Thanks for the great conversation about digital storytelling earlier at #ChiCounts. Here’s the Storify. In a world of fewer media gatekeepers, good information from nonprofits and causes is in demand. You now have all the tools to tell your stories well to your very specific audience and to amplify your reach. But what stories should you tell? It’s all about figuring out where you fit in your news ecosystem – whether its geographical or knowledge based — and creating a system for storytelling
Sally Duros is a social journalist and digital storyteller. Connect with her on Google+ and twitter at saduros.
[media-credit id=2 align=”aligncenter” width=”660″][/media-credit]These are choice days for memes, which Wikipedia defines as
A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures.
I went for a walk in my old neighborhood the other day. I lived in Chicago’s Lakeview for about ten years. It’s a fun place with plenty of foot traffic, all kinds of shops, ethnic eateries and lots of cafes. It’s a prime destination for Black Friday.
In the year 2000 — when I first came across it — Craigslist was an earnest site providing a deceptively simple service — free classified ads online— that was extremely useful to most everyone. Today, Craigslist is the 9th most popular website in the United States. As much as it is loved, it is also vilified. Some blame Craigslist for newspapers’ lost profits and decimation of the revenue model for news. If only it were that simple. If Craigslist hadn’t brought free classifieds online, some other web service would have. Personally, I credit Craig Newmark and Craigslist for setting a kind and gentle tone for the Internet. For him the Internet has always been about social change.
Today Craig can be found on Twitter with nearly 39,000 followers, Facebook with more than 120,000 and on his CraigConnects site. He converses constantly with his followers, chatting about the birds and other wildlife he sees on his deck in San Francisco’s beautiful Cole Valley. Craig’s current focus focus is on craigconnects, which he says is his “initiative to link up everyone on the planet using the Internet to bear witness to good efforts and encourage the same behavior in others.”
He will be speaking at 11 a.m. today at Chicago’s TechWeek at Merchandise Mart.
Q. Do you see the pressure from social media to change the culture of businesses as leading to lasting change or a new type of organization? What would that organization look like?
A. I do see that in large organizations, those with 150 or more people or more, that’s the Dunbar number. Currently, to get ahead in a large hierarchy, you tell your boss what he or she wants to hear, and then she or he tells her or his boss what they want to hear. That means that real company knowledge and possible improvements never make it to the top. However, social media tech can be used by line workers to combine knowledge and improve business businesses. In such situations, the boss has to back this up, and that often proves difficult.
I’m currently seeing the Department of Veterans Affairs using such methods to better serve vets and also provide better return for the taxpayer dollar.
Q. 435 Digital is all about increasing the capacity of smaller and local businesses to operate efficiently online to reach their customers and grow their businesses. What kind of tools do you see developing as an alternative to traditional advertising for local business? What other services do you see emerging?
A. I like the use of social media, where friends can help friends make better product choices, and that includes Twitter, Foursquare, Google+, Facebook, etc. Also, importantly, there are user review systems, like Amazon or Consumer Reports, which help.
The big problem is that sometimes such systems can be gamed, that’s already a problem. I feel that that might only be fixed with lots of reviewers, constant vigilance, and networks of fact-checking.
Q. You like to say trust is the new black, what are your thoughts for how local businesses can best translate the trust they have built on the ground into trust online? Services like Yelp might be part of the answer, but what else do you see?
A. I’d say that organizations just need to be straight with people in all presences, offline and online. Maximum transparency is good, within obvious limits. (There’s always stuff you can’t talk about, like customer private info.)
It helps to speak in plain language, and to get to the point, and then stop.
Q. You recently successfully launched a veteran’s initiative through craigconnects, and community building is another area that you plan to encourage under craigconnects. How do you plan to use the tools of the social web to encourage us to take more responsibility for our communities and neighborhoods. What new tools are you excited about?
A. We’re still planning that, but probably soon two areas:
networks of factchecking so that we can get trustworthy, reliable info. use of nonprofit rating services to help us select good nonprofits to help and how to find bogus ones to avoid. We’re working with GuideStar, charity Navigator, and GreatNonprofits.org.
[media-credit name=”435Digital Tribune Media” align=”aligncenter” width=”668″][/media-credit]Recently, Internet privacy concerns erupted over Facebook’s introduction of facial recognition features. Most of us have some version of this on our home photo editing systems, and many people misunderstood what Facebook was offering and how to use it. The bottom line is that only photos by your friends will suggest that you are in the photo and only you can tag the photo.
To be sure, there’s potential for abusing some technologies but the facial recognition genie is out of the bottle and it won’t be going back in. That leaves us with the question of how we will marshal this and other technologies so that they are not abused by government despots or evildoers.
Beverly Robertson is the national director of the Pregnancy & Newborn Health Education Center at the March of Dimes, where she runs large educational campaigns. Her team answers questions from the public about preconception, pregnancy, preterm birth, and baby care; and they also offer daily pregnancy and baby tips trough Twitter. She twitters at @marchofdimes and @MoDBev and speaks frequently on social media strategies at conferences including South by Southwest.
[media-credit name=”435Digital Tribune Media” align=”aligncenter” width=”668″][/media-credit]Sree Sreenivasan is the Dean of Student Affairs at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, He blogs at Sree.net and his Twitter handle is @Sree. A contributing editor at DNAinfo.com, Sree calls himself a tech evangelist/skeptic. His lists of social media resources and tools are extensive and free. He is constantly updating updating his Facebook page, Sree Tips. Sree’s social media guide includes case studies and social media guidelines.
[media-credit name=”435Digital Tribune Media” align=”aligncenter” width=”668″][/media-credit]Writing a blog about learning social media is like writing a blog about learning to talk.
Learning to talk starts with the sense of hearing and the ability to actively listen. By listening to the stream of sounds coming from our environment we start to understand and say words. Over time, we learn to put these words together into complete thoughts that we call sentences. Before too long, we string the sentences together and begin to tell the story of what is happening around us and how we experience it. We meet others and share our stories. This storytelling give-and-take is a lifelong reiterative conversation that forms our identity and self definition. Our ability to engage in this conversation deeply influences our path in the world.
Your business learns social media much like a baby learns to talk. First, you listen online to understand what your name, or brand, means to your customers. The sounds you hear might be pleasant — or not. Either way, what’s certain is your customers are conveying important information. It’s your choice whether or not to understand the sounds and fully engage in this reiterative conversation.
Nobody can decide for you. It’s a straight-forward challenge that smacks at the culture of your organization and the ongoing story that is the interplay of you, your products and your customers. It’s a challenge that asks you to understand how deeply you value customer service — really. The repercussions of your choice will be felt all along your value chain of competitors, collaborators, and suppliers.
To get started in this conversation, you need to understand the tools, tactics and strategies of the evolving social media toolbox so you can choose those that work best for you. But as important as learning the tools, is learning how to talk in the world of social media.
By taking on the 435Digital blog beat, I’ve accepted the challenge of helping us better understand tools like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and the nature of the conversation that accompanies them. As important, I’ll be discussing the cultural change and relational juice that is creating a new online economy based on trust and transparency. It’s exciting to peer around the edges of what “is” to see what is possible.
As to my philosophy, I agree with Gary Vaynerchuk, who says in his book “The Thank You Economy:”
For the record, I dislike the term social media. It is a misnomer that has caused a boatload of confusion. It has led managers, marketers, CEOs and CMOS to think that they can use social networking sites to spread their message the same way they use traditional media platforms like print, radio, television. or outdoor and expect similar results and returns. But what we call social media is not media, nor is it even a platform. It is a massive cultural shift that has profoundly affected the way society uses the greatest platform ever invented: the internet. Unfortunately, when the business world is thinking about marketing via social networking sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Daily Booth, it’s thinking about using social media, so that’s the term I’ll use.
This massive cultural shift is to the Knowledge Age from the Industrial Age. And I think Gary is right, there’s no such thing as a “media buy” in social media. Your online success is determined by the culture of your business and the timbre of conversations and relationships that emerge organically from who you are and what you say and do.
The same is true for me and my work on the 435 Digital blog. As we learn together, let me know how I am doing.
p.s. I love my little Twitter bird. I keep him with me always @SaDuros.
