Know Social Media - Blog

Internship position: Student who knows social media required

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:58:38 +1300

Source: Appnova

I am working with an out of town client who needs an intern to help roll out the strategy I am preparing. This person should know how to administer common social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube as well as experience and/or sound knowledge of community management.

Great communications skills are a must as are reliability, professionalism, access to the internet, business understanding, creativity and of course time. If you know about video and mountaineering then even better!

A student who has successfully completed COMP 113 with me in the past couple of years (or is a current student) is preferable. However, if the right person cannot be found from this group then the position will be opened up.

The client is out of town but the work can be undertaken in Dunedin. In terms of payment options, this needs to be confirmed as do start and end dates.

If you think this opportunity sounds interesting and right, tweet me or send an email stating your case.

2012 means even more social

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 22:57:52 +1300

This is a quick post to wish everyone a happy, interesting, and social 2012. Know Social Media is open for business and January is looking very, very busy.

A number of clients want to get to work straight away - which is great! In addition, I am working part-time for the University teaching a summer school paper. The cool thing is that the paper "COMP 113" is all about social media (what it is, why it's important, how to use it, ...) and online community (who is in your community, how to keep them happy, community management, ...).

It means I get to talk about things I care about and work with everyday. Students get to build their own online community and have fun doing it. The added bonus, is that explaining concepts is the best way to learn what they really mean. Moreover, talking with smart and engaged Summer School students means I learn even more.

I have many ambitions for 2012 (including blogging a lot more frequently) and feel positive and excited about Know Social Media's future. And while I am busy, I am always willing to explore opportunities so please feel free to get in touch.

Future of social media according to Mashable

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 12:36:17 +1300

Here is Pete Cashmore, founder of Mashable espousing his social media predictions for 2012. Predicting the future accurately is tough and notoriously unreliable, however, it can be interesting to see an indicative opinion from someone who lives online media.

Many thanks to Sarah for finding this.

Science Teller conference tweets science and gives away an iPad 2

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 12:27:33 +1300

November 15th - 19th 2011 sees Dunedin hosting the inaugural Science communication conference called "Science Teller". Their website describes the event as "... a celebration of Storytelling and Science dedicated to documentary filmmaking, writing and other creative media". The Centre for Science Communication are responsible for this innovative event - ably directed by Lloyd Davis.

The event involves workshops, public screenings, guest speakers such as Lawrence Krauss, Bill Manhire and Jay O,Callahan and welcomes submissions of creative works for a competition (sadly this blog is a little late as the cutoff dates for most submissions was November 9th).

However, one competition is still open (at least until midnight Tuesday 15 November) and that is the tweet competition. I had some involvement in the set up of the competition which is one reason why I am blogging about it.

Anyone can enter by tweeting their explanation of the origins of the universe. You must use the hashtag #scitell in the tweet and post it to twitter before midnight tomorrow. You must also follow the official Science Teller Twitter account @scienceteller.

By doing this you are then eligible to win an iPad 2 to be awarded to the winning tweet. See the Tweet competition page to see details of how tweets are selected and voted on.

My current favourite tweet is by Twitter user @knittedmonkey who managed to incorporate Twitter into the creation of the universe. The tweet reads: "In the beginning was the Tweet, and the Tweet was with God, and the Tweet was God".

This is closely followed by "Once you pop, you just can't stop. Until gravity overcomes inertia and it all goes crunch: the Pringles approach to Cosmology" by user @furyonesixone.

Get involved by submitting your own tweet or follow the hashtag #scitell to see how other people tweet the origins of the universe.

Social media bans are a bad idea

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 12:21:23 +1300

In light of recent provocative tweets by Samoan rugby player Eliota Fuimaono Sapolu, the Samoan Rugby union is thinking about a social media (or in their words a "social networking") ban.

This thinking is misguided. Prohibitive or draconian approaches to controlling social behaviour are doomed to failure (think alcohol prohibition in the '30s or the ongoing "war on drugs" as examples). Moreover, it creates an unnecessary and unfortunate adversarial relationship between groups of people who ought to be working towards a common goal.

This same issue exists in business. People use social media daily - it is a part of their lives (for better or worse). In fact, many employees use social media to do their jobs. Consequently, prohibiting use of social media outright creates an artificial problem between management and employees that need not exist. Moreover, it suggests a lack of trust by management of employees.

While it is true that leaking confidential internal information or "dissing" the boss is undesirable, there are other ways to handle these kinds of situations.

Knowing that people will talk, gossip, bitch, whine, etc. (as they always have done) and recognising that people have new and highly-social channels to exploit is a good first step. In light of this, every business needs to prepare internal guidelines around social media usage.

These guidelines need to be produced before any issues arise and ideally should involve employees as part of their development.

Why involve employees?

The end goal is to have sensible and even beneficial usage of social media as a part of everyday business practice by employees. For this to happen, there needs to be buy-in from employees so that they embrace and support the guidelines through advocacy and management of their own behaviour.

A business also benefits from having clear, positive guidelines as they provide clarity around social media usage so that if issues do arise there is a place to start talking.

In terms of the Samoan Rugby Union, the point is somewhat moot as their World Cup campaign is over. I just hope that next time they take a little time talking with the team about how social media might be best used.

NZ social media stats for September from Catalyst90

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 13:50:08 +1300

Wellington based social media services firm Catalyst90 track social media activity in New Zealand (in addition to providing a range of technology based social media solutions). This is useful because statistics on NZ usage and growth (specifically) of social media is difficult to come by.

From the graphic below, some interesting numbers stick out. For instance:

Total active Twitter accounts = 75,182
Total NZ Facebook accounts = 2,052,420
Total NZ LinkedIn accounts = 463,792
The gender balance favours women on Facebook but favours men on LinkedIn.

My take is that Twitter numbers are a little lower than I expected but they do only check accounts with more than 10 followers that have tweeted within the last 7 days. Facebook is clearly the dominant social media service in New Zealand (note that this is different from passive usage on social media like YouTube) with the gender split consistent with elsewhere. LinkedIn numbers are growing as recruiters and business increasingly require a LinkedIn profile to examine for employment purposes and recommendations.

Catalyst90 update these numbers weekly so if you like what you see, check their curiously named "Enigma" page for updated numbers.

Nielsen releases their state of social media report for 2011

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 14:33:01 +1300

Nielsen has just released their Social Media Report for third quarter of 2011. The report provides visualisations of trends and consumption patterns across social media platforms (primarily the US but elsewhere as well).

Some of the more interesting snapshops are shown below. For instance, Australian users spend the most time on social network sites and blogging. We might be able to guess at New Zealand's usage based on these Australian numbers.

The Nielsen blog provides a slideshow, all-on-one-page, and a full download (need to register for this version).

Click on the images to see bigger versions.

History of social media (graphic)

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:43:00 +1300

Here is a graphic made by TenthWave to illustrate key milestones in social media's historical development. Click the image for a larger version.

2011 state of social media and higher education analytics

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 18:39:53 +1300

The humble business card

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:39:09 +1300

Business cards are still important. While social media offers many options for connecting and managing relationships online, the humble business card is still the most efficient method for exchanging contact details.

In time, mobile devices maybe synchronised enough to share information across platforms, networks and apps but right now, the physical card is still a must have.

High-quality, well-designed, engaging cards are clearly important, however, it might be an idea not to go overboard like Joel Brauer in the video below:

I recommend Moo.com has an easy and slick online service for creating business cards. They provide a variety of current designs, pricing and quality double-sided stock. Note that as they are based in the UK, make sure to leave a few weeks for delivery.