Beth Kanter is an eminent non-profit, well, everything, I gather, though she calls herself “a trainer, coach, and consultant to nonprofits and individuals in effective use of technology”. In any case, she’s passionate about Cambodia, and Cambodian orphans in particular. She’s currently participating in something called America’s Giving Challenge:
My goals are to raise money for the Sharing Foundation (and with your help get $50,000 for the Sharing Foundation), share stories about the Sharing Foundation and its supporters, and
share what I’m learning about using social networks to raise money as an extra organizational activist on my blog over the course of the 50-day giving challenge.
Apparently the top 8 people with the most unique donors for their cause will win $50,000 each (to, you know, donate to their charities), while 100 charities will receive $1,000 based on the number of donations they get through the Challenge.
To donate, go here (I know it references Michele, but I gather she’s handling project manager duties). Beth’s also started a wiki on her campaign, where you can learn more, particularly if you’re a bloggy or podcasty type. And if you’re a Facebooky sort, you can always join Beth’s Facebook cause.
As I’ve mentioned on more than one occasion, Julie and I have been working on an eBook. Version 1.0 is finally done, and today we’re launching it. It’s called Getting to First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook (quite a mouthful, I know), and we’ve created a dedicated website for it at SocialMediaReady.com.
I assembled (“composed” sounds way too sophisticated) the background music in GarageBand. Watching the video again, it feels kind of like a government public service announcement. “Hey kids, don’t do drugs! Do social media marketing instead!”
If you prefer text, the blurb goes something like:
If you’re a marketer in a company, agency or small business, Getting to First Base, A Social Media Marketing Playbook will show you how to market products and services through social media channels like blogs, media-sharing sites and social networks. The book provides tips, tricks and lots of real world case studies, both from our own work and our colleagues.
Social Media Creators, Review the Book
If you’re a blogger, podcaster, YouTube star or whatever, we’re more than happy to send you a free copy to review. Just email us at ebook@capulet.com and we’ll hook you up.
One of the things I struggled with in writing the book was what to call (to borrow Jay Rosen’s phrase) “the people formerly known as the audience”. We sometimes use ‘bloggers’ to stand in for everybody, sometimes use “social media creators”, which is a bit dry, and sometimes used “new influencers”, which is a bit too slick.
In any case, drop us a line and we’ll mainline you a virtual copy.
I owe a ton of friends, colleagues, clients and contributors copies of the book–they’ll be forthcoming in the near future.
Nothing Says Christmas Like Social Media Marketing
If you’re super keen to buy, great! Just visit our buy page and click the pretty red and orange button. Make the marketer or small business owner in your life extra-happy this holiday season. It’s US $29, which works out to a mere CAN $29.23. Plus, we’re donating a dollar from every book to The David Suzuki Foundation.
Other next steps for those who might be interested:
Last year, while attempting to get a handle on the increasing number of social media, uh, mediums, I created this diagram. I’ve used it fairly often in talks to try to explain the different ways people are interacting on the web.
Robert Scoble recently blogged about what amounts to a 2007 version of that diagram. It now has twice as many spokes, and he calls it a social media starfish. You can watch a very enthusiastic Robert run through the diagram in this video:
It’s a great articulation of the evolving social media landscape, and it’s something we’ll have to update every six months or so. I don’t think Robert’s got a pretty version of this diagram anywhere, so I made him one:
Can I Use It in Our eBook?
I have an ulterior motive in making the diagram. Julie and I are writing an eBook which, gods willing, will be available at the end of the month. It’s called “Getting to First Base: Social Media Marketing Strategies and Tactics”. We’re trying to write a primer and guidebook–based on our own experiences and all the best stuff we can rip off from other people–on social media marketing. Robert’s diagram would make a nice addition, so hopefully he’ll let me use it.
I’ll be blogging about the eBook more when we’re closer to launching it, but I figured I might as well mention it. It’s more motivation to get the thing finished, after all. If you’re a blogger and you want to review it, we’ll be giving away plenty of free copies.
We also have an, uh, introductory offer of sorts where you can get the thing for a mere $29 (currency to be determined) instead of the usual $49. You just need to give us your name and email address so that we can let you know when we launch.
For the past year, Third Tuesday/Third Monday have provided the social media community in Toronto and Ottawa with a monthly opportunity to gather, hear from great speakers and talk about new developments in social media and social software…
Several people, including Tod Maffin, Kate Trgovac, Tanya Davis, and Darren Barefoot (when he returns from his global jaunt) have said that they are willing to pitch in to make this happen.
They’re organizing the first event later this month, which I’ll attend if I’m able (I’m back in Vancouver for two weeks in August). Leave a comment on Joseph’s blog to express your interest.
Aussie Trevor Cook has updated his excellent guide to social media, which now weighs in at 57 pages. If you don’t know your Twitter from your Feedburner, this introductory document is a great place to start. Here’s an excerpt on Facebook:
Hopefully sites like the newly-launched MyLifeBrand77 will become the one-stop portal for all of the various networking sites we belong to (or should do if we are to keep abreast of our industry and our profession). According to Daniel Scalisi, EVP of MyLifeBrand, it isn’t another social network, but rather a social platform which enables people to aggregate and better manage their favorite social networks and services, as well as enabling communities to develop a fully branded relevant community.
In the next version, I would like to see some more information on ROI for businesses getting into blogging, podcasting, Second Life et al. That information still seems to be pretty thin on the ground, but Trevor could start with Charlene Li’s excellent work on the subject.
I’m not sure about this service, so I’m going to withhold judgement for the moment. I’m not a big Twitter user, nor am I a huge gossip, so I’m sure how I’d use Truemors.
Maybe they should have launched a whole network of very vertical rumour sites, like http://britney.truemors.com or http://hilaryclinton.truemors? Then you could get the otaku for a particular topic to coalesce around it in a very targeted way. Mind you, otaku already have their own communties where they talk about rumors along with everything else. So, I’m not quite sure where Truemors fits in.
Truemors has Digg-like voting where you push rumours up and down the page. To try it out, I posted a rumour linking to a DeSmogBlog story. It’s not really a rumour, but I couldn’t think of any at the moment and didn’t want to make one up (Beatles reunion tour? Germany bisecting again?). I ‘dugg’ the rumour up, and asked Julie to do the same on her computer.
As it turns out, Julie couldn’t vote the rumour up. She got a message saying that she’d already voted on that story. I can only assume (and somebody can correct my ignorant assumption here) that Truemors is using IP addresses to track votes. They’re also using cookies (I just checked in Firefox), but apparently IP addresses trump cookies, or something.
That doesn’t happen with Digg, or other voting sites, and it shouldn’t. Otherwise roommates or families or (in some cases) coworkers couldn’t ever vote up the same stuff. I assume it’s just a bug they need to work out.
UPDATE #2: Huh, Truemors already killed the aforementioned post. It pretty much said “Truemors counts votes based on IP addresses, so we can’t vote from two different computers on the same IP address. Bummer.”
That kind of blows. If they’re going to heavily moderate content (particularly content which points out bugs in their system), then where are their community guidelines articulating their moderation policy? Did I violate their terms of use?
We see that Flickr isn’t itself perfect, and certain acknowledge that it has been imperfectly adapted in this exercise for a second life as an online news site. However, we feel that there’s much to be learned, and frankly, improved, in traditional media sites, and you could do worse than to copy one of the most successful sites to appear in recent years.
