Citizens’ voices matter

A few years ago I conducted a series of webinar-style workshops for the U.S. State Department, for content creators, educators, marketers and those in traditional and new media. The workshops were called  ”Passport to Digital Citizenship.”

I was convinced that citizen’s voices would be valuable, and –despite technological barriers and people who would try to keep them quiet– they could be heard.

So today, as my book is about to launch, I am thrilled to see this report by CNN on the importance of citizen-driven media.

Journalism has been forever changed — I’d argue for the better — thanks to the fact that people can interact with media organizations and share their opinions, personal stories, and photos and videos of news as it happens. This year’s nominated iReports are prime examples of how participatory storytelling can positively affect the way we cover and understand the news. 

(“36 stories that prove citizen journalism matters.” By Katie Hawkins-Gaar, CNN | Wed April 3, 2013 )

When we talk of  ’participatory journalism’ we mean that ‘CitJos’ work alongside traditional media. They are not here as a replacement model, but to complement the changing media industry. Of the 100,000 citizen stories submitted to CNNiReport.com in 2012, they used 10,789 –having vetted them first.

I just interviewed the creator of a leading citizen journalist outfit in South Asia, and he stressed the importance of community guidelines, and careful design.

Citizen journalism, and the power of citizen voices is a big section in my book, Chat Republic.

 

Meeting online with Zipcast

Looks like SlideShare has pulled out one more stop as it adds a powerful web meeting feature with Zipcast.

It has always been a challenge when I host a web event, to find an application that doesn’t involve a download.  The Pro features are really good, especially the custom channels and analytics. After one small hiccup, the flash player detected my camera and mic. I plan to use it in an upcoming webinar to compare it to GoToMeetings, which has been very reliable so far.

 

 

Top speakers at tomorrow’s Social Media event

If you had planned to do it and procrastinated, today (Thursday) is the last day for any discount codes for Social Media AZ (SMAZ)–the much awaited annual event.

The event is tomorrow and you may buy your tickets at the door, but it will cost ya! $225!

• When: February 11th, 2011
• Time: 9 am – 4 pm (doors open at 8 am)
• Where: The MadCap Theaters in Tempe - 730 S. Mill Avenue, Tempe, AZ 85281 (Map)
• Parking: Discounted parking available
• Agenda: Check the topics and speakers here

The keynote will be by Jay Baer (of Convince & Convert), and Amber Naslund (of Radian6). They will talk about their new book, The Now Revolution. All attendees will receive a free copy of the book! More background here when we interviewed Jay on our radio show two weeks ago.

Several speakers from other states will be presenting as well. They include:

• Kamran Qamar the president of mobile development company.
• Patrick Seaman (Mr. Broadcast.com himself!)
• Christian Briggs (chairman of BMC capital)

Check out the line up of speakers, here.

In case you’ve been to a SMAZ event before, do note that there will be new topics this year covering mobile, location, search, and e-commerce.

Register today!

 

My graduating Class of ‘digital citizens’

Just got off from the awards ceremony in Colombo, where I spoke, via Skype, from a spare bedroom, to a gathering of 35 attendees who qualified for a certificate.

This was the conclusion of a 6-part series of webinars I conducted for the US State Department, at the USIS in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The series was called Passport To Digital Citizenship.

Ambassador Patricia A. Butenis who addressed the group after me spoke of the ‘Republic of the Internet’ –a very fitting reference, considering the times we are in as nations and communities meld together into a global community that is at once powerful and complicated –as Republics are!

Many of the graduating class are already very active members of this diverse, passionate Republic, using  social media that is becoming their glue (to hold things together) and the thread (an infinite, unravelling ball of thread, that is) that binds us all together. See larger picture here.

Some of you in my class are already moving forward, collaborating and connecting across your specializations, ethnic communities, employee networks and global and local communities.

First, to all of you in this graduating ‘class’ of digital citizens, congratulations! But as I mentioned in my address, don’t just hang that certificate on your wall.

Put it to work. Go light a fire under a sleepy old organization that is stuck in ‘anti-social media’! Show people the power of collaboration and digital storytelling through social media.

Because this blog, Hoipolloi Report, is all about those voices out there, I am taking a step to add a few guest bloggers over the next few weeks. The first of them will be two people from the Class of 2010 Digital Citizens. Who will they be?

Stay tuned!

End Note: A big thank you to Steve England, Dan Wool, Gary Campbell, Derrick Mains and Dave Barnhart who were my co-presenters in this series.

 

Are you a Hootsuite or Tweetdeck person?

There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who divide the world into two sets of people, and those who see us as one big blob of humanity…

OK, more seriously, while presenting Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, at the webinar on Thursday night (it was Friday in Sri Lanka)  it struck me that these two interfaces, while similar in terms of dashboards, appeal to two types. After all, Hootsuite is a web-based application – no downloads necessary. There are some who are not very comfortable with apps that don’t reside on their computer.  Tweetdeck on the other hand, is a slick application that resides on your desktop (now also for the iPad and iPhone. Both are great search engines in their own right.

In my experience Tweetdeck gives you a lot more search results.

Tweetdeck Advantage: Try this: Look for “Floods in Pakistan” on Tweetdeck. The Search within Tweetdeck gives you a real-time feed of tweets. BUT you could get a broader, deeper set of results by going to Tweetdeck.com, and searching there. The same phrase gives you this. It is a lists of Lists, that also give you a snapshot of the number of followers of that list and the number of tweets a day by people on that list.

Hootsuite gives you a lot more filtration.

Hootsuite Advantage: To conduct the same search on Hootsuite you could either do a quick search using he magnifying glass icon and it brings up a floating column with results, or you could create a permanent feed. But what I like about Hootsuite is that you can then sort through those results using the pull down tab and selecting ‘filter.’ This is very useful when searching for a keyword, organization name or hashtag within the results.

So what’s your dashboard preference? Does it say something about your work style? How does it simplify your search?

 

Replace dirty filters! Stop content clogging up your pipes!

On last Friday’s webinar I asked Dave Barnhart to co-present with me on the final in this 6-part series on Passport To Digital Citizenship. Dave is a social media coach who runs a successful business practice around blogging strategy, micro-blogging and web content. Steve England was also on hand with his mobile marketing insight on how all this plays out as we take our tools and our content into a wireless world.

In this session I focused on filters and deep drilling!

We had previously taught attendees how  to create content, leverage the channels, connect and interact with audiences. So in this final seminar, I asked them to consider what it might be to be on the other side of the equation -as recipients. Too Much Information (TMI) is clogging up the arteries, and customers, readers, listeners and viewers may be filtering us out. What do social media filters look like? How do they provide us with deeper insight?

We’re talked about  Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Bloglines and much more! It was a great rounding off of what we do a both communicators and recipients!

 

Yesterday’s Webinar on YouTube

Gary Campbell and I shot this a video on the morning of the webinar, to use it before the event, and also as the content for the channel we created during the session.

Obviously there was a lot we would have liked to fix –lighting, for instance– but this was itself a demo of how to produce a video with a short deadline, with minimal editing.

 

Webinar on LinkedIn tomorrow

If you are new to the webinar series –and I know some of you will be based on the requests from companies — here is a preview of what we will be talking about in the webinar on LinkedIn tomorrow. I say tomorrow, because it will be the night of August 16th for me in the US, even though it will be the morning of the 17th in Sri Lanka!

LinkedIn is a ‘gated community’ and is much smaller than, say, Facebook. But it is also a super professional network that lets you build networks within the network. You develop solid connections and have richer conversations within this ‘closed’ (which is also a ‘private’) environment.

Here is my short take on LinkedIn: I think of LinkedIn as a knowledge–sharing portal, rather than a friend hang-out. It lets you ‘communicate to the niches’ rather than waste your resources on mass communication tactics.

Here is my co-presenter, Derrick Mains on the subject.

Some of you may recall that I featured Derrick in a guest spot during a previous webinar. Steve England will also join us as usual, with his amazing ideas on how mobile devices are powering social networks.

Here’s the format of the webinar:

• 1st 10 minutes: introduction and review of what we have done so far in our series on “Passport To Digital Citizenship.”
• 20 minutes: The key features of LinkedIn and how LinkedIn differs from Facebook. We will show you some strategies and a case study of how to do ‘business’ with individuals across organizations.
• Break

After the break:

• Hands-on session
• Questions Time

 

Fan or Friend? Here’s that handout for the webinar

I’ve been conducting a series of webinars on social media, and we reached the halfway mark last week. The series was called Passport To Digital Citizenship.

The topics have been:

• “Hit the Ground Blogging!”
• “To Tweet Or Not To Tweet?”
• “Facebook as your Hub”

In this webinar we talked about fans and friends –especially the difference between ‘lower case’ friends and ‘upper case friends.’ How do you engage your network? How do you turn on your hub? And most importantly, how do you get ready for an increasingly mobile user?

If you attended the 3rd webinar, here are two handouts. you may find useful.

• Presentation
• Facebook Fact Sheet

I had one participant suggestion –to create a discussion group on Facebook.

• Here is that link to the group

 

Fragmented Vs integrated? How do you share content?

Fragmented or integrated?

It’s easy to pick the latter, because it sounds like the right thing to do. Depending on what you are trying to achieve it’s not that easy though. Here are two scenarios:

Scenario A: You are launching a new service that is relevant to 30 percent of your audience. You’ve got the usual suspects –um, channels — in place with Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, a blog and two Twitter accounts. Do you make spread your content across all of these?

Scenario B: You a teaching a class, and most of the attendees use Facebook rather than email, but you also have a series of video updates. Do you stick with Facebook, or add a blog to the program which will feed Facebook embed YouTube videos?

I don’t want to say I know the best answer. (It may take a bit of digging deeper into the usage patterns of the audience etc.) But I often lean heavily on closing the gap between communication channels. It takes some planning ahead, but you only have to connect the dots once, and thereafter, it’s easy to pick and chose the channels you like to integrate.

I pointed this out toward the end of the webinar I was conducting last Monday. To demonstrate it…

Continue reading here.