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Social Media ROI: Socialnomics

Erik Qualman poses an important question, "Does social media = positive ROI?" @equalman addresses this in his latest book, Socialnomics and with this great video:

The Social Media Landscape for the Classroom 2.0

We mentioned last week that we spoke at the CASBO CBO Symposium on Social Media - Using new technology to deliver information to staff, students and the public.The session was very beneficial to school business officials who have opportunities and challenges presented with how and when to leverage social media to reach, inform and engage.

Much like we reported in our presentation, there are so many opportunities and tools available that understanding what tools and services are out there right now is a great first step alone.

Today, we learned of an excellent mind map created by teacher, Jesper Isaksson (@swedishteacher) E-Learning and Web 2.0 Tools for Schools, which organizationally displays what's available for teachers and digital learners in the realm of Classroom 2.0.

Special thanks to @web20classroom for raising awareness about yet another great mindmap of organized Web 2.0 tools for education.

If you are in education, tell us how you are using social media to help you in your job and in your professional development. Sharing with us, will help bring more awareness to the possibilities and opportunities many in education are looking for right now.

We are interested in your thoughts and findings. - Give us a shout on Twitter too - @Viaspire, #socmedfored, #education2_0, #ed20.

Leveraging Social Media in Education

We'll be presenting today at the CASBO CBO Symposium 2009 in a special breakout session on Social Media - Using new technolgoy to deliver information to staff, students and the public. In conducting some field research for our presentation, we came across a couple of videos, we think provide further insight on how digital learners and teachers today interact and engage in online communities, co-collaboration, user-generated content and constant conversation.

Digital World: Teachers Today

A Vision of K-12 Students Today

A Vision of Students Today
By Digital Enthnography at Kansas State University

Social Media - Fad or A Revolution?

Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics (the blog and the book) covers the latest trends in social media. Socialnomics, the book, looks at how social media transforms our lives and the way we do business.

In a recent post, Qualman reports Statistics Show Social Media Is Bigger Than You Think.

Citing over 30 statistics, Qualman reports:

1. By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
   
   
2. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
   
   
3. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
   
   
4. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
   
   
5. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia
   
   
6. Yet, some sources say China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services (Facebook’s ban in China plays into this)
   
   
7. comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network
   
   
8. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
   
   
9. 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
   
   
10. % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%

Check out this great video for more:

The Listener Is As Important As the Sender in Social Media

I stumbled upon a great article this weekend written in 2006 that tells the story of a man, John Francis, PhD, who "gave up speaking" and realized how much he hadn't been listening.

When I read this article it really made me think about where we are in the era of Social Media. Like any rush to be a part of something new, the push has been to PARTICIPATE, but I don't think there has been an equal push to honestly LISTEN. We are in an age of processing information, sending out information that can be syndicated to multiple sources, pushing "our words" out to the masses.

There's communication that spins off of that, even tremendous action, which can influence local and even global groundswells.

But, yesterday, on a quiet Sunday afternoon, as I read this article, the message for Social Media has been to  PARTICIPATE, CONVERSE, INTERACT, ENGAGE, but it strikes me that the passive notion of LISTENING has been under-valued. 

Francis, author of Planetwalker, said - "sometimes we forget that the listener is as important as the person sending the message. Communication is a shared responsibility."

In 2009, three years later, when there are so many ways to communicate via post, tweet, status, DM, text message and feed - we may need to take a step back and LISTEN.

In social media it is important to PARTICIPATE, but it is also our "shared responsibility" to LISTEN.

How can you LISTEN better on Twitter, on Facebook in your blog circles? You'll be surprised what you hear and how much clearer your response is when you really can really see what's being said.

"It's not so much that we get to where we're going, it's that we're on our way there." - John Francis

Social Media & the Gov’t, Helpful Insight for Managers

Number one recommendation for managers in government, learn everything you can about Social Media. Jeffrey Levy, Director of Web Communications at U.S. EPA provides a great introduction to Social Media for Government managers.

Social Media And The Gov’t: A Brief Introduction for Managers

View more presentations from levyj413.

Being Proactive & Prepared for Response in Social Media - U.S. Air Force

There is an excellent business process workflow map published by the U.S. Air Force Public Affairs Agency - Emerging Technology Division addressing their standard of operations for reputation management and response in social media.

It's simple, clear and addresses the way in which the U.S. Air Force Public Affairs intends to engage online. For any organization assessing their level of engagement -- what it is or will be, this visual decision map may help create a framework for discussion and planning.

Special thanks to Joey deVilla for sharing this at Global Nerdy.

30 Essential Controls for RIA Design & Development

 

If you work in any capacity related to user experience, interaction design and/or web development, this excellent article written by Theresa Neil, co-author of Designing Web Interfaces is so "rich" in information, visuals and resources related to the 30 most essential controls needed for RIA design and development.

The article beautifully lays out each control and RIA framework(s) associated with each of them. It is such a fantastic guide. I can only imagine what will be included in the book.

The Designing Web Interfaces website and blog is so generous with information and assets, including their section on "Explore the Book" and their companion Flickr site.

I extend my sincere appreciation to two authors who really take the idea of creating a "rich interactions" to the fullest extent.

Check out:

• Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions
• 30 Esential Controls
• 12 Screen Patterns

eGov 2.0: Bi-Directional Engagement

It's interesting that this morning we see a lot of news about the Social Security Administration's move towards facilitating boomers to apply online for social security at socialsecurity.gov. According to an article on NewsDay today, "Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue said Americans are becoming eligible for retirement at a rate of 10,000 a day for the next 20 years."

Providing the service and streamlining access is foundational for most eGov initiatives, but in the age of Social Media, it's interesting to see where government needs to focus, apply and adapt how these online services and the Gov-Citizen relationship evolves online.

When it comes to government and social media, there is amazing opportunity and responsibility to evaluate, plan and incorporate a deeper level of engagement into their online strategies. In an exceptional article by Mark Drapeau, he addresses this more specifically, related to Government 2.0: How Social Media Could Transform Gov PR.

Reading both these articles back to back, it's interesting to see where the SSA is focused now and where they'll be headed in the future. The idea of streamlining the application process online is in today's realm, necessary. Looking at how social media can facilitate, expedite and improve the process collaboratively as well as creating extensive reach and a more personal connection is fascinating and hopefully on the horizon.

In a recent post we took a look at an interesting documentary addressing how mass collaboration online will completely transform the way institutional organizations, like government can/will operate.

In a great video excerpt from the documentary US Now, there is a great video that addresses Governments Getting with the Internet with Alan Cox.

When it comes to government and social media, there is amazing opportunity and responsibility to evaluate, plan and incorporate "collaboration" into their online strategies. It's exciting to be a part of this evolution with many exceptional state agencies and we look forward to the realization of true bi-directional engagement in the future.

Understanding Millennials - A Vision of Students Today

Staffing, enriching diversity in the workplace, millennials working side-by-side with baby boomers on the heals of retirement. These are all common issues in our day-to-day consultation when working on projects with cross-functional work teams. The project lifecycle, the critical thinking, the process leading to the end product or  solution is all tied to the diverse perspective and learned / skilled approach engaging our client teams.

This extraordinary video is from a project by professor Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University and 200 of his students. It is a fascinating look specifically at what millennials are experiencing today - in how they learn, what they do within the learning process, what is expected and how they operate in the day-to-day.

This video, A Vision of Students Today, gave me goose bumps. There's so much to understand here that for "good or bad," the millennials expectations is a complex experience of participation, evaluation, response, collaboration in real-time "hyper-speed" environments. There's multi-tasking and hyper-tasking, but has technology helped or stripped millennials of time spent taking "deep dives" in creativity, analysis and interpretation. It's a profound look at what faces millennials today. I'll be interested in seeing what comes next when they go back to the "chalkboard."

Awesome!