Dave Duarte » social media strategy

20 Ways to Evaluate Contributions to a Corporate Social Network

Dave — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:43:14 +0000

From what I’ve seen, the main objectives of online social networks in companies are: to facilitate idea-sharing around a theme or topic (e.g. “Our Brand”); help users find out more about their peers; form useful insights to solve particular challenges; and for the network itself to become a useful repository of resources (ideas, inspiration, files, people) for participants.

However, the technology itself won’t guarantee these results – it needs to be managed or curated effectively. Here are 20 subjective criteria I’ve used to help evaluate contributions to these networks:

1. Relevance to the stated objectives of the network
2. Poses questions to the group
3. Sparks discussion and comments
4. Enhances a lecture, discussion, debate or theme related to the purpose of the network
5. Makes a relevant statement
6. Responds to criticisms as well as compliments.
7. Builds on the ideas and contributions of others on the network.
8. Acknowledges the contributions of others.
9. Shares unexpected insights
10. Stories – especially from personal experience.
11. Recommendations to peers
12. Empathy – readability; humour; use of formatting; respect for other perspectives
13. Lists e.g. “Top 10…”, “Best ways to…”, “Our favourite”
14. Thought is given to topic before posting
15. Creativity or originality of ideas or the way they’re expressed
16. Clarity of expression.
17. Well structured arguments.
18. Mixes opinion and data.
19. Uses graphics to illustrate ideas
20. Contributes to the learning experience of others on the network

What you want to ultimately see is that the group is co-creating a knowledge ecosystem – so that if you want to explore any idea that catches your fancy further, you could find out who the contributors to it are.

In his book, “The Wisdom of Crowds”, James Surowieki reveals that the smartest groups are those that allow space for people to individually form and express ideas, independent of the group, which can then be “aggregated” into more cohesive solutions. This is one of the key advantages of using the online network as opposed to discussing everything in person: it allows space for more ideas around a particular topic to be expressed simultaneously.

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Do you more often find your news via Social-Media, or Traditional News Sites

Dave — Mon, 19 May 2008 14:33:12 +0000

I find that as I have less time to spend browing the web generally, that I tend to find my news more via social filters like Muti, communities like Twitter (where people in my network recommend links directly), or by directly searching for a news on a particular topic on Google.

I thought I’d check whether my peers, also media neophytes, are accessing their news in a similar way. So I asked this question on Twitter:

“Do you more often find your “news” via 1. Social-Media, or 2. Traditional News Sites?”

pevideoguy @daveduarte 50/50

sqroot @DaveDuarte mostly Social-Media, unless I’ve heard a headline and I want to find out more, then I go to a news site.

Amabacha @DaveDuarte Combo of both – Google Reader works overtime!

cathjenkin @DaveDuarte social media hey. it used to be traditional news sites but now, over the past say, a year, it’s been more social-media dependent

robinpietersen @DaveDuarte 30% traditional, 60% social media and 10% word of mouth

ismaild @DaveDuarte rss, twitter and social media

KerryHaggard @DaveDuarte traditional news sites

Marcel_Perform @daveduarte what if you’re trying to avoid all news? I can’t on twitter!

simondingle @DaveDuarte Traditional news sites for ‘news’. Social Media for opinion.

Marcel_Perform @daveduarte Trying to avoid sceptic, paranoid news-media negative propaganda that sells newspapers.Sticking to SA Rocks & SA Good News thanx

KerryHaggard @DaveDuarte – perhaps perception(NB) that traditional news sites are less biased. Also clear idea as to left, right or centre…

KerryHaggard @DaveDuarte or completely up to own choice ie Google News

robinpietersen @DaveDuarte Hope we get to see the results sometime Would be interesting…

As Jonathan Hitchcock pointed out:

Taking a survey about social media on twitter *might* possibly give you a slightly skewed result set.

The results are interesting nonetheless. How do you find your news?

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Kindo’s Regional Marketing Strategy

Dave — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 06:25:26 +0000

South AfricanÂ ex-pat, Gareth Knight,Â just mailed me about the success of his recently launched startup Kindo, an online family tree application.

They’ve managed to signup users around the world by very quickly offering it in 14 different languages.Â Of course, having startup capital from the guys behind Skype and Last.fmÂ must have helped that along nicely.

Translation into the other languages was a smart move, because they access market verticals on a regional level. According to TechCrunch, this creates a barrier to entry for other would-be players in this space.

Despite the popularity of sites like MySpace and Facebook globally, there are many examples of social-network success on a regional level:

Â Skyrock is the biggest social network in France (Alexa Rank 2), bigger than WindowsLive, YouTube, Yahoo or Ebay there;
StudiVZ (Germany) is the biggest soc. net. in Germany and the 6th biggest site in Germany (Alexa);
There are at least 10-15 massively successful local social networks, some more of them are vkontakte.ru (Russia), Mynet.com (turkey), netlog.com (Benelux+France)…

I sincerely hope that we see the same patterns emerge in South Africa, and we start seeing sites like Zoopy.com, MyVideo.co.za, Afrigator.com, Amatomu.co.za, Laaik.it, and Muti.co.za out-ranking their international counterpart’sÂ traffic in our country.Â Do you think is likely?

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Take Conspicuous Care of Your Top Users

Dave — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 12:25:46 +0000

When Max and I started a restaurant a few years ago we knew that the core of our business had to be regular customers. We began with just a few people who came in almost every day, and we made sure that they felt special, and that other customers could see how valued they were. We’d do stuff like refer business to them, or occasionally give them and whoever they’re with a free round of coffees. This not only kept them coming back, but it also created a sense of aspiration among other customers who also wanted to be recognised and valued. The business gained a phenomenal amount of regular customers, and became virtually immune to the usual seasonal boom and busts that many other restaurants in Cape Town experience.

This same principle of having a conspicuous hierarchy of regular customers applies very strongly to building and sustaining online communities. Digg, for example, used to have a list of “Top 100 Diggers” which was very hotly contested because appearing on that list gave those users power and reknown. Unfortunately Digg has now removed the list from their site, and is already starting to lose top users. One of them, Greg Hartnett writes:

So this is how I see it playing out: more and more top users will continue the exodus, which will in turn contribute to the deterioration of the quality of the content being submitted. The SEO crowd, and others trying to game Digg, will continue with their efforts, and an even greater percentage of front page stories will have gotten there through artificial means. Average users will grow tired of the spam (or perceived spam) and return less and less often. Daily visitors will diminish over time, resulting in a front page story that generates a couple of hundred visitors. At this point, the SEO crowd will realize that the ROI is no longer there, and theyâ€™ll move on to the traffic generator du jour. In their wake, theyâ€™ll leave Digg in shambles – a mere shell of the site it had once been.

In the end, Digg founders and investors will be left scratching their heads at what went wrong. You should have nurtured your top users – not screwed them.

People are highly motivated by praise and recognition – more than they often let on

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De Lille Tries to Shut Down Our Conversation

Dave — Mon, 21 May 2007 12:42:15 +0000

Patricia De Lille has denounced the freedom of bloggers, asking government to crack down on bloggers. This follows a bout blog of criticism targeted at ID colleague, Simon Grindrod.

IOL reports that she’s even applying to use tax-payer’s money for a National Intelligence Service investigation to track the blogger down.

Fortunately, we live in a free and democratic country where this will not get very far. Perhaps, as Angus points out, MP De Lille will find a more sympathic government in communist China or North Korea?

The point of citizen journalism, as opposed to regulated mainstream media is free and natural expression of ideas by ordinary people (i.e. voting constituents). If these issues with Grindrod are being raised online, people are probably talking about them in natural conversation too. She could gain alot more benefit by paying attention to what is being said, and possibly responding in a public forum to the issues that have been raised. This is the meaning of “join the conversation”.

This is why your fellow parliamentarians Helen Zille and Ebrahim Rasool from the DA and ANC respectively have social-media profiles… And I congratulate them for that.

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Grabbing the Bullard by the Horns

Dave — Mon, 07 May 2007 17:54:17 +0000

There’s been a real uproar in the blogosphere recently after David Bullard, a very popular journalist, slated bloggers in his weekly Sunday Times column.

In classic Bullard style, it’s over-the-top, opinionated, and tongue-in-cheek arrogant. The man is a master of fuelling debate and controversy…. typically selecting prominent public targets who will make lots of noise. Hence bloggers were ripe and ready to be picked…. And boy were they juicy! (This incident has been dubbed BullardGate)

I’ve often echoed P.T. Barnums assertion that “No Attention is bad attention” (if you channel it well). Colin Daniels, Sunday Times’ New Media strategist, would probably agree… Bullardgate has attracted a massive influx of traffic and inbound-hyperlinks to SundayTimes.co.za.

Kudos to the Sunday Times multimedia team for making the most of this (they grabbed the bullard by the horns) and immediately recording a follow video-cast series and dedicated page on their site.

Best of all, this gives me a good reason to point out that Mike and I were quoted in the same newspaper on the same day in another article about blogging: Business Times: Business Missing Out on Blogging.

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On the Shoulders of Giants – CCsalon Video

Dave — Fri, 04 May 2007 12:34:31 +0000

I often drop the following two quotes into talks, to emphasise the fact that what I speak on is borrowed and built from the work of others:

Good Designers Copy, Great Designers Steal – Picasso

Interesting, considering the source of that one. And:

A dwarf on a giant’s shoulders sees farther of the two. If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. – Isaac Newton

I mention them to emphasise the importance in business of sharing and collaboration in order to increase speed, productivity, and (ironically) creativity. This is a big reason why we should support Creative Commons.

Check out this vid of the recent iCommons Salon (entitled “Bring and Braai”) held in Cape Town, where Lawrence Lessig (CEO of Creative Commons) emphasises the point that digital borrowing and remixing is being criminalized… and what we need to do to make sure that we have the digital freedom to create freely. Jimmy Wales also appears with a call for more African Language contributors on Wikipedia. Heather Ford and I had fun MCing the event :

By the way, Missing Link sponsored and produced this video… They rock!

p.s. 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0 :-p

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Are You Only As Good As Your Last Blog Post?

Dave — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 12:48:47 +0000

There’s generally a loyal core of readers that most of us bloggers have, but feed subscribers in general seem to be quite a fickle bunch.

So, assuming that you’re only as good as your last blog post (cos we all have popularity peaks and troughs), here’s two simple ideas on being a successful (yet lazy) blogger:

When you’ve got something really interesting to write about – an event, a product launch, or a public squabble – then don’t limit your views to one post a day. Strive to be the main source of info for that topic for as long as it’s hot and you’re still passionate about it.
Don’t feel obliged to maintain this frenetic pace of publishing when you’re not feeling passionate, or aren’t intimately involved in the subject matter.

Mind you though, I’m not considering the search traffic (and spam!) which legacy posts bring in… only direct referral traffic and RSS subscribership.

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SA Internet Statistics Wiki

Dave — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 16:30:19 +0000

I was preparing for a presentation yesterday which required statistics of internet and Mobile use in SA, and really struggled to find up to date information for free online.

I see a need for a central place where people in our industry can freely access stats and other information.
This kind of info will help us make more informed strategic decisions

So, to get the ball rolling, I’ve set up a wiki called SAnetstats.pbwiki.com and placed the scraps of information I was able to discover on there, and I’d like to encourage anyone who has stats that are pertinent to internet, mobile, broadband and media industry in SA to contribute since it will be beneficial to the industry as a whole.

Maybe it will grow into a little Wikipedia kind of site for the SA internet consulting industry… hopefully:)

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A Simple Viral Promotion Tactic

Dave — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 12:37:05 +0000

As an experiment, Eric’s creating a list of SAbloggers who link to his popular Mobile Q&Asite.
This got me thinking about the most basic and easily replicatable viral formula for online social media:

Offer a prize in return for people linking to you from their blog or social-networking page.
Set criteria – e.g. “Valid for first 100 mentions only”
Tell the blogger to notify you when it’s up.
Follow through on your promise of reward.

You can really get creative with this structure – for example, by asking people to create their own banner ads as links for the promotion/competition.

Do you think that this type of promotion will pollute the conversations happening in the blogosphere?

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