social media

This is part 3 (or really part 4 or 5) of my slowly-growing series on organization-based friending in social networks. Here’s what I have so far:

• Attracting Friends, Part 2: Twitter
• Attracting Friends, Part 1
• More on Friending
• Don’t Friend Me

Now, on to Facebook. How do you attract friends using Facebook? You really have to think of your organization two different ways with Facebook - think in terms of organizations and of people. Organizationally, you can create Pages and Groups. Personally, you can create an individual Facebook account that you use professionally.

For example, one of our Youth Services librarians has created a personal Facebook account specifically to connect with our teen audience. It’s working - she’s gathered over 500 friends - mostly teens in Topeka. And she uses the account to push out stuff to that group.

Ideas on attracting friends in Facebook:

• search for local people, request to friend them
• friend local Facebook Pages - businesses, authors, etc.
• Advertise your Facebook Page outside of Facebook (i.e., website, twitter, myspace, email newsletter, etc)
• Business cards with Facebook contact info at a public services desk, passed out at programs
• Teach a class on Facebook
• Create a Facebook Ad to advertise your Page to other Facebook users (there’s a cost attached)
• Leave those business cards at place local Facebook users hang out, like coffee shops
• Have good content on your page - send your blog there, add some photos that connect to flickr, same with youtube
• photos and visuals are important - helps you look more real
• Especially for people using a personal Facebook account - interact with your Facebook friends!

What else? How do you attract friends using Facebook?

Tagged as: facebook, friending, friends

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Interesting problem I had to deal with today … Here’s the run-down:

A month or so ago, some of my library’s teen patrons participated in a Making Mini Movie Masterpieces program held at my library. Cool program!

One of our librarians just posted the videos some of the teens made to YouTube … and guess what? In the related videos section of the video page (and also on the related videos flash thing that plays at the end of an embedded YouTube video), some … let’s just say “questionable” videos appeared.

Here’s what I think happened: YouTube found “similar” videos based on keywords. And the keywords it found in our video include these words in the title and description: mini teen teens . Dump those into YouTube and you’ll unfortunately find some pretty “interesting” videos.

Naturally, we don’t really want those thumbnails appearing on our library’s website, so we are fixing it in two ways:

1. Good idea from our Web Developer: “There is an option when creating the embed code to include or not include links to “related” video.  For this one I have gone ahead and embedded a new video without the related video thumbs at the end.”
2. From me: Change the title of the video “Making Mini Movie Masterpieces” to something without the word “mini” (maybe just “Making Movie Masterpieces”) … and remove the “teen” and “teens” words in the description – maybe change them to “young adult.”

What an odd problem … and something you might want to be on the lookout for. ANyone else run into this type of problem, and if so - what did you do?

Tagged as: youtube

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A couple posts ago, I suggested that libraries stop friending other libraries and to focus instead on their local community. (aside - If you need/want to connect with other librarians, that’s great - make your own personal account for that).

Now, on to how? What are the different ways one can friend others in popular social networking sites, and how can you find and attract friends in each? That’s a bit more difficult, and takes a bit more work. I’ll take a couple of posts and give some pointers (and would love for you to join in and suggest your own idea,s too!).

Here are some general ideas that work for most of the new social networking tools:

• Setting goals (have I mentioned this one enough?). You need to figure out what you want to achieve with your twitter/facebook/etc account. Do this first!
• Focus on a target audience - it might help to focus on a target audience, rather than to focus on a generic “patron.”
• Be human, instead of a stuffy organization. @Zappos and @Timbuk2 do this well in Twitter - when you send them a question or comment about their product, you generally get a real, live person replying, being helpful, answering questions, etc. (hmm… that sorta sounds like a reference librarian).
• Good content rules! Make interesting posts/tweets/updates
• Advertise/promote it! Think business cards in the library, articles in the library newsletter, etc.
• Link to it on your website, and explain what it is and why I should care.
• Find out where people who use these tools hang out, and go there. And post flyers, pass out cards with your social networking info on it, etc. in those establishments (I’m thinking bulletin board in a coffee shop here).
• Teach classes on the tool. Show attendees how to set up an account, and how to follow the library. Instant followers!
• Even better - do the same thing at a local chamber brown bag lunch or other business oriented gathering. Show them how the library can meet real needs via these tools.
• Library programs/events? Take the first 2 minutes and push it there.
• Colleges/high schools nearby? Put an ad in their newspapers.
• How about a local newspaper or local magazine? Put an ad there or check into writing an article for them (better yet, a weekly tech column).

You might have noticed that most of my suggestions on getting friends for social networking tools … doesn’t involve using the tool to make friends. Instead, it’s all about YOU leaving the library and meeting your community. Getting out of the building. Actively introducing your community to these tools. Or even talking to peole inside your library that you notice use the tools.

That’s the hard part - lots of walking and talking and meeting people, physically and digitally. But it will pay off.

Next post - I’ll look at some specifics of finding friends by using the tools - Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr.

Now - on to your ideas. How do you get friends with social networking tools? Have I left off anything?

photo credit

Update: This is part of my slowly-growing series on organization-based friending in social networks. Here’s what I have so far:

• Attracting Friends, Part 3: Facebook
• Attracting Friends, Part 2: Twitter
  
• Attracting Friends, Part 1
• More on Friending
• Don’t Friend Me

Tagged as: facebook, flickr, friending, friends, myspace, social media, social network, twitter, youtube

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WebJunction recently excerpted chapter 5 of my new book in this article: Designing the Digital Experience: What is Community?

Here’s an excerpt of the excerpt:

Chapter 5 - What Is Community Focus?

What exactly is community focus, and how does it facilitate experiences in the digital space? To answer these questions, let’s consider what community focus means in the context of physical spaces, such as in a town hall meeting. In such meetings, people are focusing on one another: listening, sharing opinions, and discussing community needs. This type of interaction allows community members to voice opinions and concerns, providing a voice for the community. In this context, we can say community focus is an emphasis on participants’ ideas, concerns, and interactions.

The town hall meeting is just one example; people obviously hold many different types of meetings, from religious gatherings to departmental business meetings to family reunions. We tend to think meetings are important. Why is that? Because we find conversation important, and meeting together facilitates conversation.

Conversation inherently facilitates something else, too. It allows us to interact with members of our community with whom we wouldn’t normally interact or even know. This type of interaction allows us to feel as if we are participating in the “grand scheme of things.” The challenge, then, is to usher community into our digital space.

…

Go read the rest of the excerpt (or buy the book ).

Tagged as: book, community, DDE, designing the digital experience, engagement, experience, webjunction

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Three people asked me to try SocialMinder, so I did. SocialMinder “is an online assistant that helps you maintain relationships with your LinkedIn network” (from their website).

Here’s what I saw - I was asked to add in my LinkedIn contacts, and then I was emailed a report telling me which relationships “should be strengthened” - meaning people I haven’t connected with on LinkedIn for the longest.

What’s wrong with that? The six people SocialMinder told me I’d needed to connect with … I have. Five of them I saw last month at a conference, 3-4 of them I see daily on Twitter. One of them I’ve connected with through Facebook.

So for me, SocialMinder is a cool idea, but didn’t work. And I wanted to share that with them, so I clicked on their feedback link… which took me to some Digg-like “vote for the best improvement” thingie.

Moving on…

Tagged as: linkedin, social networks, socialminder

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Libraries… stop friending me! What???

I’m noticing that when a library decides to start a flickr account, a twitter feed, or create a Facebook page, they naturally want to start “making friends.” So what do they do? They friend me. Or you. Or they friend other libraries.

This is bad.

Why?

Social networks exist to connect with other people, right? When your organization decides, say, to create a Facebook page … who are you trying to connect with? Me? I don’t live in your neighborhood. Another library on the other side of the world? They’re not going to use your services.

Who are you trying to connect with? If you can’t answer this question, take a breather from the web for a couple of days and figure out your answer. Think about it for a sec - you wouldn’t open a new branch if you didn’t know your target audience, would you? Do you invite people to a book group with no idea of what book to read or who the target audience is? I hope not.

It’s the same with social network sites - you need to establish a target audience, and then work on finding that audience. Once you do that, my guess is this - the friends you want to attract probably don’t include me or a library from the other side of the country!

Another way to look at this is from your customers’ point of view. If I use [fill in your favorite social tool here], and I discover your page, one of the first things I might do is check out who your friends are. If they are mainly other libraries, I might decide it’s a librarian thing, and not for me. I’m gone!

Don’t get me wrong. It’s great to get ideas from other libraries, and to spy on their social media tools to see what they’re doing. But if you can, try not to accept too many friend requests from other libraries … or your friend page will look more like an ALA reunion rather than a true reflection of your local community.

Update: This is part of my slowly-growing series on organization-based friending in social networks. Here’s what I have so far:

• Attracting Friends, Part 3: Facebook
• Attracting Friends, Part 2: Twitter
  
• Attracting Friends, Part 1
• More on Friending
• Don’t Friend Me

Tagged as: friend, friending, social media, social networks

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What’s VloMo08, you ask? It stands for Videoblogging Month 2008 - sorta like NaNoWriMo08 (National Novel Writing Month 2008)… but it’s a video a day instead of a chapter a day.

So yep - the general idea is simple: make a video every single day during November, put it up on the web (your blog, blip.tv, YouTube, etc) and tag it vlomo08.

But don’t stop there! Sign up for a free account at mefeedia.com, add your video feed, then join the vlomo08 channel - and connect to lots of other participants. Fun!

Tagged as: videoblogging month 2008, vlomo08

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