Advice to social media mavens…from media pros

We’re just back from two days in Houston as the guests of ttweak, a marketing, communications and design firm that shares our belief that authentic, original voices are the best way to convey a message. ttweak’s best-known work is probably their Houston It’s Worth It campaign, but their extensive and varied experience also includes a number of video projects that let interview subjects, rather than narrators, tell the story. ttweak principals Randy Twaddle and Dave Thompson proved to us that Houston is indeed worth it, not only for the food (mmm, bbq. I mean mmm, Mexican. I mean, mmm, Cajun.) but even more notably for the almost unbelievably friendly people.

While we were in Houston we had the opportunity to meet with a number of ttweak’s clients, all of whom reinforced our impression that Randy and Dave have mastered the art of bottom-up marketing campaigns — and did so long before us johnny-come-latelys in the Web 2.0 world started yakking on about user-generated content. Here’s some of the wisdom we gleaned from their example and their advice:

  • Let participants speak for themselves. Don’t drown out original voices with heavy-handed narration or moderation.
  • Remain tool agnostic. If your goal is to convey a message, you’ll need to choose a different medium depending on the message you’re delivering.
  • Production values matter. Don’t kid yourself into thinking that people will see past your barebones interface to appreciate the depth or brilliant of your feature set. Appearance counts.
  • Invest in your local community. Even if your business has a national or international reach, a solid reputation with clients in your own city provides a bedrock for growth.
  • Build relationships with your client’s entire team. During one client visit, we saw how ttweak’s introduction counted with the CEO — but we also saw Dave on hugging terms with the parking valet. We got a warm reception in the boardroom — and a warm car waiting outside when we were done.
  • Client service is the surest way to grow a business. Resist the temptation to cash in by focusing on a single hot product, or cash out by selling your company to the highest bidder.
  • Do what you’re great at. Over-reaching is the surest way to burn your client — and your brand.

We’re excited to work with a company that realizes Web 2.0 values of user engagement in all of its work. And thanks again to Randy and Dave for introducing us to their wonderful city!

Turning Words into Deeds: A response to Knight Foundation’s 21st Century News Challenge

What makes for a transformative media moment: a moment when an individual reads, watches or hears a news story and is galvanized to take action on an issue? Social Signal hopes to offer a new answer to that question with the WIDget, a tool that will turn words into deeds by marrying web-savvy media outlets with the latest nonprofit volunteer and donation opportunities.

The WIDget is our proposal to the Knight Foundation’s 21st Century News Challenge, a call for “new ways to understand news and act on it…new ways for people to communicate interactively to better understand one another…[and] new ways for people to use information.”

The WIDget answers this challenge by by using the latest Internet tools to match issue-oriented journalism with opportunities for concrete citizen engagement. Through a Words Into Deeds widget (WIDget), online media outlets, blogs, audio and video sites will be able to complement any issue-specific story with a set of related volunteer and donation opportunities. You can read about the WIDget and take a look at a mock-up in our draft proposal for the Knight Foundation (PDF).

We’ve made a conscious decision to share our proposal before the December 31 submission deadline because we think that a community converesation about the proposal can help make it stronger, and help us find the best partners to support the WIDget’s development. You can contribute to this process if you are:

  • A nonprofit organization that maintains organizational databases: contact Social Signal to add your database to the list of databases that will be tapped by the WIDget.
  • A nonprofit organization that wants to promote its donor or volunteer opportunities: contact Social Signal to add your organization’s name to the list of nonprofits who want to appear in WIDget listings.
  • A media outlet or blogger: contact Social Signal to add your outlet or blog site to the list of outlets that would deploy the WIDget to offer volunteer and donor opportunities to your readers.
  • An interested observer: share your thoughts about the WIDget by commenting on this blog post or by emailing Social Signal with your comments.

To contact Social Signal, please e-mail widget@socialsignal.com.

Thanks in advance for any comments or suggested partnerships, and we’ll keep you posted on how our proposal evolves.

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WordsIntoDeeds-30Nov06.pdf 354.07 KB

PODCAST: From Org Charts to Sitemaps: How organizational structure affects web strategy and implementation

Does your organizational structure support web innovation or inhibit it? Learn how to make the most of your own team's structure from the web strategists at two very different nonprofits: Corrie Frasier,  Online Communications Manager for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Jed Miller, Director of Internet programs for the American Civil Liberties Union. In this, the first edition of the Social Signal podcast, Corrie and Jed talk about everything from how to get senior buy-in to your web strategy, to how interdepartmental cooperation helped the ACLU respond effectively to NSA spying.


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ChangeEverything is TechCrunched

We're delighted that Change Everything has been noted on TechCrunch as "a nice alternative to the user generated advertising model".

Marshall Kirkpatrick writes:

I think this is a great example of a company making use of Web 2.0 tools to promote themselves in a way that places the ballance of the impact on providing value to users and incurs promotional benefits for themselves as a consequence of that. Though this model may seem less immediately lucrative, it’s also much less likely to face the kind of anti-corporate backlash bubbling up in MySpace and YouTube.

Marshall had a couple of tips for us, too:

Unlike at 43Things, there’s not the option at ChangeEverything to mark a goal as something you have done already or the question of whether a goal is worth persuing or not – perhaps leftists are too Quixotic for such features.

These are both options we hope to introduce on the site soon – so no, lefties aren't too Quixotic (in this respect, anyhow!)

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