the visual analysis we all use to figure out what we need to accomplish and how to accomplish it when we walk into a room - but consider what visitors need when they “walk” up to your website.

What are your favorite examples of sites with well-done widgets or sites with over-done widgets?

When I’m not pondering the status of the Internet I help a graphic designer friend by writing code for her clients’ websites. One of our clients owns a hip and trendy spa that marries a massage clinic with a gallery featuring work created by local artists. As I spoke with this client, I discovered that this was more than a business for her. It is a reflection of her passion for wellness, a holistic sense of being.

In addition to her knowledge of the musculoskeletal systems she treated, she considers artwork to be a form of therapy that provides healing for the mind. When she talked about her clinic, her passion was contagious. Fairly soon I began to see the world through her eyes, and started to want what she wanted: for the world to experience total wellness.

Our conversation developed along the lines that she should capture these thoughts and release them on her website as a blog. I suggested this to the graphic designer, who immediately kiboshed this idea, saying, “When I visit a website to read about a spa, I don’t want to read a stupid blog.” So that was the end of that. I promised myself that I would not let this die.

Maybe your business isn’t a massage clinic, but you are probably as passionate about the heart of your business as my client is about hers. I’m not talking about what you do. I’m talking about your business being an extension of who you are. For your business, I believe a blog is the answer. But not a stupid blog.

Why a Blog?

When I told the graphic designer that we should incorporate a blog, her first thoughts were that it would be a collection of meaningless posts amounting to nothing more than naval gazing. I explained that she described “Twitter”, and that a blog doesn’t have to be like that. I’m sure she also thought about how managed blogs on blogspot.com and wordpress.com don’t give users explicit control over the layouts.

A blog engine is a content management system (CMS) that provides the simplest means for content entry and publishing on the planet. Engines differ in scope of features, but most users would find it easy to enter and edit articles, and installing the software on your own web host provides the ability to customize your page layouts. Most engines provide a means to install plugins and widgets that extend the functionality of the blog, adding really cool features that average website users would never have thought possible to include on their own sites.

What Do I Blog About?

My intent is not to convince you to use your blog as a marketing tool, which is the most common use for a blog after random sputtering, but rather an online repository of informational articles, discussions of subjects of interest, news and notes, and in the case of my spa friend, upcoming events and reviews of past events at the clinic.

My spa friend considers herself a “wellness practitioner”, and could write about the role ergonomics, diet, meditation, and regular treatment play in maintaining wellness. Also, their esthetician is passionate about using organic products in her treatments.  If they didn’t feel confident about writing their entries, I could have written the articles for them based on our discussions about what they were interested in.

Likewise, there are aspects of your business that you find work well, and others that are more challenging. You could use blogging as a means to elicit discussion in your search for a solution. Since I started my multifarious blogs, my topics ranged from the foibles in setting up my Tablet PC, coding websites to be compatible with the Mac, and most recently, my struggles learning to code using the ExtJS JavaScript framework. The last post elicited a comment from the development team, which gave me enough hope to continue pushing through.

How Can Blogs Help My Business?

While the impression is that blogs are a one-way, “push” communication mechanism, blogs are designed to be conversations. News sites post articles about recent events (hello—that’s a blog entry) and other users respond to that entry by posting comments. The most controversial articles incite discussion between comment writers themselves, and that adds new value to the existing content on your page. Now, instead of only reading your post on the wonders of caffeine to stimulate your dreams in sleep, readers can participate in the ensuing discussion, more than likely quoting studies of the effect of caffeine on the nervous system, the loss of REM stage activity, et cetera.

The reader community improves the quality of your content, and suddenly, your post takes on a life of its own.

If you don’t feel like you have the time nor the talent to write the quantity of quality entries you want to see on your site, you can hire content creation specialists who can blog for you. You can work out in your deal if the work is meant to be in your voice, or if the writer will receive public credit for their work. Several such services exist, and many content management specialists will contract out to them.

Frequent blog posts of consistent information quality also help your business by adding to the content from your site indexed by search engines.  Your site’s page rank is driven first by popularity—the number of external pages that link to your site, and then by currency—how recent the pages were most updated? Content quality is rated by relevance and keyword frequency—the number of pages within your site that emphasize the same subject matter.

Search engine algorithms are actually a lot more complicated than that, and change often. However the basic rule still applies: websites that contain well-written, quality content, properly structured for machines to read and index well, supported by accurate keywords and summary descriptions, rank higher in search engine indexes. While it’s not a good practice to try and fool Google, it is possible to use blog software to create a site with valuable content that drives your site to the top of the search engine index for your chosen subject matter.

And that can no way be considered a stupid blog.