Social media is about relationships and creating interest in what you do. The way to do it? Do it yourself. 

It doesn't matter if it's for you or the organisation you own or represent. Do it yourself. 

There is no easy way. There is no quick solution. There is no magic content maker.  Do it yourself.

Devolving social media management outside your organisation is misguided. Do it yourself.

Social media requires authentic intimacy, tone, culture and personality. Do it yourself.

Fans, customers, visitors, clients want to talk to you. Do it yourself.

Not prepared to do it yourself? Then don't bother.

There is a photo of growing grass on each page of this website (and displayed below). You might ask why? You might not. Regardless, I thought it would be useful to briefly describe some of the ideas behind its selection.

If I ask a room of people what they think it means, they often reply with useful (and often quite literal) observations:

• It represents growth
  
• It suggests social media is about grass roots movements
• From solid foundations good things grow
• Organisations need to nurture their social media
• Social media involves lots of elements
• Social media is organic
• Aim high
• Social is about interelated relationships
• ...

I like the above suggestions as they are consistent with my own ideas. I also like the openness that the picture offers. This means that visitors can perceive it how they will and more likely than not, their ideas will support the point of its use. 

If I had to be brief, I would want the picture to reflect that Know Social Media helps others with long-term social media advice and education based on organic growth. That is, no gaming, cheats, tricks, manipulation, traditional marketing, etc. - just a purity of application based on best practice and deep knowledge.

What does the image say to you?

The following video shows various case studies and solutions for what are commonly referred to as "social media fails". You know, employees abusing customers on Twitter, YouTube videos of staff doing horrible stuff to food production, inappropriate responses by executives to small problems, and so on. 

These "fails" can negatively impact on a business' reputation and if serious enough - negatively impact on sales and customer retention too.

Matthew Quint a director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership at Columbia Business School explains how businesses can prevent social media fails in the first instance and then recover when they do.

I am pleased to announce that Know Social Media (in the guise of Andrew) has joined the Digital Office community project.  The project is based in Dunedin and works by providing "ambassadors" to help with community-driven digital, IT and related technological projects.

The ambassadors are local business people with particular technological expertise willing to give up their time to provide free assistance to the wider Otago community.  

Activities might typically  involve advice, strategy, trouble-shooting, etc. or more accurately as the mission statement says: 

"To work closely with community groups and businesses across Otago to understand digital needs, support digital projects, advocate digital initiatives and ensure the successful outcomes of Digital Strategy projects. "

To find out more or to get involved, explore the Digital Office website: http://www.digitaloffice.co.nz/.

UPDATE: This is NOT how Know Social Media operates or how Andrew purports to represent himself. As mentioned elsewhere on this website, we are pragmatists as opposed to evangelists.  

Infographics are a crime against communicating meaningful information. Sadly, they have  spread insidiously over the internet to entice weary eyeballs and frazzled brains into a brightly-coloured world of indecipherable nothingness. 

Don't know what I'm talking about? Then check out this collection of gems (warning: prepare to hurl!).

Purported advantages of infographics is that they present information in a manner that is easy to read and fun; that they take complex data and reduce them to easy to decipher collections of symbols, pictures, colours, typefaces and effects; that viewers of these graphics will holla with joy and share them with their soon to be worse off friends.

While it's true they are frequently shared (mores the pity), in terms of readability, pleasure, accuracy, and usefulness they fail. 

A reason for this is that infographics consist mostly of "chartjunk" (coined by visualisation expert Edward Tufte). This entirely superfluous characteristic obscures information and directly affects ease of interpretation. And as most infographic effort is directed at making chartjunk, it is pretty clear why they don't work.

Compounding this vexing issue for me is that there are infographics for almost every social media phenomenon imaginable (a few examples here). In fact, I get spam asking if I want to check out infographics hoping that I might actually pay for the pleasure of owning one.

There are even infographics made to illustrate how bad infographics are. This is level of meta-ness is completely unnecessary and I'm afraid - not clever. It is simply more unwanted visual pollution and in these days of sustainable sensitivities, highly irresponsible.

Now let's look at a classic chart to see what is wrong with infographics  - namely the humble pie chart. My view is that the pie chart is the direct ancestor of the infographic.

The problems with the pie chart above are self-evident as they are with infographics (look closer). For better criticisms though, read this post at Cyncerely and this other one by Erick Schonfeld.

The irony is that it takes more effort to produce one of these garish, colour-filled monstrosities than it does simply describing facts with - you know - words. So try using them instead. Please.

If you happen to like infographics, please tell me why in the comments below (I advise using plain old text otherwise comment approval is unlikely to be given).

Internet NZ is holding their well regarded Nethui event in the South Island for the first time. It is to be held in Dunedin on November 23rd-24th at the University of Otago and the Otago Museum. The cost is cheap and at a mere $40, the value from being involved will vastly exceed this paltry amount.

The event seeks to address various "economic, social and cultural" issues in relation to the internet in New Zealand. Since the event is participatory and community-focused, a South Island specific event is important - particularly as the first two Nethui were held in Auckland which resulted in a prohibitively high cost for some people living outside the city.

Check out the programme to see the variety of high-quality presenters and panel chairs sourced from Government, business, community organisations, and higher education. Example topics include: Globalisation and the Law, Internet enabling opportunities for NZ, discussion around the Dunedin digital strategy, digital inclusion, copyright, and many more.

Clearly the event will be stimulating as well as being a lot of fun so I hope to see you there!

Here are the important links:

• Register for Nethui
• The Programme
• Venues
• Nethui on Twitter

Graduate Research Services at The University of Otago is hosting their second annual Twitter conference on the 27th (updated!) of August. Last year's event was a great success and a lot of fun for all those that participated.

This year, Know Social Media are proud to announce that we are sponsoring the event! This involves producing an online transcript of entries (read last year's transcript to get an idea of what happens) and providing an excellent prize to the winner.

The competition is open to all University of Otago post-graduate thesis students in which each, gets to summarise their thesis in six tweets. To minimise confusion, submissions will be scheduled so make sure to register soon.

The cool thing is that students can submit their tweets from anywhere (home, cafe, other-side of the world, ...). Even better, the whole world can read and participate.

Twitter might seem a strange target for Academic research. It turns out that distilling a thesis (even for those near completion) into six, 140 character statements is a very difficult task. This is compounded further by writing for a general readership with no prior knowledge. Consequently, Twitter is an excellent forum to communicate difficult and abstract concepts.

Furthermore, Universities ought to be seen participating in the wider community by disseminating the research currently underway. So, what's better than a public, online forum like Twitter?

This event is informal and fun so if you are a University of Otago thesis student, register for the conference and sign up for Twitter.

Facebook have just announced roles for Facebook Page admins. This means that owners of Facebook Pages can control what actions different kinds of administrators are allowed to do. 

For example, a Page manager might have full control while a Moderator may only be permitted to respond to questions and comments. This allows for better management of your Facebook Page and provides more opportunities for staff and external businesses (e.g., to measure analytics) to access specific features of your Page but only those relevant to their jobs.

There are five distinct roles: Manager, Content Creator, Moderator, Advertiser, and Insights Analyst. I include a table (sourced from Facebook) that illustrates what kinds of actions these different roles can perform. 

Clearly, the Manager role has the most permissions (which matches responsibility level) while the Insights Analyst has the least. In fact, this latter role is increasingly likely be performed by an external business monitoring Page performance. 

By assigning the appropriate role to your admins, you are guaranteeing increased security around how your Page will be used.

I recommend taking a look at this Facebook help information then review how your Facebook Page is currently being managed. If you have any queries, please feel free to get in touch. 

My good friends at Turboweb (they make website management simple for business) have teamed up with Know Social Media to provide a 6 week intensive workshop on social media. It is called "Launchpad" and I am really excited to be a part of this worthy project.

The Launchpad has been in planning mode for quite a while and I am delighted that it is now ready to go. The aim is to take businesses, regardless of their social media experience, and prepare them for social media readiness.

What does this mean?

In a nutshell, it means that businesses will leave with a solid social media infrastructure in place, a solid understanding of social media's strengths and weaknesses, a clear plan of where to go, and how to manage related resources - including employee participation.

It sounds comprehensive - thats because it is! Social media is a much wider proposition than simply marketing as it has an impact on many facets of a business' operation; internal (e.g., employee guidelines), technological (e.g., Facebook or Twitter?) and external (e.g., engaging with customers) are three such areas.

Social media is also way of doing things. 

With this mind, the Launchpad sessions are designed to be interactive, informative and fun. A lot like social media itself. There are clear outcomes for each session and participants will take tasks away to work on, think about, share, etc. in time for the following session.

Paul Southworth (Managing Director of Turboweb) convinced me to shoot a quick video to chat about the Launchpad. The aim was to quickly explore our thinking in the hope that the value inherent in the course becomes clear. Watch the results (below). 

To find out more about the Launchpad, take a look at the official website. Here you can find background details, pricing and registration information. 

I hope to see you at the first session on Tuesday May 29th at the Turboplex. It starts at 5:30, finishes around 7:00pm and will most certainly be a blast!