Using social media for community engagement
Andy Carvin- NPR- andycarvic@yahoo.com
Okay, I found my OMG moment- with Andy Carvin’s keynote presentation yesterday. Actually several moments. Andy came at last minute notice... one day! One thing I think many librarians have really struggled with is the idea of moving from being experts in their field to collaborative information mavens. Listening to Andy you begin to see that media is encountering the exact same problem and when you start to look at how they are using the social networking to make their process more transparent and open to collaboration with both bloggers and the general public you may begin to see a pattern for our own path.
Now the first day's presentations start to make sense to my marketing mind.. first off let me start a new mantra coined from Andy himself, People formerly known as patrons”. I need us all to let go of patrons because the title is actually not one genration behind it is your grandmother’s world… no good.
So here’s what I think. If I were to rethink my Three reasons campaign, I’d really have to change the whole concept to “Tell us what you really think about your library.” That’s an open question that needs to be asked and will start the dialogue that we need. Will it bring out some negative comments? Sure but in a way the Three Reasons campaign is the old 1950’s marketing concept - we are still creating a product and trying to convince the public they can’t live without it.
By opening the conversation we can begin to create the programs, products and services our customers will use. You know I’ve spoken about the push verses the pull marketing concepts but we are now in a whole new world where even that is passé.
So what does this new world look like to libraries?
First off – it looks honest. And that means we allow ourselves to be exposed or as Andy commented, ”We raise our kimonos” and begin to open the processes in which we work. I know so many libraries are doing this with the selection of their collections and even gathering input for designing buildings but the new world means the process stays open going beyond the “Thanks for you comment” cards to a dialogue where we are talking.. … or better yet conversing. and conversing ... and conversing.. no it doesn't really ever stop!
So how do we take our experts and implement new processes? I like the news assignment concept of collaboration- but I also like the idea of opening our wikis to citizen input and adding citizen bloggers to our websites. I also think we need to open the content of what we are talking about like the news media is doing with their story ideas- what does our public want to discuss? How do they want to discuss. We have to stop the “Let me name the process” (look, here’s a great reader’s advisory for teens) and begin letting new ideas flow … we don’t have to worry about if they aren't ours...
Here's the notes from Andy's presentation that inspired me- hope he does the same for you.
o In charge of web 2.0 strategies
o Old model for publishing: had to be part of the main stream media- own the company, broadcasters, billboard owner, had to depend on someone else’s company to get the word out. Even the earlier day of Intranet you needed technical skills, graphics skills.. etc
o With web 2.0 anyone can publish with the new classes of tools sand software
o Read-write web or We media (NY term?)
o Time magazine was off- should have been “us” or “we” not “you”
o Democratization of content- basically social software is a way for people to share each other’s original content
A Nancy thought—marketers need to look at the “other” sites for target audiences smaller long tail audiences
Did the YouTube videos highlighting political bloopers really create the losses? Maybe not but the tools are having an impact on policies and how things are being done
He loves Pew stats from Lee- young people are blogging but African Americans and Latinos are more likely to post online than whites. Lower income groups are entering content online. Reflecting the way America really works.
“Twitter is taking over the universe.”
“Currently more bloggers in China than all the blogs written in English.”
Does media hates bloggers? visa versa? They did, there is still some residuals but basically bloggers have become valuable and media has its pluses that attracts bloggers thus a new world is opening up...
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Let’s face it the traditional media is now using the same tools- blogs, inews, etc… to improve the transparency to show how they do things “pulling up the kimono” difficult process but important because it will allow that public dialogue and improve the communication
**Note to self- libraries going from experts in the field to having dialogues with their audiences… As a marketer, I have to go from advocator to empower the thoughts of people – allowing people to create the content. Why can’t we?
Broadcasting editorial meetings then encourage blogging about the meetings…
BBC – creating a system to comment on the leading news story of the day- allows the producers to see the buzz words and then can take the best rated comments and put ontop poof their news [page--- peppering the stories with quotes from the public- mining ideas….
CNN – ireport
Focusing on multimedia- video distributed to producers and can mine videos from the public- playing “the numbers” day. Sometimes can have serious impact- like the student who shot from his camera phone of the shootings from VT- in minutes uploaded the story around the world.
New citizen syndication around to sell videos.
USA Tod ay p created website around social networking- embedded into every page- syndicating blogs – users can comment on any story- early complainers- now using. People don’t like change but will use the social networking tools to complain- how doe sit get better than that?
OhmyNews English.ohmynews.com
Korean newspaper- 20% of space dedicated to citizen journalists- if you submit on consistent basis then you get paid- a ful 20% of columns are dedicated to citizens
Harvard global voices online- global network of bloggers bridge blogging- no one single person can absorb everything that is going on in the world- so let the bloggers follow issues in various parts of the worlds. Reuters is now working with them – bloggers re helping because they know the topics and are in the areas- alternative to main stream but developed into partnerships….
Voteguide- followed candidates with videos to get everything they said related to policy – using YouTube and blip and broke up the speeches according to topics – to allow people to track . Wil it go nationally?
e-democracy.org E debate- candidates submitted text, video, voicemail… public rated responses, users uploaded a nd tagged, used aggregated software – could be replicated on Ntional LEVEL
newasignment.net –Pros and amateurs collaborate together - public helps to frame, write and interacts with journalists- even serves as editors….
Goog philosophy to adopt for your own: My readers know more than I do. And if we all take advantage that of that, in the best sense of the expression, we will all be better informed.
Equal opportunities to participate in the conversation – that means people need the tools, the ability and skills- there a few institutions better than libraries to do this.
Open piloting (They are using the Google model…)
Invite public to help create new broadcasting programming
Show the rough drafts before they are ready for prime time
A focus group, but everyone’s welcome
“Rough Cuts” new shows … another show ”Bryant Park”
started right from the first question of what should we c all this show…
****Note to self- maybe it shouldn’t be tell us your three reasons why you love your library , maybe it should be tell us what you really think about your library….
www.Radioopensource.org - is where they got the idea. They embodies an open source process to produce pubic radio. Can join as community members and pitch ideas….
One in 12 are publishing blogs.. question is that considering MySpace as a blog or separate blog?
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