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Jeremiah Owyang has a thought-provoking post today about whether or not blogging is evolving into life streams. He notes how bloggers like Robert Scoble and others are much more focused on the real-time web, while seemingly putting their blogs on the back burner or shutting them down altogether. It’s a great read and I encourage you to go over the Jeremiah’s blog and take it all in.
What I want to focus on for a bit is the concept of building community through these life streams, or through an aggregation of life streams. I’m not sure that it’s possible.
I am a big twitter user. I also use Friendfeed and a great deal of other social media platforms. I like the constant stream of fresh new content coming in. But I also know that I miss a whole lot of it and the stuff that I miss is pretty much gone forever for me.
I may go back a few hours on my twitter stream as time permits, but for the most part, I don’t. I miss 85% of the happenings on Friendfeed, but since so much of it is feeds from twitter, blogs, etc….chances are I may see it somewhere else. So to be fair, I’ll say I miss about 65% of the content streaming on FriendFeed.
Existing solely through life streams seems a bit disjointed to me.
The ultimate aggregation of your activity across 10 or more platforms is not a selling point in my book. Talk about noise. I do not believe that ones online presence is the sum of it’s parts, and that is what such aggregation suggests.
You can’t combine all of your activity into one place without somehow connecting the dots and expect people to latch on to you, or join your Tribe.
Now, I know that this may work for the superstars and we can see that it does.
But you will lose me if you resort solely to this kind of online presence. I am not saying that blogging is the only way. But your followers, readers and viewers sometimes deserve a complete thought with a beginning, middle and end. If you are providing that in your life stream, kudos to you. Maybe you will continue to build community, which for me is the ultimate goal.
What do you think? Are life streams a bit disjointed or am I way off-base here?
Consider this a special invitation.
On Wednesday, July 1st I will be the featured guest on the Guerrilla Marketing Association call hosted by Roger C. Parker.
Roger is a best-selling author, designer, coach and consultant. He’s written 38 books which have been purchased by over 1.6 million readers and translated into 37 languages.
So the fact that he enjoyed my book, “18 Rules of Community Engagement” enough to invite me to discuss it along with my strategies for growing successful online communities with his association is quite an honor.
The calls are recorded for members of the Guerilla Marketing Association but it is live and there is an opportunity to ask questions.
I’d like you to attend as my guest, so consider this post an invitation to all of my readers to call in on Wednesday July 1, 2009 at 7pm EST.
To access the interview, call 404-920-6610. Once you’re in, please use the PIN: 192304#.
I’m excited about discussing my passion and I hope you can find the time to join us.
Less than 24 hours after creating a Freshbooks Account to bill for a recent consultation and presentation, I received a follow up call from Jon Spenceley. It was the best 15 minutes of my morning and I can’t say that I’ve had a better customer service experience.
The call was unexpected but completely sincere. Jon seemed genuinely interested in my work and helping me succeed with their software. I ended up asking several questions and he provided honest answers. He didn’t try to up sell me to a paid account and even shared that the paid account wouldn’t do much else for me other than allow me to have more clients in the database.
He could have easily lied about that, but he didn’t.
You see, after talking to Jon I WANTED to upgrade even though I don’t need to at this very moment.
But when I do, who do you think I’ll call? I was so impressed by Jon’s follow up email which came 10 minutes after our conversation, that I asked his permission to share it in This post. Notice how he makes it all about me and even reveals how he was listening to pretty much everything I said during the call. I mean come on, he even mentioned my book!
Here it is in its entirety:
Hi Angela!
Thank you for taking the time to talk to me about your business. It was really great to learn more about your new freelance work, and congratulations again on publishing your book! I think it’s fantastic that you’re starting out to make some money on the things you enjoy doing, and I wish you the best of business, and a whole lot of new clients coming your way!
As I said on the phone, my job here at FreshBooks is something of a work-flow consultant (boring title, awesome fun job). If you have any questions on how FreshBooks works, what features may be interesting to you, or how FreshBooks can fit with your business, please feel free to let me know. I will also be happy to give you a discount on a paid package when you reach the point that you need to upgrade, because I think people who take the time to talk to me about their business are awesome.
If you need anything, you can reach me directly at 1-866-303-6061 (ask for Jon), or by emailing me at jon-at-freshbooks-dot-com.
Thank you very much for taking the time to tell me about your business. I really appreciate you checking out FreshBooks, and I hope you have a fantastic day! Thanks again for the Tweet!
- Jon Spenceley
Isn’t Jon fabulous?
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The minute the ice cream truck was in my neighborhood today, my children knew it. I probably knew it a full 20 seconds before they did though, because I have 28 and 33 years more experience with the ice cream truck and it’s marketing tactics than they do. My ears were trained long ago.
It starts with a jingle. That jingle tells you it’s coming and forces you to act. You will either run home for money, ask a friend to give you some or, depending on your age, burst into tears because you know you don’t have the means to make a purchase.
If you already have money, you can get a jumpstart on persuading the truck to come down your street. A combination of vertical leaps, wild hand-waving and whistling or screaming usually does the trick. Although, you may have to resort to a quick sprint, but that’s only if the driver is a speed-demon.
The point here is this: The ice cream truck is reliable. It always has the goods. You know for certain that there is something on that truck that will make you happy, and it doesn’t matter who is driving.
The driver of the truck knows that he has what you want, so there is no need to recruit you or cajole you into flagging him down. He announces the trucks presence with that jingle and waits for you to make a move. There is no question about his power and he is always at the top of his game.
Does your community have the goods? Is it reliable? Is there something there that will make your members happy every day? What happens when you change drivers?
I am not happy with my answers to those questions, and I bet you aren’t either.
I think we can learn a lot from the ice cream truck. Our communities should speak for themselves. Our content should be top-notch and we should try to offer surprises every now and then. There should be other drivers who care just as much about the truck and it’s upkeep to keep it running in the event you can’t. Many of us are solo acts and I don’t know if that’s a good thing.
Shhh…
Do you hear that?
I’ve gotta run home to get my money. You flag him down. I’ll.be.right.back!
Last Friday brought another interesting hour of #Cmtychat, created by Bryan Person and Sonny Gill. We had a robust discussion about community management, growing communities, the 90-9-1 Principle and the importance, or lack thereof, of community lurkers.
I stressed the importance of providing content that makes it easy for lurkers to participate: A quick poll, or blog post with a fun question that most people would find irresistible and want to chime in.
While lurkers may not seem important, they are. I can’t tell you how many new members have told me that they’d been lurking for anywhere from 4-8 months before finally deciding to join the community.
One community manager on the chat mentioned that her community had so many new people joining that they don’t really focus on lurkers. I can understand that philosophy but that has not been my experience. I am always trying to impress non-members with our content to encourage them to take the leap from lurker to participant, and then from participant to active participant.
In my opinion, it’s a member drive that never ends.
After all, if you don’t encourage lurkers, how can you grow?
If you’re looking for an easy way to get your community members talking, write a quick blog complaining about an issue in your life and they will quickly commiserate.
It’s human nature, and people simply cannot resist the urge to chime in and tell their own stories. Throw out a topic and let them run with it. Keep in mind though, that it has to be something they can relate to, so don’t go on and on about something that matters only to you and expect people to care enough to jump on board.
Were you stuck in traffic this morning? If so, you weren’t the only one. Complain about that, and stories of individual traffic woes will follow. Trust me. l do it all the time in my Editor’s Blog and it works. I even devote an entire chapter to the benefits that complaining can provide in my new book, which by the way is now available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com.
I recall complaining about gas prices last summer and I was in good company. Remember those insane prices? Who didn’t want to complain about that?
Try it. Everyone can stand a little free commiseration.
Are you feeding your Twitter stream into Friendfeed? Do you ever LOG IN to Friendfeed to see what people are saying about those tweets?
Well, in case you didn’t know, there are people on Friendfeed commenting on your tweets and if you aren’t talking back to them you are missing a great opportunity to build your community.
With twitter becoming so mainstream people are flocking to Friendfeed in droves. So the days of leaving your FriendFeed to its own devices as a location to cull your many RSS feeds, are over. Well, they should be over, starting today.
Pay attention to your FriendFeed and join the conversations. I have been commenting and “liking” tweets, photos, links, Brightkite status updates, YouTube videos, Picasa photo albums, you name it! Someone could be commenting about your blogpost on Friendfeed and you may not even know it.
So go back and see exactly what you’ve got streaming into your Friendfeed account, and start taking action. Just like you check for @responses on Twitter, or use services like Tweetgrid, Tweetdeck, Tweetbeep and others to follow the conversation, you need to check the conversation on Friendfeed regarding those tweets as well.
If you don’t you’ll continue to miss out, because as I always say…communicating with your community is key.
You can find me as @communitygirl on both platforms.
Hope to see you there.
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I’m a fan of Slideshare. I upload all of my presentations there. Well, at least those that I feel are of value to the masses.
When asked for a copy of my presentation after a speaking engagement, I always provide the URL to my personal slideshare space or e-mail a direct link to that particular slide.
But, I’ve learned that Slideshare provides so much more opportunity and value and we should all view it as a social network that allows us to connect with others, much like our other favorites.
Here are a few ways you can connect and build community through Slideshare.
- Check to see who has “favorited” and/or “embedded” your slides. This is the ultimate lead. Once you do this you will have a list of people who are genuinely interested in your content.If someone has embedded your slide, click through to the actual post and comment. Thank them for sharing your content.
- Visit their profile and view their slides. You may find something you like since you clearly have similar interests. Learning more about their content is a perfect way to decide if you want to connect.
- Send a personal message asking to connect. You now have enough info to compliment their work, ask to use their presentation or maybe even get them to guest blog for you.
- Search keywords for your topics of interest. Once you do this, repeat steps 2 and 3.
- Share your slides on LinkedIn and Facebook. This is very easy to do, and it exposes your Facebook and LinkedIn contacts to your presentations. A win-win.
- Post thoughtful comments and offer feedback on presentations. Not everyone will appreciate this, but some will. It’s worth a shot.
- Share presentations with others and be sure to let the creator of the slide know about it.
- Embed slides (yours and others) in blogposts and on your website. This will bring your current audience to Slideshare and you could be providing new opportunities for your readers as well.
- Consider sharing more than just slides. I recently shared the media kit for my book on Slideshare. It accommodates many types of files, so think outside the box and get creative.
The point of this post is to encourage you to do more with this great tool. I was able to connect with @MeriWalker on Twitter after noticing her interest in one of my presentations, and it’s largely because I live and breathe “community.”
You don’t have to live and breathe it, but be mindful of new opportunities and try to look at every tool as more than what it seems. It usually is.
What other platforms are you using to build community?
I have a new goal.
I don’t have a time-frame, nor a target college or university but I know that I’d like to teach a college course on building communities. I have the curriculum laid out in my head.
I would require each student to nurture and grow their online community AND use various social media platforms to promote it and garner interest in the site. They’d have to pitch five ideas for a niche community and I would approve two, giving them the final say. They’d be graded on how well they engage, how often they contribute, how well they grow the community and how they communicate within it.
This course could be in the Communications or Journalism department. Heck, it could even be in the Business Department. It doesn’t really matter where it lives because it is an essential skill.
We should not assume the Gen Y’ers know how to do this because they spend a great deal of time in the social media space. They are focused on other things and I’m talking about something entirely different.
I believe wholeheartedly that a decent track record of building communities will open a lot of doors. There are going to be MANY companies late to the game and they’ll need people who know how to build successful online communities. I read a post today about confidence, that sealed the deal for me and I now believe that I can pull this off.
I haven’t pitched this to anyone yet, but I will. I’m in the Raleigh area, where there are tons of great schools, but with the internet I can do it for anyone.
Who knew how handy that Distance Education course I took through Penn State’s World Campus a few semesters back would affect me?
So here it is. A distance education course on The Fundamentals of Building Communities. That’s it. That is what I want to do. Now, I will formalize it and start looking for opportunities.
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I came across a tweet today about a new online community for IPL lovers. It read: “Finally a community for IPL lovers” and linked to this blogpost.
Upon reading the post, I learned that this community consists of more than 68,000 members. So, given my passion about online communities, I had to know more.
You see, I know from living in South Florida for six years that Cricket is huge in the Caribbean. Well I now know that it’s even bigger in India. I saw a match once and it was interesting enough but I can’t say that I’d rush to see another.
However, I have reached out to the DLF Indian Premier League–the creators of the community for an interview and will hopefully get one to post here on Online Community Strategist.
In the meantime, I joined the community. The default choice for favorite team is the Bangalore Royal Challengers and the default favorite player, Aakash Chopra. So those are my new favorites. I even watched a video called “Funny Cricket Moments.” I’m sure I would have laughed if I knew what was going on, but I didn’t. It was posted today and has more than 4,000 views so it must be pretty funny.
The point here is we have to be willing to learn from everyone. For someone to post that there is “finally” an online community on any topic is a testament to the desire to belong to such communities and the power that comes with them.
So join new communities, even some that are outside of your interests and learn a few things. You’ll be better for it.
Go Bangalore Royal Challengers!
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