“New! Lists. A great way to organize the people you follow and discover new and interesting accounts. (BETA)

Lists are timelines you build yourself, consisting of friends, family, co-workers, sports teams, you name it. You’re part of a small group receiving this feature, so don’t tweet about it yet.”

Notice they didn’t say not to blog about it. And, um, notice they didn’t tell you all not to tweet about it. Ahem. I mean, if you wanted.

I am actually excited about this new feature, but am not sure how it might change things. Wanting to try it out, though, I went with my first instinct, which was to create a “McCombs” Twitter subscription list, so that people could subscribe to all of the school’s official tweets with the click of a button.

Here’s how the beta version seems to work (series of screen shots follows - click on any image for a bigger view):

The Announcement I received upon logging in. Hello, TwitList!

Creating the new list...you can make the list public or private.

Searching for a user to add to the list...

Adding the user to my list (you can select which list to add them to from a drop down menu).

My new list shows up highlighted in the right-hand side...

You can see how things look from the subscriber-side by going to @TexasInnovation and poking around.

The tech side of things seems basic enough. Now what to use the lists for? Ideas? Let us know in the comments what you plan to do with yours.

Thanks to Tracy for all of this information sharing and community support. I’ll publish some tech FAQs next week. Here are two excerpts from Tracy’s articles with links to the full posts at her blog.

Kodak on transparency:

Even when you are talking as an individual, people may perceive you to be talking on behalf of Kodak. If you blog or discuss photography, printing or other topics related to a Kodak business, be upfront and explain that you work for Kodak; however, if you aren’t an official company spokesperson, add a disclaimer to the effect: “The opinions and positions expressed are my own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Eastman Kodak Company.”

Intel on moderation:

The Good, the Bad, but not the Ugly. If the content is positive or negative and in context to the conversation, then we approve the content, regardless of whether it’s favorable or unfavorable to Intel. However if the content is ugly, offensive, denigrating and completely out of context, then we reject the content.

IBM on Social Media Value:

If it helps you, your coworkers, our clients or our partners to do their jobs and solve problems; if it helps to improve knowledge or skills; if it contributes directly or indirectly to the improvement of IBM’s products, processes and policies; if it builds a sense of community; or if it helps to promote IBM’s Values, then it is adding value. Though not directly business-related, background information you choose to share about yourself, such as information about your family or personal interests, may be useful in helping establish a relationship between you and your readers, but it is entirely your choice whether to share this information.

I hope to use (and cite) these for McCombs’s purposes. Any thoughts on how/if they need to be modified for the McCombs School?

In the 1960s, ABC signed a contract to televise college football games nationally. This was a previously unheard of notion, as college football was a parochial game. Why would Longhorn fans care about an Ohio State game? And why would an Alabama fan ever watch a game from Corvallis, Oregon? Roone Arledge, a young up-and-comer at ABC, had an answer, and he wrote it in a memo:

“Heretofore, television has done a remarkable job of bringing the game to the viewer—now we are going to take the viewer to the game!”

He goes on to explain that the problem is context. You have to give the viewer a sense of space, history, and perspective. Only when they understand the game in its context will they care about who actually wins it. In short, you have to fill in the gaps between what they know and what they don’t know.

Applied to McCombs, we have done a decent enough job bringing McCombs to our users. We have failed to bring our users to McCombs. In terms of imagery and language, we don’t give our users enough context to show them how they will fit into the school. We miss the opportunity to let them see themselves in our environment and explore it, and in turn become comfortable in it. This is an important psychological opportunity missed as they decide which school to go to.

Take for example, the first time you visit a restaurant or bar. You walk in the door and immediately look around, trying to orient yourself. Is there a host? How are the tables arranged? Is it quiet? Loud? What’s the decor like? You begin to make some choices that affect whether or not you like the place. Over time, you become familiar, and you don’t even bother looking around. The place has become familiar and comfortable.

I argue that we have an opportunity to make people familiar and comfortable with McCombs before they get here, while they are deciding which college to attend. To do that we have to give them some context. Certainly, the school visit gives a prospective student some context, but could the visit be enhanced if the student were already familiar with the surroundings and people, allowing them to spend less time acquainting themselves with McCombs, and more time asking questions relevant specifically to them, and in turn becoming more and more comfortable with the school.

Going back to Made to Stick, we have to fill in the gaps between what they know and what they don’t know. We do a good job of talking about our rankings and our programs and departments. That’s the stuff most students can learn with a minimal amount of research. It’s also not a tremendous differentiator. We need to give our prospective students all that info up front and be honest about it: “Here’s what you know, but now let us show you what you don’t know.” That’s when we knock their socks off.

David J. Neff gave a speech on new media in the nonprofit sphere this morning. He spent a little bit of time explaining new media and then went on to give advice on how to use it.

Old and new media
-Old media had all communication pointing outward toward the audience
-New media has communication pointing both ways and we’re expected to not only listen to comm. coming in from the audience but also to respond to it

Facebook ate many of the old media sites (Xanga, Live Journal, Friendster) and is now the giant of the industry.

Social networks are walled gardens
-You have to have an account to use it
-Further, users must give you permission to interact with them and see their profiles

The first thing you need to do in social networks as a nonprofit is LISTEN.
-Run searches on your brand
-Don’t start broadcasting until you’ve searched yourself and engaged in a few conversations with users.
-Even so, keep the broadcasting to a minimum

Find the key masters.
-These are the people who can open doors to new connections or new ideas.
-They can be anyone. Think about who you’re targeting and who might be able to help you reach them.

Video is sticky and social
-48% of people watch video online (2007 study)
-15% of people use video sharing sites (2007 study)
-Most people share links with friends or watch videos with friends because it’s a social topic

YouTube and Facebook OWN your stuff.
-They hold copyright to everything you upload to their sites.

SharingHope.tv
- Created by American Cancer Society as a multimedia sharing site to tell your cancer story
- More positive atmosphere than on YouTube (YouTube’s comments usually skew very negative)

Facebook Advertising
-Incredible because it’s so targeted

Statesman sells first twitter ad
-Robert Quigley (online editor) for Statesman sold @statesman tweets to MansionofTerror for $150 a pop
-Statesman requires ads to be actionable (coupons, etc.) - MoT was buy 1 get 1 free
-Ad was retweeted 29 times and gained national media coverage
-However, no one showed up to MoT to use the coupon

Brainstorm on why it didn’t work
-Too early in the season for people to care yet
-Maybe Twitter was the wrong medium
-Statesman reaches an older audience than was desired
-Many people forgot to or were uncomfortable mentioning the ad
-Could have had a landing page to buy tickets with a special twitter code for money off

Key Concepts
-Be honest (if you tweet an ad, admit that it’s an ad)
-Listen first and be responsive
-Spot trends and make trends
-Speak up/have a voice (don’t be a robot)

Thanks,

Amber Walkowiak
Communications Intern, McCombs School of Business
The University of Texas at Austin
(512) 232-6779
amber.walkowiak@mccombs.utexas.edu

I thought I’d begin by laying out some definitions.

Content Management System (CMS)

A web-based program used to help site owners and editors to manage, edit, and publish content easily. Content can mean text, images, documents, or forms. There are lots of content management systems out there. Wordpress, which runs this blog, is an example of a simple, but robust content management system. Sharepoint is an example of an enterprise-level content management system. The difference is the goal of the system. For Wordpress, the goal is blogging. For Sharepoint, the goal can range from handling internal documents to running your entire web presence.

Sitecore

Sitecore is our chosen CMS. It was chosen for a number of reasons, but none more important than the simplicity of allowing you to edit your content. The web team has long had the goal of removing itself as the middle man between you and your content. Sitecore will allow us to do that, while simultaneously ensuring quality and consistency.

User Experience (UX)

If I’ve ever spoken to you, I’ve probably prattled on and on about user experience. Get ready, there’s more to come. Quite simply, user experience deals with the interaction between the user and your website, or “their experience.” There are a number of best practices and processes that I will detail in later posts that will help us to create a positive user experience.

That’s all for now. If you work with someone involved in our site, let them know what where trying to do here.

Here’s the code for embedding an image: <img src=”url” alt=”descriptive text” hspace=”8″ vspace=”3″ align=”left”/> Italics indicate what you need to add: the URL of your pic on your photo site, and a descriptive text to indicate what is there if the pic cannot be seen. The hspace and vspace code will add a bit of horizontal and vertical whitespace padding around the pic so that text is not right up against the pic. The align code will make text wrap around your photo, either to the right or left. Photos should be no bigger than 500 pixels wide to fit into our template.

If you need a good image, you can always find one on Flickr that is completely legal, by searching among Creative Commons licenced photos. See Finding Pictures For Posts.

Social networks often have social hierarchies where members play different roles:

• Some seek information
• Some prefer to pass info along
• Some are merely spectators
• Others take the lead role in determining what the group will do

Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research have created a Social Technographics Profile that further clarifies potential community members by action:

• Creators—members who will create more content than anyone else. They are highly motivated, will produce blogs, upload videos, write online articles, and more on yours and other network sites.
• Critics—members who will react to online content, post comments on blogs, ratings and reviews, edit wikis, etc. Typically, there are more critics than creators.
• Collectors—members who organize and aggregate content by saving URLs and tags on social bookmarking services, voting for news stories on sites like Digg, or gathering RSS feeds, etc. Collectors play an important role in organizing and spreading content Creators and Critics develop.
• Joiners—members who build profiles on typical social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, but limit their activity to networks.
• Spectators—members who passively take in what everyone else puts out in the form of blogs, podcasts, videos, etc. This will always be the largest group. Like Joiners, Spectators are necessary to fill out the ranks but should not be considered prime movers and shakers.
• Inactives—members who don’t do much of anything, such as Facebook members who haven’t updated their profiles in years. Insights from this kind of profile can tell you what levels of participation you should build into your network.
  - from STAMATS, “Social Networking, The Five Fundamentals”

Here are some questions you might ask yourself:

• Do you already have community members that fit any of these descriptions. What are you?
• Do you have a ‘listening strategy’ that categorizes and utilizes these people?
• How can you document and connect with these people?
• How could you incentivise, reward, and encourage involved community members?
• What can engagement tell you about community member motivation for participating in the first place?