Top Ten Must Read links of the week

I'm kinda losing the plot lately, with all my recent travel and getting ready for Buzz2009, but I can't not share a few really fantastic recent posts I've read / conversations I've been following. I've shared most of these via Twitter/Friendfeed but I wanted to make sure you didn't miss them. Truly MUST READs - this will keep y'all busy for a while! In no particular order:

1. Dare to be weak: When it comes to engagement, social media is the art of the possible - by Rob Cottingham on Social Signal. All about starting small. Killer quote (of many):

"Understanding what you want to achieve - even if it's just to experiment and learn more about the platform and what you can do there - doesn't just help you shape your initiative at the outset; it's the only way of gauging whether you're succeeding."

2. Tweeting With Your Twitter Community: How To Participate In A Twitter Chat - Jeff Hurt on Twitip (again!). Fantastic "how to" about chats on Twitter, including a handy list of tools and existing chats by topic.

"With some practice, hashtags and one of these third party Twitter applications listed below, even beginners can tune-in and participate in a robust Twitter discussion."

3. Reflections on Social Business - by Peter Kim. Just the start of developing the construct for "social business design". Check out the links he mentions in particular. Killer quote:

"Social business design is a mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive way of considering how a corporation, business unit, or project can create and capture value from today's emerging technologies and evolving operating environment. The social business design framework captures ecosystem (community), hivemind (culture), dynamic signal (collaboration), and metafilter (content). Putting these into play creates improved business outcomes as well as emergent outcomes. Measurement provides the backbone to the entire framework, as driving change requires proof."

4. Online Community - 25 Motivations and Incentives For Getting Involved - By Buzz Canuck. Killer quote:

"Having too few incentives for participation is a recipe for building a ghost town of community. Tapping too many motivations in one platform and you get a bouillabaisse of confusion."

5. Community Alone Isn’t Enough - by Dave Fleet. See the comments too - see what you think! Killer quote:

"For companies, however, you can’t only give back. You need to withdraw push for yourself, too. Community alone doesn’t pay the bills. Revenue and growth does."

6. What about the other Social Media ROI? - by Douglas Karr on The Marketing Technology Blog. Great list of things that can be considered ancillary ROI for social media efforts.

7. Death By Association: Do Association Leaders Consider Social Media Their Competitor, Partner Or Neither? - by Jeff Hurt on Midcourse Corrections. Great recap of a serious discussion a few days ago on Twitter about whether social media poses a threat to associations.

8. What Tyler Durden Can Teach You About Twitter And Social Media - by Shea Bennett on Twittercism. This is just truly awesome, and not just because Fight Club is one of my all-time favorite movies. :)

9. Clues to Authenticity - by Deirdre Reid on Reid All About It. Deirdre asks us, what does it mean for an organization to be authentic? Please do comment, I know you have thoughts on this. I do too of course, as do others, and I will as soon as I get the chance! Killer quote:

"We learn to listen to criticism and dissent and not overlook the uncomfortable. We face up to reality. This is not always easy, but the right thing to do usually isn’t. Does your organization go through this process? Is it listening to all its constituent voices, including those that usually go unheard?"

10. Is relevance enough? By Lisa Junker on Acronym. Whoa. Great argument raging. Is it all semantics? Killer quote by Jeff De Cagna (though I'm very much on this side of the fence):

"Great organizations don't aspire to relevance."

Enjoy!
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New Media - Old Risks

Here's the second in a series of guest posts by our risk manager bud Leslie White of Croydon Consulting, LLC. Follow her on Twitter at @ltwhite. I'll also take this opportunity to let you know that Leslie has kindly agreed to work with us at SocialFish so that we can offer her guidance if you need help with drafting your own social media policies. We're also writing a white paper with Leslie about the hot topic that is Risk Management and Social Media Policies (yeah, I know, we need a pithier title). We'll let you know more about that soon!



This post is a follow-up to my first guest post (thanks Maddie), The Hidden Risks of Social Media – It’s Not What You Think, which discussed the business risks of social media. Business opportunities are lost while not participating in social media, and harm can arise from participating badly (not engaging the right communities and participants). However, I didn’t discuss the legal liability issues - which are what scares people the most.

Every social media presentation raises the risk question. The responses range from “don’t worry, be happy” to "it's the end of the world as we know it (Danger! Danger! Will Robinson!)". At the recent Blog Potomac, the speakers’ answers were on the lower end of the risk continuum - not surprising from people whose careers are built on social media. While social media risks are not cataclysmic, they exist and can have adverse reputational and financial consequences IF the exposures are not acknowledged and managed well.

According to Elizabeth Engel’s post, Shel Holtz said at Blog Potomac while discussing the barriers to social media, “2-3 years later none of what the lawyers warned us about has happened.” True, we have avoided the apocalypse so far, but we do not yet know all of the legal risks since it takes years for litigation to work its way through the United States court system. For example, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act in 1996 where Section 230 (47 U.S.C.§230) essentially bars claims to hold the service provider of an interactive computer service (your association) liable for tortuous or unlawful information that someone else disseminates through that service. The act seems fairly simple, but thirteen years later it is still being litigated.

Last month, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals partially overturned the 2005 dismissal of a case against Yahoo! The appeals court in Cecilia L. Barnes vs. Yahoo! Inc. (May 7, 2009) ruled that the plaintiff’s allegations of a breach of contract by Yahoo! for failing to remove offensive material is not precluded by Section 230. This means the original case goes back to the U.S. District Court for litigation – costly for both parties. Is this court decision disastrous? No – but your association had better review its complaint procedures and train the appropriate personnel to respond appropriately. [More on the case here].

Social media is media, so that is where the risks are – defamation (libel or slander), disparagement, invasion of privacy, copyright or trademark infringement, and plagiarism - to name a few. Associations also have to worry about antitrust allegations and professional liability exposures from any standard setting, certification or accreditation activities. Media exposures have existed since the first spoken or printed word. However, the nature and complexity of these risks have changed with the adoption of social media.

First, associations have lost the illusion of control of what people are saying about your organization. Associations still have the same level of control over “official” information distributed or published through its Web sites, magazines, newsletters, training materials, and body of knowledge materials. But now staff and members are writing blogs, commenting on blogs, making videos and publishing material about your association and industry. People were doing these things before; you just did not know about it. One advantage of social media that is often overlooked is that now you can listen and find these conversations with just a little effort.

A more significant change is the speed with which this information travels through the universe. In the electronic world, information becomes “viral” because it can spread so quickly. Before, conversations involved a few disgruntled members or employees, now via the Internet and telecommunications the word spreads rapidly throughout the universe. Conversations take on a life of their own and your association cannot control them. But you can decide how to respond to the negatives and extol the positives. A strong social media strategy will help you manage these risks.

Social media is too important for associations to avoid or abandon due to fear of litigation, but a healthy respect for the risks is a good thing. I do believe the risks can be catastrophic IF you do not manage the risks proactively. Most exposures can be handled by policies (social media, code of conduct, crisis communication, and others) but all policies need to be supplemented with training. Most people mess up accidently because they did not know any better. Help your staff and members become smart social media participants. A little planning and training goes a long way. Good luck.

[photo credit]
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NTEN Water Cooler Social Media Chat 6/25

Your friendly neighborhood Socialfish will be "IN" the NTEN Office Hours Communications Chat Room every Thursday (that's today!!) at 3 pm EST. Got burning questions about social media strategy? Or just want to hang out and shoot the breeze and get a break from work? Now's your chance!

Last week I took some time off, but Lindy reports that the discussion mainly centered around wikis and how difficult they can be to get off the ground. An Ideastorm-like model may be of more appeal to get people participating. Today we're on our way to Charlottesville but we hope our regular crowd will hang out round the water cooler as per usual.

Whether the conversation is deep or just a nice break from the dullness of your daily routine, though, we're all about sharing. Pick our brains, we'll tell you our take on things.

Click HERE for the chat room if it's not working well embedded below.

[chat room removed after chat]

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How to Think Like A Social Media Marketing Genius

Busy bee this week - Boston today, Philly tomorrow, Charlottesville Friday... but here's something to keep you busy in case I don't get a chance to add my usual volume of stuff to your Google Reader. (Sorry about that by the way, I have tried to do less blogging but it's just my natural rhythm, can't help it! Just so much good stuff out there and things to think about!)

Anyway this one is a really great slidedeck by the prolific Beth Kanter. Enjoy - and share!

Craig's List Nonprofit Bootcamp

View more OpenOffice presentations from kanter.

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Twitter Search in Plain English

The latest awesomeness from Common Craft.



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Trying to take a break.

Not very good at it I'm afraid. Hat tip to Randi Sumner for the LOL cartoon. :)

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NTEN Water Cooler Social Media Chat 6/18

Your friendly neighborhood Socialfish will be "IN" the NTEN Office Hours Communications Chat Room every Thursday (that's today!!) at 3 pm EST. Got burning questions about social media strategy? Or just want to hang out and shoot the breeze and get a break from work? Now's your chance!

Last week, we had really full house for some reason, which is great! We talked about...

- the Facebook vanity url situation (which I am sure will have gone through several more permutations by the time this is posted - and oh look!)

- buddypress.org, which creates a social network from your Wordpress blog.

- building a Drupal social network from scratch

- BlogPotomac

- homebases versus outposts and how many associations still make the mistake of starting with the tool rather than the objective

- listserves (ugh)

- ASAE's Technology Conference versus NTEN'S Nonprofit Technology Conference

- our forthcoming 80's party in Toronto. #ASAE09 FTW!

(I had to look up what "FTW" means, btw, so it's OK if you do too.)

Whether the conversation is deep or just a nice break from the dullness of your daily routine, though, we're all about sharing. Pick our brains, we'll tell you our take on things.

Click HERE for the chat room if it's not working well embedded below.

[chat room removed after chat]

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What's all the Buzz about?

Get this badge.

Yeah yeah!

I am sure you've heard that Lindy and I, with the help of our smart and savvy SmartBrief friends, are working hard on getting ready for our Buzz2009 Social Media for Associations conference.

Here's the scoop.

It's a one-day conference on July 9th in downtown Washington DC. It's "the only event that ties cutting edge social media concepts and practices to the unique challenges of association management."

Really, you say? Why yes! Want proof?

We'll start the day with Andy Sernovitz doing the keynote. He's the original Word Of Mouth guru, and has a ton of association experience, which makes him doubly awesome.

Next up, we've put together a fantastic series of snapshots from associations who've done exciting things with social media - from a "problem solving" perspective, like member recruitment, energizing advocacy, building event buzz... Here's a teaser, but subscribe to the Buzz2009 blog to hear a lot more about associations working the social media machine. The panel will be moderated by Rob Birgfeld.

But wait! That's only the morning!

The "lunchtime special" will be a presentation by "The Man", Guy Kawasaki himself, talking about the brand new Alltop for Association Management he's built just for us... and for you! He will then moderate a panel of experts from the corporate world. Brendan Hart of National Geographic, Stacey Kane of California Tortilla, Stephanie Miller of Return Path, and Andy Sernovitz will talk about massive viral successes they have seen in their social media marketing efforts. For those of you who can't attend in person, this panel will be viewable live via a free webinar - check the site for details, to be posted soon.

After the panel, the webcast will end and here's the real reason you need to be in the room - you'll be able to ask Guy and the panel questions about how to apply their strategies for success to association-specific goals and objectives. How often does THAT happen? No, not very often!

Next comes Lindy's and my roundup session, where we'll focus and summarize the things we've learned so far and engage you in deeper, strategic ways that you can apply to your own problem-solving back at the ranch.

And just when you thought you couldn't take any more awesomeness, there's more! Jeremy Epstein will finish up the day with a really fun, practical session to give you plenty to think about and ideas to take home with you... But not til you've had a drink with us at the closing happy hour!

Do YOU want to:

- Recruit more members?
- Energize your events?
- Activate your community online?
- Reinvent publishing with online content models?
- Engage volunteers by leveraging your social capital?
- Raise money through social fundraising and micro-donations?
- Connect grassroots advocacy efforts with public conversations online?

Then this conference is for you.

Register here! Can't wait to dig in to all of this with you.


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On personal vs corporate branding

I was at BlogPotomac last week, and as you'd expect in a room full of bloggers, there were some great roundup posts. The speakers included Shel Holtz, Shireen Mitchell, Scott Monty, Liz Strauss, Shashi Bellamkonda and more.

Read this one in particular by Mahdi Gharavi, which gives a perfect, pretty straight recap of the speakers' main points. Each had some good nuggets to share.

And here's a more irreverent but fun recap by Elizabeth Engel that I loved.

The session I've been percolating, though, is the one on personal branding which was a debate of sorts (though they both seemed to agree on everything) between Aaron Brazell (@technosailor) and Amber Naslund (@Ambercadabra). I'm going to put in some quotes below recorded by PR Mom on her blog, which are a pretty good snapshot of how confusing this was. Aaron also posted a follow-up blog post which summarizes his view on the issue of personal branding.



Basically, both Aaron and Amber were of the opinion that personal brand should not trump corporate brand, if you work for a company. I disagree, perhaps just on the semantics of it all, and will explain why, as I did not have a chance to make a comment during the session.

First, I thought they did not adequately define what they meant by "personal brand", which seemed to be a reference to the Robert Scobles (and Scott Montys) of the world. Here are some excerpts by PR Mom:

Amber: It is the idea that personal brands have become a shortcut for building a real relationship that is not cared for. You are listing these bullet points about yourself and then others are just suppose to buy it. Your personal brand is not your own, it is not what you say it is, it is what the community says it is.

Aaron – the fundamental flaw is the concept of a personal brand, a personal brand is more about ego. A brand should be bigger than an individual person. Where do you position yourself, are you positioning yourself for yourself, or are you positing yourself for your company. Never allow your personal brand to eclipse the greater initiative, the greater goal of your company.

Amber: you cannot separate a personal brand with your professional personality, it’s about knowing who you are and representing it across everything you do. Your company is paying you to do your job, your reputations are tied together because it is for both of your benefit, it’s not about you, its about the company, can it enhance that, if you can- that means that you are being a good employee.

Aaron - It is okay to have a personal brand, but does not like the word personal brand because there is a cockiness about it that says it’s all about me vs. all about us. Your brand is controlled by your customers.

Amber – You can’t control what is put out there about you. Doesn’t matter what information you put out abut yourself, it matters what others say. We have a personal responsibility to know what is being said about us, should be doing vanity searches on Google to see what is being said about you.



So on the one hand, I was bemused because to me you can't NOT have a personal brand when we're talking about operating socially and professionally online. (And remember the context here is a room full of 150 bloggers, who by their very nature as bloggers, are all about having an online persona which is both personal and professional). Everything you do on the social web leaves a permanent mark, and the collective of all those traces of you become your personal brand, whether you want them to (or manipulate them to) or not. (I talked about this from the organizational point of view in this post on the paradoxes of identity in a digital age.) Your personal brand is actually your digital identity and everyone has one.



So obviously I agreed with what both said about, on the one hand, your brand being created by how others see you, and on the other, how "you cannot separate a personal brand with your professional personality". But those statements and the circularity of the conversation seemed to me contradict the overall point that both were making, which is that your personal brand shouldn't trump your being a "team player" and part of a company's brand. If your digital identity, or brand, is created by how others see you, then you have no choice in the matter. Sticking with corporate examples, Tony Hsieh IS Zappo's. Gary Vaynerchuck IS Wine Library - and Scott Monty is Ford (and the best thing about Ford, IMHO). Whether they are CEO's or PR dudes, they put a face to the brand and I think that is a good thing for the brand.

But those are extreme examples. What about the rest of us?

As bloggers, we have a vested interest in making sure our digital identity/personal brand is as authentic as possible, whether we represent ourselves, our own companies, several of our own companies, or someone else's company or organization - we're bloggers because we want to write stuff from our own personal point of view, regardless of who we work for, and we want to engage our readers, learn from them, converse with them, debate with them as individual voices.



If we work for a company or organization, whether we're bloggers or not, we collectively make that organization what it is, and this is more and more true in the digital age (although for smaller companies it's always been true). Companies are made up of individuals, and in the social web you can actually find out quite easily who those individuals are and -whoa - talk to them directly. Brands are created by the collective voice of those individuals, as well as customers, members, stakeholders, and anyone who cares. And yes, a huge Scoble-like personality inside an organization could hypothetically eclipse a corporate brand, but how often does that really happen? Each employee brings certain skills to the table, for a certain time, and then they go off and do something similar (or better) for some other organization. It's extremely rare that any one individual controls the corporate brand.

In my opinion, the corporate brand is becoming irrelevant, at least in terms of anyone blasting marketing messages out about it and hoping the public at large believes the hype. Don't believe me? Check Brand Tags and look up Ford. (Let's just say, despite Scott Monty's efforts, things don't look good.) So what do you do about that? Well...

As an individual, you can only be truly responsible for your own words and actions, and collectively, with others who care about the same things, whether they are products or services, you help build communities that gather around brands - and those are the brands that will last. But you don't need to have LESS of a personal brand to do that - in fact you need to have MORE of one, to tend it more carefully, to live it more honestly, to be an evangelist for the company you work for but only if you're real about it. (And if you can't evangelize your company, maybe it's time to find one that you can rave about - which means tending your personal brand even more in this economy!)





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BlogPotomac 2009

So I'm here at BlogPotomac, which is just as awesome as it was last year. As I'm in a room full of bloggers, I'll be lazy and not live blog it myself - I'll concentrate on Tweeting it. (Follow me @maddiegrant, the stream for the conference is #blogpotomac

Here's a great recap - refresh throughout the day to get the scoop.

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NTEN Water Cooler Social Media Chat 6/11

Your friendly neighborhood Socialfish will be "IN" the NTEN Office Hours Communications Chat Room every Thursday (that's today!!) at 3 pm EST. Got burning questions about social media strategy? Or just want to hang out and shoot the breeze and get a break from work? Now's your chance!

Last week, we had an intense debate about the value of membership and whether "free" really devalues membership. It was truly awesome, thanks everyone for participating!

Whether the conversation is deep or just a nice break from the dullness of your daily routine, though, we're all about sharing. Pick our brains, we'll tell you our take on things.

Click HERE for the chat room if it's not working well embedded below.

[chat room removed after chat]

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Is Twitter "information overload and interaction underload"?

You're probably familiar with Rohit Bhargava's image of the Five Stages of Twitter Acceptance.


I also like Jason Hiner's "Four Stages" version on ZD.net:

1. Confusion and indignation

>>>> 2. The first "Aha!" moment

>>>>>> 3. Remembering to Tweet

>>>>>>>> 4. Thinking in 140 characters.

Then this got me thinking about it all, now I'm almost two years into it. Maggie McGary recently posted, asking "Is The Twitter Honeymoon Period Over?" Her conclusion: "Twitter is starting to become information overload and interaction underload." I know exactly how she feels... namely that in some respects the more immersed you get into Twitter, the lonelier it feels.

Having said that, it seems to me like this is a cyclical and repetitive process which is entirely to do with the growth of the "stream" as you progress from newbie to power user, and your use of and experimentation with more sophisticated applications in order to handle that growth.

I've gone through several cycles:

I joined Twitter on September 6, 2007, after my first ASAE annual meeting in Chicago and the immense value I got out of meeting people via the Mozeo text backchannel set up by blogger bud Ben Martin. At first I listened closely to everyone I followed, and being a social, extroverted type, felt right at home. At this point the mobile value was huge, since I was following a small number of people whose tweets I could read on my phone.

Then, at one point fairly early on, I had to stop getting tweets delivered by SMS except for a handful of friends. That changed the way I listened to the stream and I started investigating Twitter apps. I found a myriad of great ways to find new and interesting people to follow, and I followed back everyone who followed me. I started seeing the value of link sharing, I connected it via RSS to my blog, I started feeding my stuff to my Facebook page. Over time, Twitter became less of a "cocktail party" and took over as my RSS reader. My follow/follower counts grew to over 500.

I kept finding great links and content and kept adding miscellaneous people, many of whom followed me back. I found more ways to connect to people - local to DC, tech scene, startups, anyone who had a Twitter app (or any other online app) I was using, brands, bloggers, social media mavens, more and more association friends and colleagues, nonprofiteers... I eventually decided I couldn't deal with the fact that the stream of tweets I was following had become a raging torrent. I spent a whole afternoon trying to cull the list of who I followed - I got it down from 2100 to 1300, which was hard for me, as I want to listen to everyone! I couldn't bear to unfollow anyone I knew personally, even if many of those people had yet to tweet or had dormant accounts. At this point, some of the Twitter apps I had checked out started developing group functionality - like Tweetdeck - but I unfortunately already had too many people in my stream to be able to divide them up into groups easily. My advice for you - do this before you are following more than a couple of hundred, or it's a bloody nightmare. (and same goes for Facebook. Sigh.)

I stopped automatically following people who followed me. I turned off @replies to people I didn't know, then later turned off all @replies not addressed to me (until they decided to mess with the settings and now I annoyingly have them back. No offense, but I really don't need to read a 25-tweet conversation between two people I know, regardless of the fact that I know them.) At some point, I had to automate my "thanks for following" messages because I couldn't do them fast enough to keep up and I thought it was important to say it anyway. Eventually, the backlash against auto-DM's became such that I recently stopped bothering (apologies to any new followers).

And right now, I'm currently in a new "brain freeze" stage, where I'm so busy that I feel like I'm missing out on lots of good stuff, I'm clicking on less links directly (have reverted to my Google Reader for blog reading because it's more controlled - which, by the way, I also cull regularly); I've learned to spot really good stuff by watching for multiple retweets; and I'm starting to learn to really use the search and trending functions better and better. Groupthink and the wisdom of crowds here we come.

Call it "Twitter fatigue", "Twitter blues" or something else, I'm actually OK with this cycle - or spiral - of growth and culling, of plateauing and adjusting, of diving in and pulling back to get the lie of the land. I think that one the one hand, Twitter is still a brand new communications tool, maybe just like an awkward teenager with zits, and as it grows and the apps around it adjust to that growth, it's going through its own organic development cycle. Whether we're actively involved in all that beta testing or we're just along for the ride, the kinks are being worked out as we use it, and that's not only ok, it's awesome to see.

Twitter is a simple concept with vastly complex applications and iterations and add-ons. It's easy to get frustrated, or overwhelmed, or simply lose the plot with it over time - but it's also easy to take a break. When the current become too strong for a while, just sit on a rock and catch some sun for a bit instead. And when you're ready to swim again, just start by responding to your friends! If there's one thing I remind myself, it's that "All community forms in small groups". Just start small again and roll with it.

Dang, look at that, that pesky incrementalist strikes again! :)

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Associations and voting

Votenet Solutions needs your help. If you hold elections, take their 5-minute survey. CEO Michael Tuteur says, "We’re working with AssociationExecs.com to capture a snapshot of average voter turnouts, voting costs and processes, trends in online voting and more." This will be annual so they can track trends, and of course you'll get a copy of the results.

I know questions about online voting processes (specifically) come up on the ASAE listserves all the time - so this could be interesting for you. The deadline for responses is Monday, June 15. Thanks!


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Authenticity means...

Authenticity means realizing there's no such thing as brand perfection. Brand perfection is dead. Some gems from this post by Douglas Karr:

- It’s no longer the choice of the brand manager or the CMO to maintain the integrity of the brand. It’s now the responsibility of every employee in the organization.

- If you want to kill a bad story in a search engine results page, you need to work much harder as a company to make some good stories make the results page instead. Much, much harder.

- The good news is that consumers don’t expect perfection anymore… but they do expect honesty.

- We can’t control the message unless we can live up to the expectations of what we wish our brand to portray. We can’t cover up our faults anymore, we have to be open about them.

Jeremiah Owyang summed it up quite nicely over a year ago:

What does Authentic, Transparent, or being Human look like?

- Training and entrusting employees to build real relationships using these tools
- Admitting when you’re wrong
- Asking the community for help, working with the community to build better products
- Showing your strengths –and weaknesses –in a public forum
- Showing more of unique side of the employees (that you invested in) in addition to your products, technology, and services
- Realizing the brand is actually owned by the community and not just the MarCom brand police

Authenticity means telling the truth. Maybe allowing everyone to tell the truth.

What else might it mean?



[photo credits]


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Quote of the week: Audience vs Community

"The difference between an audience and a community is which direction the chairs are pointing."

From Chris Brogan. Full post is here.

Apologies for lite blogging this week - will hopefully make up for it on Friday, when we'll be at BlogPotomac. Can.Not.Wait!

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NTEN Water Cooler Social Media Chat 6/4

Your friendly neighborhood Socialfish will be "IN" the NTEN Office Hours Communications Chat Room every Thursday (that's today!!) at 3 pm EST. Got burning questions about social media strategy? Or just want to hang out and shoot the breeze and get a break from work? Now's your chance!

Last week, we started out talking about techniques for shepherding members to new technology, meaning outposts, but also new tools in our homebases. Then we switched gears to content marketing, which brought up a bunch of interesting stuff on publishing frequency, the role of association staff as content creators, where should the member wall be... Sound like interesting conversation? Join us!

Whether the conversation is deep or just a nice break from the dullness of your daily routine, though, we're all about sharing. Pick our brains, we'll tell you our take on things.

Click HERE for the chat room if it's not working well embedded below.

[chat room removed after chat]

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Self-explanatory awesomeness

Check it out at minsh.net. Follow @minshdotnet to sign up for a fish!

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Small pebbles make big waves: 15 tips for fundraising on Twitter

Originally, I thought I'd write this post in order to summarize the comments to this post on Twitip, which posed the question of how to fundraise on Twitter and requested help from readers in the comments. But I actually found a lot more ideas after a quick Twitter request, so here's what I've come up with so far. If I've missed any, please list in the comments, and thank you to everyone who sent me links and ideas. These are in no particular order, and I haven't gone into any great detail - I figure you can get a better sense from exploring the links below about how these worked.

1. Use a hashtag to promote a link to make purchases. Retweet several times over a few days and ask followers to do the same. The hashtag will show all the other people interested in the cause and build a sense of community around it.

2. Get a celebrity to back your cause (this doesn't need to be a TV celeb, it could be someone big in social media or someone big in the relevant field or industry).

3. Offer a prize; each person to donate gets entered to win. Get someone (or a company) to donate something cool for the prize.

4. Use Tipjoy, a great twitter widget with a "goal thermometer".

5. Find people on Twitter interested in your cause. Search by keyword, but also by location (try NearbyTweets).

6. Try something like Tweetsgiving - set up a simple website that tells your story, use a ChipIn widget, tweet it, list and thank donors, make it shareable in lots of ways.

7. Make your campaign time-limited, to encourage people to donate now. Encourage small amounts.

8. Plan a Twestival - i.e. find sponsors for a face-to-face event promoted through Twitter, where people can meet each other, socialize, maybe auction some donated stuff. If you can have more than one event going on concurrently in different places, it's a Twestival, otherwise, it's a Tweetup, but both are good!

9. Do a 12 For $12k - combine efforts with other causes to maximize exposure and viral power.

10. Try a Tweet-a-thon - a limited time campaign with a live video component (using a site like Ustream) and celebrities (of all kinds).

11. Find a "hook" - like 140 characters for 140 smiles - a simple idea about how small pebbles can create huge waves.

12. Write a personal appeal that really touches people.

13. Start a bidding war for something cool, silly, or meaningful.

14. Encourage champions for your cause to be able to set up their own "red kettles".

15. Create a game like Trick or Tweet.

Now you may have noticed some talk about "social media fundraising burnout"; however I believe that there are always people willing to help others. But you need to find a way to tap into your community (so you should have a community to begin with, or have a cause that community can gather around); and you need to have a story, be creative and have some fun with it, because no individual can really donate to every cause that will come across their Twitter stream. I believe that successful fundraising using Twitter needs to be easy, needs to be shareable, and needs to be interesting. Hmmm... now where might I have heard that before? The same keys to creating word of mouth apply here. Good luck!

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Community series on Acronym

Just in case you didn't see it, Acronym has a cool series of posts all about community, which of course, is my thing.

Shirky: Associations must be the broker of connections - thoughts from the Man

Building and sustaining community - thoughts from me and Lindy

New thinking about community - thoughts from the Gode

Community at ISTE - Part I and Part II - thoughts from an association which is ahead of the curve. Check out this rockin deck from them:

25 Tips and Techniques for Using Social Media to Build Member Communities

View more Microsoft Word documents from Jennifer Ragan-fore.

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