Rebecca Krause-Hardie

Writing Project - 25 words on Social Media

Liz Strauss just posted a blog about getting to the essence of an idea related to social media.  She asks us to write 25 words about something we observe.  

Here's my take:
 
social media extravaganza
where to start?
welcome tai chi mind
feel feet grounded to the earth
mind slows down
begin listening
follow one inspiration
now

What's yours?

Come Participate in "We Are The Media!"

I am a religious reader of Beth's Blog.  And there is rarely a day that I don't learn something interesting there.  And Beth is one of those amazing people that shares everything she knows with you. 

But this post isn't exactly about Beth, its about the sharing part. I learn something and share it here and with clients. All over the web people are doing amazing things.  Just look at Brooklyn Museum, or the Victoria and Albert Museum, or the Boston Symphony, or the New York Philharmonic  (shameless plug here).   Can we help Beth and NTEN and all our friends in the non-profit community? 

Here's how:

NTEN and the Non-profit community, spear-headed by Beth Kanter are creating:

We Are Media Project:

The Social Media Starter Kit for Nonprofits

There is a hugh amount of expertise in the non-profit community and the goal of the We Are The Media project is to harness that great collective of knowledge and experience and share the love.  This month is focusing on the social media tool box.

As the site header says...

Starting October 6th, WeAreMedia participants are going to unabashedly focus on the tools and collectively build the nonprofit social media tool box. Now that we've laid the strategic framework in the other modules, we can have some fun. So come join us ... it will be easy and quick. And, we'll be awarding special prizes for participation.

Have you experimented with any of these things?

• RSS Feeds
• Social Bookmarking
• Commenting
• Blogs
• Podcasting
• Photo Sharing
• Video Sharing
• Crowd Sourcing
• Lifestreams
• Social Networks
• Fundraising Apps
• Fundraising Widgets

Please go over to We Are The Media, join the group and join the conversation.  Your 2 cents makes a difference!

Being an interesting Blogger

Blogging for Community Building
One of the key tools that people use for online community building is blogging. We have this idea that if we build a blog that people will come flocking to our doors to buy tickets and attend performances.  If only it were that simple.

Being an Interested Blogger
I was reading a post today from Problogger about how to be an interesting blogger. The key take away for me in that post was about being interested in what you writing about and what your readers are interested in.  Being interested in your readers.  Are we writing because we love it, or because we are really intrigued with something?

Who is Your Blog Audience?

Audience in the KKL
Originally uploaded by Archangeli

Chris Brogan talks about this in his post today, with the really good point that we need to be clear about who our audience is and stay focused on writing about what they want to hear about.

Who is My Audience?
Well that really got me thinking.  Who am I writing for?  I'm really interested in knowing about how people in the arts are using social media tools.  What works, what doesn't. What can we learn from others using social media? I've mostly been interviewing people in this process.  But I think I need to branch out and try other things as well. I think my audience is people interested in the same things.

What are you looking for?  What interests you?

Openess, Trust, Value, Give : 4 Secrets of Community

More from MW2008 - 

Shelley Bernstein, from the Brooklyn Museum gave a really super talk last week about the learnings and changes in approach at the museum in the last year.

The biggest take away for me was the idea of changing from an institution voice to a personal one, and how that change has manifested.  While this is not a new idea to me, the elegance with which Shelley presented the case for personal voice, really came home to me.

Her talk weaved 4 concepts together:

1. Openness
2. Trust
3. Value
4. Give

Opening the door to community participation allows unanticipated things to happen.  Trusting that the community won’t steal your art, or whatever your worst fear is, allows them to bring unique and valuable perspectives.  By valuing their perspective and insights, you get help in finding ways to be accessible and interesting to your community. By giving back, you can connect with and understand your community better.  And around it goes. 

A great example Shelley talked about began with a blog post about the Schenk House.  The post inspired a comment by someone who once lived there, and opened this whole door of discovery and connection for everyone involved. The openness in the blog drives home the idea of community. A kind of conversation that is so rewarding and would never have happened in the past.

And speaking of GIVING, 
Shelley asks all of us to help with their Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition

Says Shelley:

Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition is a photography exhibition that invites Brooklyn Museum’s visitors, the online community, and the general public to participate in the exhibition process. Taking its inspiration from the critically acclaimed book The Wisdom of Crowds, in which New Yorker business and financial columnist James Surowiecki asserts that a diverse crowd is often wiser at making decisions than expert individuals, Click! explores whether Surowiecki’s premise can be applied to the visual arts—is a diverse crowd just as “wise” at evaluating art as the trained experts?

So....now we need a diverse crowd. If you know everything about art or nothing at all, we really need you to help us out. Create an account, log in and evaluate some of the works that have been submitted during our open call. Your participation will shape the exhibition, opening at the Museum on June 27, 2008. Evaluation can take a while, but you can do as little or as much as you want *and* you can log in anytime throughout the eval period which ends May 23.

Register and get started here:
www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/click/

It would also be super helpful if you'd pass the word along to others. We really need a diverse crowd and that means we need evaluators with range of knowledge (including none!) and varied geographic locations (including outside of Brooklyn!)

Now Go Curate!

Thanks Shelley! 

Blogging Insights with Brian and Mike

I'm at MW2008 conference in Montreal, and I’ve just been sitting in a workshop on blogging run by Brian Kelly  &  Mike Ellis.

Its exciting to see the diversity of people in the session – coming from North America, Europe and New Zealand, and yet the similarity of needs and goals... 

Session highlights:

Challenges to blogs:  How do we...

• overcome institutional inertia
• build traffic
• build enthusiam
• take on one more thing
• make it sustainable
• overcome restrictions on the official institutional voice

Why Blog? For museums, specific reasons to use blogs suggested in the room include:

• giving curator’s personal voice
• measurable outcomes
• replace or complement existing websites
• increase visibility
• get feedback from audience
• easy and cheap
• build community & relationships
• build traffic
• exhibition and event promotion
• blending:  generating dialogue  both before and after audience walks in the door

What Makes a Good Blog?:

• Being Passionate
• Having a personality – a defined tone of voice
• Finding a niche
• Two way engagement
• Intelligent posts
• Finding new angles not regurgitating
• Link a lot, and read links you ‘lunk’ to  (that's Mike's word)

Differences between Blogs and Official Websites:

• official website is well official, formal, marketing driven and branded, impersonal
• blog:  unofficial, informal, personal, don’t need IT dept. to update and change

A few other really good points that came up..

• Use the right technology -  the technology should be invisible... so that you can really focus on the message
• Editorial policy -  respond to every comment on your blog

Some Great Comments I heard:

“Blogging, in this context, is about discussion and engagement.  It’s not about publishing and workflow."  Brian   

"Much easier to seek forgiveness then permission"  Mike

"You can’t mediate every message anymore.  To be in this environment need to play like the other players”

"You’ve got to be opinionated"

“I’m of the opinion that we don’t need to think about why to do a blog, but we jump in and have a go at it.. – that’s the spirit of web 2.0”  in response to question about overcoming the need for approval from higher ups..."   Gail

What else did you hear?   What would you add to these concepts?