Buzz2009 – Keynote Notes

Andy Sernovitz’s Keynote from Buzz2009:

WOM starts with happiness.

Give people something to talk about & the reason to talk. Make it easier for that conversation to take place.

Jones soda understands giving something to talk about, their Thanksgiving 6-pack.

Do amazing things. Sometimes the tiny things are more important than the big picture. The simple things can spark the biggest conversations.

Don’t underestimate the power of email! How do you make your ideas portable? One-click works.

It shouldn’t be about the budget, the marketing should be about how can we get people to talk about us for free because they think we are awesome?

Why aren’t bloggers writing a blog post about you every single month? How can you inspire members to talk about the awesome stuff that you do?

Your brand isn’t what you say it is, your brand is what other people say it is.

It only works for good organizations, with good people who make their members happy. It’s an opportunity for the “good guys to win”.

Motivation 1: You – Everything is about you being remarkable, but it’s not enough.
People don’t talk about what you talk about! Did you know, did you see?

Motivation 2: Me – People talk because it makes them feel good (smart, pride, fun)
Don’t under estimate the power of small blogs & newsletters. Make people feel exclusive & they will talk.

Motivation 3: Us – We desperately want to belong.
Check out the Maker’s Mark Ambassador program. They give people fun things to talk about, free giveaways which inspire people to talk. They make it easy to talk by giving people the tools to talk about them.

The 5 T’s of WOM:
Talkers – Who is talking? Not necessarily customers.
Ferrari talkers are not owners, it’s the 14 year old boy who spazzes out about them.
The Wynn Hotel let Vegas cabbies be their talkers b/c that’s who people come in contact with first.

Topic – Topics can be the experience, not necessarily the content. The giveaways. WOM topics need to be portable, repeatable & emotional.
Carnegie Deli makes 7″ tall cornbeef sandwiches b/c it gives people something to talk.
The iMac was about colors, not about the OS.
“Would anybody tell a friend about this?” Can we blow their minds & get them excited?

Tools – How do we help the message spread?
1. Asking people to tell a friend. We don’t ever ask. (My question: Is how we ask important? Member-Get-A-Member campaigns usually suck.)
2. Everything goes in an email. There is nothing more viral than email.
3. Solve the matchbook problem. WOM gold – giving people something to hand off to others. Nobody walks out the door without something to share. They should be able to share EVERYTHING on your website. Next time they come in contact with you, how are they going to share it with their friends.
4. Multiplier effect.
Potbelly rents mailing lists of people who have moved from Chicago to a new city, they get 10 free coupons to share with friends. Potbelly: “I bet you miss us.”

Taking Part – Join the conversation. The way to get started: “Thank you.” or “I’m sorry.” comments.
Finding the problems & fixing it is one of the most powerful ways to fix your relationship with members.

Tracking – Measure & Listen.

So basically… Go out there & make people happy.

“Happy customers are your best ads.”

~Lynn

P.S. Hope Andy is cool with me posting such detailed notes, if not & he lets me know, I’ll take them down. He’s an amazing presentor & definitely an amazing keynote.

 

Dare to suck.

Experiments & failure are good for business. You always learn more from your mistakes than you do from your successes, yet I feel a lot of times that our culture doesn’t allow for failure any more.

Imagine how much farther we would be along if we were allowed & encouraged to fail, instead of stressing about always succeeding and maybe doing sub-par work so that our jobs are safe?

Experimentation is the spice of life & I believe the social media world allows us to fail in a very public way (meaning it’s a good thing). It encourages us to try things, admit when we have not done as well as we hope to, pick ourselves up & try again. As association executives we will never be able to please all of our members all of the time, but I still believe we should shoot for the stars. Find out what really works, as opposed to what keeps the membership at bay. (And I have in the past worked for associations that do this)

In my Freshman Acting class in college, our teacher gave us a mantra… “Dare to suck”. Meaning push yourself as an artist and not be afraid to fail. It’s that fear of failure that stifles creativity and makes our efforts sub-par, restricted & uninspired. (Makes me think of member-get-a-member campaigns)

I understand that for a business ROI is important, but why not build into your process time for experimentation and failure? By allowing a little breathing room, you may just be setting yourself up for even greater results.

What do you think? Have you ever “dared to suck”? Did it come back to bite you in the butt or did you see improved results because you were willing to take a risk?

 

How to automate your social media.

The longer I do social media for a living, the more I look for ways to automate my process. Here are a few things I’ve found that you can do to make things a little easier on you.

1. Harness your RSS feeds

There are RSS feeds everywhere! Find ways to integrate them into all of your channels, try these to start out…

*Twitterfeed – Will take any RSS feed and tweet it out for you with a pre-determined intro (great place to put a hashtag if needed!) Also don’t forget to pull the RSS feed from your YouTube Channel & possibly your Flickr stream, depending on how often you upload, this is not something you want to have automated if you bulk upload!

* WordPress & LinkedIn – If you have a WordPress blog, you’re in luck! You can set it up so your blog is attached to your LinkedIn profile and all those perspective employers & colleagues can see what a genius you are.

2. Facebook does a lot of the work for you

* Notes – With notes you can actually import a blog’s RSS feed by just typing in the web address! Go to the notes page (this is something you would probably want to do for the public profile, but it works on personal profiles too) and there is a little box on the right hand side where you can enter ONE web address to automate to notes. Then whenever a new blog is posted, it will appear as a note. Check out AAPA’s PAProNow blog & the AAPA Public Profile.

* Social RSS – An application on Facebook that allows you to import multiple RSS feeds into the Facebook Public Profile wall tab. This I believe can also be put on the “Boxes” tab.

* Wall Settings – If you go to your personal profile “Wall” tab and click the “Settings” link, there you can import stories from Flickr, YouTube, Delicious, Pandora, Digg & a bunch more. This way whenever you update one of these sites it will automatically publish to your wall. Please Note – This ONLY works on personal profiles, NOT public profiles, so make sure someone visible in your org has these settings imported.

3. Go outside the networks

*Ping.fm – Instead of posting to each individual site, post using Ping.fm and cut your time in half. This site allows you to post to multiple social media/networking sites all at once. Remember to make sure that your content on each site you post to varies slightly, but is consistent.

Though automation makes life easier, it can also potentially spam your friends & followers, so be mindful of how often you post. Nothing beats being authentic, so make sure you don’t try to automate everything, leave some things unplanned, it’s what makes the content you send out special.

~Lynn

 

Facebook and Public Profiles

So Facebook changed to the Public profiles awhile ago & I think everyone is adjusting nicely. It seems to me that public profiles are the *it* spot for an association (at least for the group that I work with). We try to submit content to get an interaction every day and help keep us in front of people’s faces. We import any RSS feeds that we can & are working on integrating other applications. I find some applications trickier than others to actually get on to the public profile, not very user friendly some times.

My question for everyone is this… How are you pimping out (technical term there) your Public Profile?

This question is a little self-serving b/c I’m hosting a webinar for Socious on the Facebook Public Profiles and I want to make sure I haven’t missed anything. So my social media buddies… please try to stump me!

~Lynn

 

Top 5 Myths for Non-Profits and Associations Engaged in Social Networking: Redux

Fiesty Lynn here.

My last post was a little negative, scared this one will be too, but when I read this post from ThePort Social Media Solutions blog it struck me how self-serving the blog post ended up being. I think the idea base is good, but i’d like to strip out some things. I’ll probably get a bunch of heat for this post but here’s my go… let me know what you think!

5. Social Media isn’t Media

I think media is more than just a standard definition that relates to adevertising. It is a way that people communicate with their own content, it is a media of, for & by the people as opposed to large networks of professionals. You now find media professionals engaging in this new form, but they now need to play by the rules of the community, instead of setting their own.

4. If you build it, they will come

No they won’t. They’ll wonder why you spent the money on a large social network that nobody uses. Investing in a social network MUST be a call from the community. Experimentation though through free tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. IS A GOOD THING! You have to test b/c nobody knows everything about social media and each group of people. We are all learning. The risk I think is less when you’re talking about outposting, b/c you are going to them. The main investment is in staff time, but there are ways to cut that down.

3. IT Security Risks Are Not Common in Administrating a Social Community (I don’t believe this one fully, but I’m not an IT professional)

So I’ve been doing social media officially for an .org for 6 months now, but have been involved with social media for 5+ years and actively engaged on the web in primitive forms of collaboration since I was like 13. I’ve never had a problem with “IT Security Risks” before. If you’re smart and look at what you open, pay attention to what you download and use a decent anti-virus software (I use the free version of avast! & love it) you shouldn’t have an IT problem. The ONLY problem I’ve ever had is that since I installed Adobe Air on my work PC, it was having problems downloading Microsoft XP Service Pack 3 and the computer wouldn’t load on rare occassions, know how I solved this? I use a Mac now and am much happier for it, now to just get a Mac at home…

I will say you should be careful about the personal information that you put out there. Remember, people can see what you put out there, so if it can be used against you… don’t post it.

2. As Always, Quality Social Relationships Are Built More Offline than Online

I think I might come at this differently b/c I’ve met many people online during my web travels that ended up turning into quality offline relationships, though the bulk of the relationship was built online. I don’t think online relationships can last unless that’s all they have to go off of, but the natural way of people is to want to connect face to face, so if you establish an online relationship, I think the natural way is to be able to connect face to face.

1. Social Media Won’t Last

I don’t think the tools will last, but the way of engagement will. Social Media is revolutionizing how individuals digest content, online components have brought down an industry that thought it was invincible. These things are not going away, but they will evolve. How long will Twitter & Facebook last? Who knows, but in all likelihood they will be replaced by some shiny new toy. Though I think the important parts of engagement, instant communication and value sharing will not go away.

So I realize the beginning of this post was ragging on ThePort a bit, but their text just seemed really biased to me. Am I crazy for thinking this? I mean they ARE a white -label social network software providor, but did it have to be so blatant? To me it came off as though it was trying to “make a case” for a white-label network. Hope

ThePort doesn’t take offense for this post, just felt the need to respond.

~Lynn

IT Security Risks Are Not Common in  Administrating a Social Community

 

I’m 26, Tattooed and I do Social Media strategy

So about two weeks ago Mr. Terrence Barkan posted this onto the ASAE list-serv (on many different lists) and onto SNAMA (a free org for social media related association stuffs). I personally take offense to his title and his characterization of individuals who may be younger than him.

Like my title says, I’m 26, tattooed and I do social media strategy…

I understand that my association’s strategy of outposting and integration (i.e. community building on networks where people already hang out on, capitalizing on the time they already spend, going to them instead of trying to pull them kicking & screaming to something we created for them) is a path that a lot of associations don’t take. Most want the simple solution, a white-label social network that you can just plug into your database and/or website and go! (Not to imply that Mr. Barkan was saying that in his post)

That’s a fine choice if it comes from the community, your community wants it. But you can’t just open a network and then pray it works. You have to breed community & connection between your members before you even start to think about a private network. It’s definitely a shift in how associations are thinking and the way we interact with and engage our members.

And that’s what social media strategy is about at it’s core, a call from the community. Making sure that you are fulfilling their needs b/c if you don’t, then what value do you provide?

I guess what made me mad and made me feel like I had to defend myself is his characterization of others my age. I have enough to prove being a young female, who may be seen by the outside world as “alternative” and honestly, my job and working in social media specifically has really helped me to own all that I am and be confident in my abilities, my skill & who I am as an individual. I just don’t like to be cut down b/c of my age or b/c I may do something to myself is diverges from the norm. My differences & accepting those is WHAT makes me an authentic social media professional.

~Lynn

 

The Revolution is now digitized.

Though this doesn’t really relate to associations using social media, it does show how important social media can be and allowing the crowd to contribute to create the whole picture. Not sure if the embedding will work (thanks wordpress hosted blog), but if not, check it out here.

 

The Long Road.

So this past week I’ve been in San Diego for our Annual Conference and I’m completely exhausted. I wanted to share with everyone the different ways that we used to connect with our constituents and I would love your feedback on all we’ve done.

The PAnel – A conference blog manned by 11 PAs/PA Students & 1 exhibitor (who works for a medical library). This was the first blog of this nature that AAPA has embarked upon and we completely let them take over. The content was their’s, the pictures (for the most part) were their’s, they chose their own name and helped come up with their own guidelines. We got really positive feedback from the bloggers themselves about their experiences as well.

2 Positives – Engaging content, driven by our members

2 Needs Improvement – The blog could be moved up a level in navigation, need to figure out ways to extend the blog beyond the conference period

Tatango – Tatango is a text messaging service that we used to inform attendees of room changes, session cancellations, promotions, etc. It was a useful service for us, but we noticed that if we used it for anything other than informational texts we would lose members of the group. This was valuable information for us moving forward, because should we offer this again, we realize that there is a difference between real value & promotional value.

2 Positives – Easy to use, an efficient way of distributing information

2 Needs Improvement – Integration into our website, no “promo” texts should be sent out

Twitter - We used the hashtag #aapa09 to create a back channel for what was happening at conference. Unlike most other .orgs we do NOT have a general account manned by someone. We have many employees on Twitter, but only allow 2 employees to use AAPA in their Twitter username. One is myself & the other is our Senior Director of Communications and Media Relations. We have done this b/c it is way to easy to become a faceless .org to those follow if you have a general account & then we don’t allow more employees to use AAPA in their usernames b/c if 1 person follows all the employees & we are tweeting a lot, then all of a sudden AAPA gets equated with spam. We do encourage employees to self-identify (should they choose to do so) in their bios, but this is not required should they not want to participate in the business sense.

2 Positives – We got AAPA leadership to start participating in the conversation, were able to engage people who were there & those who could not attend

2 Needs Improvement – Twitter search now only seems to archive for about 2 weeks, finding a way to pull decent metrics from the conversation (hashtag.org provides metrics that aren’t very clear in my opinion)

Facebook Group- We started this Facebook group after last year’s conference, but are now considering moving to a Public Profile as this may provide more up front view to the content we send out. I found that it was just harder to keep dynamic content on the Facebook group, dynamic content is really the territory of the Public Profile (aka Fan Pages).

2 Positives – Have amassed over 1300 members, the ability to message the entire group

2 Needs Improvement – Dynamic content that a group does provide the option for, transferring to a Conference Public Profile

YouTube – We’ve archived a bunch of footage that we captured on-site and did this in the previous year as well. We will be uploading more footage as it becomes available and I think the video footage has a longre shelf life than some of the other content.

2 Positives – Long shelf life for video/re-usable & embeddable, wide-variety of content from educational to promotional

2 Needs Improvement – Turn around time, finding a video hosting solution that allows for clips longer than 10 minutes

Flickr – We have a Flickr photostream & set-up a group for IMPACT 2009 as well. We offered a “photo-sharing kiosk” where individuals could upload their photos to a computer and then we would pull them into our photostream. There was much more popularity for the group than the photo sharing kiosk, so we will evaluate how we will be able to improve on this in the future, whether that is moving our photo-sharing to Facebook or push the group for another year, or maybe look at other solutions.

2 Positives – The pictures that were uploaded to the group had a lot of diversity in look & feel, pictures are engaging and allows us to archive visually the experience of conference (we also have decent picture views)

2 Needs Improvement – Participation & is Flickr the right forum for this? Do we continue photo-sharing?

Live-Streaming – This year was a first for many things for the AAPA, including a Town Hall meeting with our CEO, President & President-Elect. To compliment this we also live-streamed the entire thing via Ustream. We chose Ustream b/c of the ease of use, using their service is free & that it opens us up to a broader audience, much the way having a YouTube channel does. We also pumped this live-stream into the surrounding hotels so that way people who were not able to attend would still be able to watch as well.

2 Positives – Free to live-stream, allowed PAs who could not attend were still able to participate & we even fielded a few questions from Twitter as well.

2 Needs Improvement – Archiving the footage proved tedious & difficult b/c of YouTube’s 10 minute rule, better promotion of it as a way to connect & possibly increasing the frequency

Social Media Cafe – We offered a lounge space with WiFi (up to 30 people at one time), couches, tables & chairs as well as office hours every day with the “AAPA Social Media Expert” (aka me). The goal was to encourage people to ask questions about these tools to help them get more engaged in the conversation. I ended up doing a few demos, but most of the questions were about how to sign on to the WiFi.

2 Positives – People loved having WiFi! Opportunity to engage with individuals on a one-to-one basis and provide great customer service

2 Needs Improvement – Scheduled demos as opposed to the free form hours might be more helpful, more seating!

So this is my personal take on successes & areas for improvement. By no means are these the only successes that we encountered and I’m sure there are other ways we could improve. I’d love to get your feedback on what we’ve done and what ways you think we could improve our efforts moving forward.

~Lynn

 

Why I Blog Meme

So I was tagged by Elizabeth Engel last month in the “Why I Blog” Meme. Basically I need to explain why I blog…

Well I write two blogs on my own and then I contribute on another blog, so I’ll break this down by blog.

SNAP (aka this blog you are reading now) – Blogging for SNAP came out of the need to create fresh and dynamic content, while providing insight on new trends or topic on the network I run (Social Networking for Association Professionals on the Ning platform). The reason it became a WordPress blog is because the Ning network doesn’t give the fresh and dynamic content any SEO within the network, so I export my content to this blog as well so that way I can bring attention to the network and hopefully help more people.

B-More Theatre – Well if you look at the header, it’s pretty self explanatory. I am trying to find my artistic voice in a new city and that blog is a process of documenting that discovery. I aslo find it a place where I can really dig into my own artistic process, comment on shows that I’ve seen and really bring my own theatre knowledge to the table.

BTA Blog – I contribute to the BTA blog because I helped start it. I work for a non-profit for my day job, but volunteering for my local theatre association lets me get “down ‘n dirty” with my skills and keep me cutting edge and constantly working on something I love. I also feel that b/c the perspective I’m developing on my own craft by blogging on B-More Theatre, that I can bring something to the Baltimore Theatre Community as a whole.

So, I’m tagging and eclectic mix of blogger buddies:

Ben Martin
Maggie McGary
Cole Matson
Joshua Conkel
Margaret Cho (okay, like I know she won’t answer, but it’s fun to try)

 

Power of A, lets take it to the next level!

Recently ASAE released the “Power of A” campaign (aka #PWRA) to, from what I can tell, little acclaim in the association world. I really haven’t see anyone be like “wow that’s fantastic, that will really help us as an association reach our members”.  In fact, Chris Bailey from Gravit8 had some suggestions to make the Power of A campaign even better (as well as pointing some things out that were missing the mark).

I tend to agree, so I have a challenge for all association leaders out there. Let’s prove the Power of A and really crank it up a notch.

Here’s what I’m suggesting:

• Blog Posts: Post on your internal association blogs and the Power of A blog about specific examples of what your association has done to better your trade or profession. Preferably this won’t be written by staff but by a member or a leader in the association. Associations are the voice of their members, but why don’t we let our members speak for themselves every once in awhile?
• Videos: This might be more of a vlog form, but create a short little video telling the story of one of your members, what impact they have in the association, how the association has helped them and then what impact that member has made in the world through their profession. How have they improved our society? Make it short, sweet, to the point and not over produced.
• Pictures: Take pictures at your community outreach events, either upload them to Flickr or your Facebook page. Maybe see if ASAE can include a photo component with their Power of A campaign.
• Tweet about it: Any time you help a member in a significant way – tweet about it, use the hashtag #PWRA and show how you as an individual, and association professional help your members directly.

Feel free to add any other ways you can think of to really take this campaign to the Power of A!

For the associations that have contributed already, here’s what I’m seeing wrong and how I think it should change.

• Your blog posts are using traditional media styles and trying to integrate them into a social media space. It DOESN’T work. Let go control, let go of your elevator pitch and really try to change something! Show how you make the world a better place.
  From @elizabeth627 on Twitter  “Every opening sentence reads like news release boilerplate”
  
• Get your members involved, make it a team effort. This isn’t about staff talking at potential members, this about staff and members talking together, so let them know to join in on it all!
  
• This one is for ASAE: By having all these pre-formulated materials you are under cutting your audience’s participation and engagement in what you are doing. Encourage your members (association professionals) and their members to write these for you and submit them, showcasing what ASAE thinks is the best, most inspired ones.
  
• Stop be general. Be specific, site specific examples, people, places and things. Your audience doesn’t connect with general, they connect with an experience that is specific, yet universal. (Thanks to my Playwriting teacher in college for teaching me the value of this in writing)

So is everyone up for the challenge?

~Lynn

Blogging Style: Evangelist Blogging
14 down, 11 to go.

Updated 5/4/09 -

There has been some blog talk about what’s going on, here are some other takes on what’s happening:

Maggie McGary – The Power of …Huh?
Deirdre Reid – The Natives are Restless
Dave Sabol – The Power of Missed Opportunities
Jamie Notter – The Power of Frustration
John Graham – The Power of Conversation (From The Power of A site, they’re listening!)

I will continue to update this as more people blog about this topic.

Btw, it was clear to me that this campaign was funded be Associations Advance America and not by ASAE membership dues, BUT I think the point is how much it cost in general, not where the money came from. Just because you have a special fund for projects of this nature doesn’t mean you need to spend it all.