Chapter 5
The New Media University 201
Communities, Social Calendars, and Livecasting
In the last chapter we reviewed the online provinces of blogs, podcasts, and wikis. In this chapter, we examine the nuances, risks, applications, and also the merits associated with content communities, social bookmarking, and livecasting.
CROWD-SOURCED CONTENT COMMUNITIES
Online content communities exist to promote the human filtering of online information (or manipulation of it, depending on how you look at it). These unique communities are basically social networks that increase signal and reduce the noise from all of the information out there, fostering interaction around compelling content. These platforms tap the wisdom of the crowds to source, share, and showcase news, videos, pictures, music or other audio, and events. The most popular content is determined by the crowdsourcing of votes to determine popularity and visibility of entries as organized by the specific categories within the network.
These communities serve as a lens into what's hot, interesting, or promising, as dictated by the psychographics that connect demographics. We'll open the curtains to reveal the groups of people powering these networks later in the book.
Leading sites include Reddit, Digg, Mixx, and Fark, among others. Combined, these networks receive, on average, 55 million unique visitors per month. In comparison, CNN.com receives, on average, roughly 30 million unique visitors. Niche content communities exist for almost every vertical industry as well, and here may be more than one resource for you to learn and share with people who can help you and the company you represent.
The practice of curating content is pervasive in these networks, as well as in networks dedicated to social bookmarks (see the next section). Conversations take place in the form of comments and backchannel interaction where people usually ask each other for votes or spark private dialogues based on the comments for a particular entry.
These communities receive content from users who submit something that they find interesting on a news site, blog, website, or other social network (YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, Photobucket, Picasa, Docstoc, and so on) directly into the community—usually by clicking submit or a similar command. To simplify the submission and promotion of content in user-curated communities, integrated (or user-installable) tools exist directly in the pages where the content is hosted. For example, if you're reading a news story or blog post, you may be guided to a “Digg This” or other button specific to a particular network of the publisher's choice, so you can either submit a story or vote it up for further visibility. Other aggregated services such as “Share This” enable publishers to offer one tool to connect users to the network of their choice.
The goal, of course, is to earn significant momentum within a finite time in order to hit the virtual front page, or at the very least, be among the most active within your given category.
The front page of Digg, for example, can yield upward of 20,000 to 50,000 unique visits in one week to that particular piece of content. And if it's a blog post on your corporate site or a video related to your brand or product, imagine how that traffic could directly convert into leads or prospects.
The activity that sends flurries of votes in any given direction is not always organic. In fact, in some cases, the process is calculated or paid. For example, in most social networks, many of the votes are driven by working with people in specific social graphs to vote for as a favor or as an investment, when something is needed in return. On the other hand, to make the front page of Digg, many of the “Power Diggers” will help you for a price ranging from $500 to $2,500 per event. Power users are connected and there's an incentive for them to leverage their networks to your advantage. Without them, it takes a very organized and orchestrated campaign to submit a story and then drive enough support for it to move naturally—pushed by the people you've aligned in advance to help.
Sometimes it's a combination of leveraging both power networks and the social graph to help push posts to the top.
The wisdom of the crowds begins with curation and is then propelled by word of mouth (WOM) or the physical act of endorsing or promoting content within the network and also across the social graph (in other social networks). Everything requires content promotion for any of it to grab the attention of those who are focused on everything else but what it is you're trying to share with them.
Earn their attention.
SOCIAL CALENDARS AND EVENTS
Nothing beats participation and relationship building like connecting in the real world!
Social calendaring networks transform email or website-based consumer invitation and RSVP management applications (such as evite.com) and provide a platform and supporting social network for those hosting or seeking events.
Want to see what your friends are attending?
Care to view upcoming events tied to your keywords in any city around the world?
Social calendars facilitate this ability and form paths to identify and connect with real world communities—or, as some refer to it, IRL (in real life).
Facebook events, Upcoming.org, Meetup, Twtvite (tweetups) and Eventful serve as sites that reach potential constituents by introducing or participating in relevant events, sorted by location and by topic or industry. In the case of companies and interest groups, these networks serve as tools to invite people to demos, polls, town halls, open houses, training, webcasts, trade shows, customer spotlights and Q&As, and live chats, among many other occasions and gatherings.
For example, you can list a particular event within a social calendar network. They can also invite inside and outside network friends to RSVP for the event. As people RSVP, their responses are visible across their social graph (those people connected to them within the social network and those who have set up their accounts to syndicate their updates across other social networks). If the event is listed in Facebook, each time someone RSVPs or comments, the activity appears on their newsfeed and in the newsfeed of all their friends. This brings greater awareness to the activity organically. For example, if you RSVP for a particular event in Facebook, I would see that activity in my timeline, “YOU have RSVPd for X event.” The idea is that it would most likely motivate me to click through to view additional details about the event. This activity can also send updates to outside networks such as Twitter and Facebook, to reach an entirely different set of contacts. Did you know that millions of events are created each month within Facebook?
You'll notice that the events in each of the aforementioned services differ in organization, intention, and reach. For instance, Meetup.com is dedicated to recurring themed events. It's a vibrant, geographically expansive network that hosts regular meetups for everything from scrapbooking, photography workshops to branded dialogue around issues and opportunities facing particular industries.
I've hosted events for companies in our home cities using Meetup.com, Facebook, and Plancast, to experiment with event formulas, formats, and audiences that offer the most impact for attending guests while still building a community that extends from online to the real world. The idea was to create an event that appealed to customers, prospects, partners, and influencers to share and learn together. It also served as an installment series that provides ongoing insight and surfaces the most critical questions and concerns.
We invited customers and industry experts to speak about industry trends, challenges, and solutions, as well as answer questions related to the real-world experiences of those in the audience. Using Meetup.com, we're able to create a branded event that created a microcommunity within the larger community of users looking for related events. The goal was to find a format that proved effective, and that could be used locally on a monthly or quarterly basis, and create a template that could be reproduced by ambassadors around the country or world so they can provide resources for communities of users IRL.
We also experimented with events in which we used a combination of Upcoming.org, Facebook events, and Twitter for additional visibility to point back to one or both of the event hubs. Each network boasts its own group of contacts. Crossover may exist, but for the most part, distinct connections are anchored to each network. Contacts discovered and shared the events within their own networks and when combined with those targeted prospects who also discovered the affairs through search, the results were always outstanding—to the point of having to close sign-up lists or turn people away or both.
Another popular trend for meetups or tweetups centers on bloggers, local influencers, and visiting authorities who are in town for an event or conference.
As companies recognize the value, opportunity, and potential of blogger relations and engagement, extending a virtual hand to introduce bloggers to key executives is instrumental in establishing effective relationships that can garner attention and coverage in the future.
People are actively searching for relevant events. To reach them, we must earn a presence in the networks where they seek intelligence. It is imperative for every company to proactively and personally recognize bloggers and influencers as important to your business—not only for pitching stories, but also for establishing dialogue. Respect and admiration are not simply sentiments, they can be effective building blocks for strong relationships.
Building relationships within these communities, promoting events among those they benefit, and using the right tags and descriptions all play important roles in creating and attracting visibility.
Hosting events in the real world, even if they're organized on the Social Web, transcends online interactions and builds bona fide, real-world relationships—in fact, it ratifies them.
LIVECASTING
There was a time when only the most prosperous companies had access to the tools and services to shoot, edit, and broadcast audio or video. Over recent years, the Social Web has sparked remarkable innovation, substantially reducing the barriers to entry and the associated costs for creating and publishing online audio and video. Companies are, in essence, building full-fledged content networks online that can air live or episodic videos on demand.
As a result, a rising class of video networks exists that facilitates the streaming of live and prerecorded video channels that foster conversations around media.
Live video communities such as Ustream and Justin.tv, among others, enable livecasting and chat room interactivity. Services such as Qik and Mogulus also allow for livecasting, in addition to offering the ability to broadcast video and support chat room functionality from a mobile phone. Viewers can enjoy the videos from any PC or mobile device.
Live audio also represents a growing opportunity to reach important markets. Services such as BlogTalkRadio provide a sophisticated, but simple, platform for livecasting hosted audio discussions, similar to a radio talk show format. Imagine hosting a weekly interview series with executives, customers, or market experts to share insights with your community while introducing the personalities behind the business.
Livecasting networks also share many similarities with traditional social networks. Inherent in each network is a community of active affiliates. Users can “friend” other members to form micronetworks of contacts to interact in and around programming.
Many companies that I've worked with or observed have effectively leveraged these services to webcast training sessions, earnings reports, live chats with key personnel and special guests, HR and executive announcements, product reviews, marketing or industry events, lectures, and conference discussions, speeches, panels, and so on. Employees, partners, and customers can view and chat with one another during the sessions to ask and answer questions and solicit feedback. In every interaction, you're investing in and building a dedicated community of appreciative and loyal subscribers and patrons.