by Rob Cottingham | Apr 13, 2010 | Blogging, Social Signal
For anyone who’s been told to cut the blog from their communications proposal…
…for anyone who knows their social media activities could pull more of their own weight on the bottom line…
…for anyone who wants to take their blog from the experimental stage to having real-world impact – and real-world value…
…we have something for you.
Today we’re launching Social Signal’s first ebook, called 10 Ways Your Blog Can Provide Real Value to You, Your Organization and Your Brand.
It’s based on one of our most popular blog series, and we think you’ll find it timely. Budgets for organizations – whether they’re corporations, non-profits or government agencies – are tighter than they’ve been in a long time, and every program has to justify itself. That’s especially true when we’re talking about something as new as social media.
One thing you won’t have to justify is the purchase price for this book: it’s free, in the Open SoSi spirit.
This ebook will help you make a business case for your blog (and for other social media channels). But more importantly, it will help make sure you get as much value from your blog as possible: by building capacity for your team, putting a human face on your organization, creating a crisis communications channel, and more.
It’s illustrated with Noise to Signal cartoons, naturally, and licensed under a Creative Commons non-commercial attribution license (which basically means you can’t sell it, and if you reproduce it or portions of it, please attribute it to Social Signal with a link to this page).
We would love your comments. Even better, we’d like to hear your ideas for getting value from blogs and other social media tools.
In times like these, organizations have to make every bit of effort and investment count. We hope this book will help make that happen… and we hope you’ll join in.
Download it here (PDF)
by Rob Cottingham | Mar 28, 2010 | Social Signal
Those little tidbits you’re sharing with the world could add up to a much more intrusive picture of your private life than you think.
by Rob Cottingham | Mar 17, 2010 | Environment, Social Media, Social Signal
Tell me this isn’t someone’s dream internship:
Our friends (and The Big Wild clients) at the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Committee are looking for an intern to help them make their web, email and social media presence a thing of grace and beauty. If that sounds like someone you know, do pass along the details:
Deadline: March 30, 2010
Start date: May 10, 2010
Length and type: Full-time, for 3 months
Salary: $14/hour
This position will play a role in improving, updating and analyze CPAWS’ web activities.
Responsibilities may include
- Making updates to CPAWS-managed sites as directed, using our CMS
- Using public domain image repositories to find appropriate images for projects
- Coding HTML emails
- Suggesting ways to improve existing sites
- Assembling statistics on our email blasts, websites and social media accounts for analysis
- Organizing and tag images from our collection
- Using services like Google maps, Twitter, etc. to create interactive tools for our sites
- Researching and compare online service providers.
- Working with our chapters to improve their websites
- Writing and editing text for the web
The complete posting is here.
by Rob Cottingham | Feb 18, 2010 | Social Signal
Vancouver blogger and friend-of-SoSi Dr. Raul Pacheco has a post today explaining why he’s been skeptical about LinkedIn, the business-focused social network. And on Twitter, he asked for suggestions “if you believe in this social network, or can give me some insight on its value”.
If you’ve been wondering about LinkedIn, too, here’s what I suggested to Raul:
I’m completely onside with being picky about where you devote your online attention, and LinkedIn can be especially thorny: the fact that there’s an implied endorsement when you connect to someone can make it awkward to decline an invitation. (Not to mention what it can do to your ego when someone declines yours!)
That said, just off the top of my head, here are three ways I’ve found LinkedIn hugely useful:
- LinkedIn Groups: Because these birds-of-a-feather communities are professional in nature, I’ve found the conversations there tend to be conducted at a more business-like level than what I’d get on, say, Facebook. And I’m discovering some people doing fascinating work whom I might never otherwise have come across.
- Network diving: This is something Alex has shown me, and good lord, it’s handy. When I’m travelling out of town, I search my network on the destination. Now I have folks to look up when I’m in town, as well as second-degree connections who might well be worth meeting while I’m there. I ask for a few introductions, and we’re off to the races.
- LinkedIn Answers: This underused (IMHO) LinkedIn feature lets you draw on your community’s expertise, as well as giving you a chance to share your knowledge and, perhaps, come to the attention of people you’d like to connect to.
Do any of those sound potentially compelling to you?
by Rob Cottingham | Feb 15, 2010 | Social Media, Social Signal
I missed passing this along when it first came out, because I didn’t know those nice CBC people had put it on YouTube. It’s their segment on what to expect in 2010 for social media, based on an interview they did with me in their stunning new Vancouver studios.
The key point for me is that I’m finding people are becoming more deliberate and discerning about where they direct their attention, whether it’s in who they friend, what they watch or which applications they install on Facebook. (That doesn’t mean I’ll always agree with the choices they make: witness the rise of FarmVille. [shudder])
And in the background, yes, you’ll see VanTrash on my screen.
Enjoy… and see what you think of how my predictions are turning out one month in.
