Posted by Woolfie in Communities on January 29th, 2007 at at 3:31 pm
When communities are dispersed in any sense, things can fragment and diffuse until, poof, there is nothing left. Migrating groups to online space can also be a “lost in space” experience if there is no structure in that time or space.
Online events, like offline events, can provide a focal point for an online migration, or regular punctuation for communities to stop, reflect, touch base or work intensively for a short period of time. Like a tall cool beer in the afternoon, they can make a break from ongoing activities to connect and focus. Or like a workshop, they can focus a group on tasks and deliverables within a fixed time frame.
Read on
Posted by Woolfie in Communities, eLearning on January 29th, 2007 at at 3:28 pm
In the late 90’s there was a lot of energy around “virtual communities.” They were touted as the ultimate web deployment, the key to online commerce and later online education. Early adopters swarmed sites and racked up web hits in the millions.
But then there was a deafening silence. Commerce and media sites began closing down their discussion boards. Even busy boards like CNN’s were shuttered. Was the online community movement dead?
Read on
Posted by Woolfie in Communities on January 29th, 2007 at at 3:25 pm
| Tool
|
Defining Criteria
|
Use For:
|
| Conferences |
A collection of member posts over time in a linear sequence |
- Ongoing casual conversations
- Ongoing focused, topic-centric conversations
- Brainstorming
- Dialog or advocacy
- Building relationships
- Story telling
- “Fun” topics like “just 3 words”
|
| Forums |
A collection of member posts over time in a threaded sequence |
- Q&A, FAQ building
- Posting resource information (URLs, quotes, etc.)
- Conversations that more more 1 on 1 than for larger groups such as a student/teacher interaction.
|
| Email Newsletters |
Something that appears in your mailbox |
- Update members on community status
- Draw participation and increase traffic (use links)
- Provide content for member response in conferences and forums
|
| Email |
Something that appears in your mailbox |
- Communicate one-on-one with a member (such as dealing with problems, questions that are not of interest to rest of membership, etc.)
- Invite people to participate in a community
- Provide community rules or other introductory information.
|
| Chat |
Things that happen instantly |
- “Get to Know”
- Provide access to guest members or celebrities and experts
- Build relationships
- Live “events” such as seminars, q&a, etc. (limited interactivity with higher number of participants)
|
| Internet Broadcast Events |
Something you to the web to view, synchronous, limited interactivity |
- Communicate synchronously, one-on-many with a larger audience.
- Can archive for later viewing
- Can utlize streaming media (audio/video)
- Disseminate information
- Poll
- Moderated public or private Q&A
|
Posted by Woolfie in Communities, Glossary on January 29th, 2007 at at 3:06 pm
-A-
Archive - (or archived topics) Topics from an online interaction that have been closed for participation, but kept as a record of the interaction. Chat archives are often called transcripts.
Asynchronous Interaction -Online discussions occurring independent of time or location. Participants send messages to a central location (discussion forum) where they are archived for later retrieval from other participants. Examples of asynchronous interaction are web based bulletin boards and email.
Read on
Posted by Woolfie in Communities on January 29th, 2007 at at 3:01 pm
By writing in this - asynchronous online ‘communities’ - context, it is possible to learn a great deal about oneself precisely because a huge amount of what revolves around that writing is all in one’s head. And there is no better way to take out and examine what is in one’s head than to write about it. Because humans generally mediate their perceptions through language, preserving and ordering the language around one’s thoughts serves an essential function of simultaneously historicizing and analyzing what is in one’s head.
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Posted by Woolfie in Communities on January 29th, 2007 at at 2:59 pm
People have been using online spaces since the beginning of the Internet to communicate. That includes prior to the World Wide Web, when BBS, or electronic bulletin boards and email loops connected folks across time and space. (For a good short history of the Internet, see http://www.dsv.su.se/internet/documents/internet-history.html). Many found that they began to form bonds of one sort of another. Today, the online forum tracking service, ForumOne (http://www.forumone.com/index/index.php/) had more than 270,000 distinct communities and forums registered at their site in 1999. (The site no longer lists total numbers.) And many more remain unlisted.
Read on
Posted by Woolfie in Communities on January 29th, 2007 at at 2:54 pm
As with any communication technology or medium, the ideal is to match the right tool for the audience. Is the need for one-to-one communications? One to many? Many to many? Is the goal to build social bonds? Brainstorm and critique? Accomplish a specific goal? Persuade? Build an audience? All are possible with the net. Some entail building bonds through community, some more simple application of communication tools. Here are some Internet avenues for connecting with audiences. Some considerations for what works for which audience are noted.
Posted by Woolfie in Advertising, Marketing on January 23rd, 2007 at at 12:52 pm
I’ve run a lot of pay per click campaigns in my day, and done quite a bit of search engine optimization for both huge and small web sites. One common misconception I often get from clients when they get their reports is that Pay per Click marketing should always have a higher conversion rate then Organic Search traffic. They think something must be wrong with the pay per click. Read on
Posted by Woolfie in Marketing on January 23rd, 2007 at at 12:51 pm
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
It can be defined as the process by which a site’s rankings in the search engines are increased for the keywords it is optimized for. Good SEO keeps both the user and the search engine in mind. Things that look beautiful on your site may have a negative influence on your site’s ranking. Good content ensures return visits. Keyword enriched content ensures that people will find your site.
How many people do you know who actually look at the fourth or tenth page of a search engine’s results page? Most people only look at the first ten to twenty search results. SEO can get your site ranked in the first bundle of results. Read on
Posted by Woolfie in Marketing on January 23rd, 2007 at at 12:49 pm
Perhaps you’ve redesigned your website and are wondering if search engine marketing (SEM) or search engine optimization (SEO) is right for your business. Or maybe you don’t trust most search engine marketing companies to do what they claim they will do. Maybe you feel like you are running in place, spending money on SEM but not seeing the results you anticipated. Or you feel abused because your site is re-optimized every time you work with an SEO company and still no results.
This article will help you recognize the legitimate, ethical SEO and search engine marketing companies as opposed to those who are making unsubstantiated claims. Armed with this info, you will be able to sort out the claims an SEM company makes and drill into the claim enough to expose the truth. Read on