Social Media

Twice in the last 24 hours I've explained Twitter to friends and family who aren't exactly "early adopters" of webstuff, but who aren't slouches when it comes to staying in touch via facebook, email, etc.. I think these are the third and mainstream wave of adopters and they're starting to hear about Twitter. Arguably, that's because they're in my network and they see my posts on Facebook, which I've configured to update my status with my Twitter feed. "via Twitter" and my occasional tweets about Twitter have 'em wondering. Whether they adopt or not remains to be seen.

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In this fifth and final article in our series on creating an SEO strategy we will tackle the topic of community. Websites are not like the "field of dreams" -- if you build it, they won't necessarily come. Certainly if you do everything right up to this point: write good content, use appropriate markup and install the right Drupal modules, the search engines will index your site. However, when you start receiving quality inbound links is when your organic search results will increase exponentially.

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It goes without saying that we at CivicActions have been watching the presidential race with a passion that borders on addiction. We have also been excited by recent developments and new uses of technology in the service of civic engagement (which was, in part, what our company was founded on 4 years ago).

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Amy Sample Ward at NetSquared posted the following question for the Net2ThinkTank:

What are the key questions nonprofit orgs should ask to help them determine how to prioritize social media training and experimentation as they do their technology and organization-strengthening planning?

I provide Social Media Training and Coaching to our clients.  While there are many good reasons to make social media a part of an organization's overall internet strategy, there are plenty of wrong reasons too.

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During a recent client meeting, I had the opportunity to explain Twitter to an organization with very little social media experience.  I think my explanation may be of use to others who are just starting to consider using Twitter or other micro-blogging platforms (though I would argue that Twitter is where the people are and thus is where any organization looking to jump in should be. 

The Basics of Twitter

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Four years ago at Telephone Bar in NYC, Noel Hidalgo and I talked about an idea to run an IRC back channel during the presidential debates. This morning I saw a tweet from him about remixing the debates and reminded him of our idea. He has now blogged about something very cool. Current TV and Twitter have teamed up and will be aggregating debate related tweets and displaying them on Current TV.

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Last week Andy Laken asked me if there was a way to aggregate only select bookmarks from a group of users that would prevent an "unauthorized" user from posting a bookmark to the pool.  The aggregated bookmars would then be published ona  website.  After a little bit of thinking and some exploration while on the phone, we figured it out. Here is a quick and dirty recipe for creating a group bookmark feed from delicious.

1. Get everyone delicious accounts
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A recent study on social networking came to my attention yesterday and it sparked a discussing with Bevan that we vowed to continue on the blog. The study which surveyed 13,000 adults between 18 and 65 in 17 developed nations found that 58% did not know what social networking is (30% in the US).

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Last night I was scheduled to fly from New York's JFK to Seattle on JetBlue. As the storm clouds gathered and a crazy thunderstorm gathered over the NY region I called JetBlue's automated flight status service and was surprised to hear my flight was still on time. That was at 6:10pm.

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Chris Brogan posted a fantastic list of 20 free eBooks about Social Media on his blog. Learn everything from the New Rules of Viral Marketing, Podcasting, Google Adwords, Marketing Plans, SEO, Analytics, Twitter, and more...