A Journey In Social Media

The Hosting Problem

So, we've hit a little speed bump in our uber social media journey here, and it has to do with finding a hosting model that works.

Sounds like a little thing, but it's turning out to be a big thing.

And, I'm guessing you'll run into this one as well, so you might want to follow this thread.

We Are Now Corporate Legit

I'd like to say we had a well-defined plan to move from prototype to pilot to early adopters to mainstream, but -- like all things web 2.0-ish -- things happen at their own pace, and -- occasionally -- in ways that you don't expect.

This week, I think we made a phase transition from "interesting project" to "corporate legit".

Let me explain.

Clearspace Alternatives

I don't know if all of you know how blogs work on TypePad, but we all get a stats panel, and we can see where people are coming in.

One of the most popular avenue, not surprisingly, is searches.  And if you click on the link, you can see what people were searching for.

I've gotten more than a few hits on "Clearspace alternatives" or similar, so I thought I'd offer my thoughts on this.

And, no, I'm not getting paid by Jive Software for this ;-)

Here Come The Big Communities

I believe that the ultimate value of social media revolves around a central idea: communities.  Groups of like-minded people sharing information and collaborating in unstructured ways.  For me, that's the mother lode, the jackpot, the singular goal.

When we talk about our social media initiatives, I've brainwashed everyone to talk in terms of communities: community identification, formation, growth, development, management, leverage, etc.

And we're starting to see some proposals for some pretty big and hairy communities start to form.

The Corporate Blogger Conundrum

Part of using social media as a business strategy is using SM techniques (e.g. blogging) to reach customers and influence perspectives.

I am a corporate blogger.  All false modesty aside, I am considered a very successful and influential corporate blogger in our little corner of the market.  If you're interested, see here.

But we're wrestling with some interesting strategic problems as we try to scale corporate blogging, and integrate it better into other things going on.

And, like most things, there are no easy answers.

Learning To Swim

I've written before how I believe that social media success has everything to do with new behaviors, skills, roles, etc. -- it's not so much about the platform and technology (although you DO need a place to do this), it's more about how you use it.

And -- like all behaviors -- we've noticed a certain reticence in the masses to adopt many of these new behaviors.

Sure, we have our early (and vocal) adopters.  But for every one of those, there are literally hundreds who are watching, and not participating.

And we've given a LOT of thought on how to improve the situation.

Private Vs. Public Spaces

One of the things I try to do here is to capture the interesting debates we have over guiding principles associated with our Social Media effort, expose you to the thinking, and recap what we did and why.

My only hope is that you'll get some value from the discussions you're likely to enter into, and might be a bit forewarned as to the various tradeoffs.

We've just crossed the threshold on this discussion, so here's what happened.