Tag Archive

You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'administration' tag.

Stuff I Use: Tools for Managing Social (and other) Media

January 4, 2010 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , | 2 comments

Managing and monitoring your online reputation requires keeping tabs on lots of different online spaces. Fortunately there are several free tools available on the Interwebs to help you. Here are some of my favorites:

Hootsuite: a free, web based tool for administering Twitter identities. I use it to manage several Twitter accounts at once, search specific keywords and hashtags, shrink URLs and schedule future tweets. It does all that AND supplies metrics on specific tweets (if it contains a url you shortened via Hootsuite). Overall, its a great tool. My only complaint is that in the past they’ve forced users to send a canned tweet telling everyone how great Hootsuite is. Annoying.

Google Alerts are a no brainer: a free, simple way to monitor new stuff that’s been posted to the web about a certain subject. First, customize the system to send you an email with results on a certain query (or queries – you can set up as many alerts as you want, but you’ll get an email for each one). You can search for a name, a school, a company, a product – anything. When that search term pops up in the latest relevant Google results, you’ll hear about it via email. You just decide how often you want to receive them. Google Alerts has been around for a while, but I still find it incredibly useful.

NetNewsWire. To keep up with blogs, news, and other sites via RSS you need a good feed reader (if you’re not clear on what RSS or “syndication” is, read more here). My favorite is NetNewsWire, a free client for the Mac (sorry, no PC version as of yet). By sorting everything into folders/categories I can quickly and painlessly sift through hundreds of feeds every day.

PC folks: No NetNewsWire should not mean that you give up on RSS entirely. I hear good things about Google Reader; give it a shot and let me know what you think.

And don’t forget: you can put the feed for this very blog in your reader of choice right here.

Social Media: Actually, it is Work!

December 1, 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: , | 1 comment

“Doesn’t anyone work anymore?”

I heard this from a woman in the audience during Q&A at a conference session. It came at the end of…well, let’s call it a rant. After describing her frustration with online social media tools (though she didn’t refer to them in that way) she explained that the staff in her office are on the computer “all the time,” engaging in such activities as “doing Facebook” and “twitting.” Clearly exasperated with the situation, she asked of those of us in room: “Doesn’t anyone work anymore?”

I understand her frustration. She doesn’t understand the tools, how to use them, and why they exist. To her, the colleagues in question were goofing around while phones went unanswered and mail went unopened.

But here’s the thing: for some people (like me, and maybe like you too), those things she described are work. Gasp!

Engaging in social media as an individual and/or on behalf of an institution isn’t necessarily hard, back breaking, abhorrent work. It can actually be fun sometimes. But it is complicated, requires attention to detail, and good strategy. Keeping on top of community management and targeted Facebook messages and blog posts and so on is work, to be sure.

Going back to the woman at the conference…I see two problems. One is that the staff in question didn’t make the effort to educate everyone in the office on social media and why it is relevant. Assuming someone won’t “get it” and not bothering to engage them can cause more harm than good. Problem two is the opposite side of that coin: the woman was closed minded about social media tools, didn’t make much of an effort to learn about them on her own, and had discounted them entirely because she didn’t understand their purpose. 

If you encounter a situation like this, try to see it from both sides, and then open up the conversation. We work in a new field, one that’s growing and changing constantly. It makes perfect sense that not everyone would understand all of the subtle nuances right away (and let’s face it, we might not understand them ourselves). The thing is, our jobs are pretty cool. And we get to be the ones to tell people just how cool they are.

Note: I realize that this may be over simplifying the problem in some cases; there are folks who won’t listen no matter how many times you try to open up a conversation. That issue is for a whole other (future) post…

Now get back to work!

Measuring Success: Qualitative and Quantitative

November 17, 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: , | 3 comments

One of the misconceptions about social media is that you can’t measure the results of your efforts. The overall feeling is that when you tweet, send a Facebook message, or post to a blog, there is no way to know if it was “worth it.”

There are lots of tools available to help you measure the number of followers you have, number of retweets, who clicked on what link, etc. You can find a list of some of them here, via Mashable. But no matter how many graphs, charts and spreadsheets you are able to create, it’s up to you to define what “worth it” means.

So what does success mean to you? What’s “worth it” and what isn’t? It’s important to come to your own conclusion as you develop your social media strategy. And to measure your success, the data you gather should be both qualitative and quantitative. Here are some examples of the types of things you can use as metrics:

Qualitative

  • Are you reaching audiences you never reached before?
  • Are you being talked about in a positive light?
  • Are you engaged in meaningful conversations?

Quantitative

  • Traffic
  • Number of RTs (re-tweets)
  • Number of conversations/threads
  • Number of followers/fans
  • Number of click-throughs
  • Number of subscribers

Measurements should be comprehensive and encompass many aspects of communication and engagement, not only basic statistics.

[Note: No Adaptivate post during the week of Thanksgiving, but I'll be back the following week. Have a nice holiday.]

LinkedIn Group Management: Are You Using the Tools?

October 31, 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: , | Leave a comment

LinkedIn group managers can take advantage of several tools and services to make their groups more valuable for members. I’ve already discussed the pros and cons of a closed LinkedIn group in this space. After you’ve decided on that, you have a few more things to think about. Here are my recommendations/thoughts:

Use the Subgroups. Members of your group can opt in to a subgroup of your main group. This might be a good way to serve members from a particular geographic area, those who have specific interests or needs, or those sharing a common background. If your main, larger group is a closed one, you may choose to allow members of the larger group to join the subgroup without manager approval, or to have a group manager approve each request.

Enable Discussions, News and Jobs. What good is a group without discussions? Enabling this feature allows group members to converse amongst themselves. Giving up control of the conversation can be a scary prospect for some, but it’s the name of the game when it comes to social media. The News option allows group members to post links to news articles AND gives you the opportunity to drop in your organization’s RSS feed. The Jobs board gives group members a forum for finding new hires; enabling this feature means you could help a group member find a job.

Create an Automated Greeting for New Members. When someone new joins your group, they get an email welcoming them. As group manager, you can customize that message with instructions, links and all sorts of information. Make sure you’ve taken full advantage of a communications piece that will go out to every single member as they join.

As always, make sure to put some thought in to the relevance of these tools to your audience. For example, there might be a case where subgroups just aren’t necessary, because your main group is already small in size. Don’t use the tools just because they’re there; think critically about what benefit they’ll have for you and for your group members and then proceed.

Final Stages of Web Redesign

October 6, 2009 in Uncategorized | Tags: , | 3 comments

For those of you who don’t know, I’m deeply embroiled in a web redesign project. We’re (fingers crossed) very close to completion. But while I’m really looking forward to launching the site, I’m fully aware that even when the “live” date comes and goes, the work is far from over.

A web project, as previously discussed here, is never truly complete. The launch of a new site signifies the completion of one phase of the project, but at the same time ushers in a host of new projects and tasks, including keeping your site current and relevant. Here are some things to keep in mind:

Training. When you’re close to launch, train your staff on how the new tools work. Give them the opportunity to try things out for themselves – staff members make great beta testers. This will prepare them to use the site and to troubleshoot problems when your users are stumped. Additionally, brief the “higher ups” about the new site and how it will function. Communication is key.

Marketing. It sounds obvious, but have a plan in place for letting your users know that the site has gone live. Consider rolling the new site out to a small group of stakeholders, then a larger pool of several hundred people, then to your larger audience. This will help you make corrections and fix problems before your entire user base runs head first into a major bug.

Debugging, revisions, and inevitable issues. You might think you’ve found every bug, tested every link and examined each page with an eagle eye. It turns out your site probably still has wrinkles to iron out. Gasp! Have a plan in place for managing such problems. In other words, don’t cancel the project management/bug tracking software package just yet. You’re going to need it for at least a few more months.