Sooner rather than later

Quora, the new crowd-sourced question and answer network, has quickly gained some traction online in the past couple of months. Like all new platforms I signed up and participated.

I’m not a fan and here’s why :

Names
You're only allowed to use your real name. Fair enough (and Quora were great in assisting me get my handle for my common law name, thanks guys).

Company names are also not allowed at this stage. Again, fair enough, it’s their site and they make the rules. But what about Edmodo or Vimeo or 37signals? It seems when you tag a question it creates a page for that brand / organisation, and here is where the danger lies : it has the potential to turn into another Get Satisfaction dilemma where they establish pages without permission or assistance from the sites / companies / organisations cited?

Duplication
Quora offers nothing really new.

What about asking questions to your already trusted / established network on Twitter and / or Facebook questions? Then there’s Yahoo Answers, Wikipedia, Squidoo who all offer similar things.

(See also “It’s not a survey question” / Reaching Critical Mass below.)

It’s Broke
For some reason I can’t sign in anymore. Apparently I haven’t validated my email address. Even though I ask for it to be sent again it never appears. Now I’m quite au fait with this online stuff and know it’s not in my spam box or going somewhere else. Makes you wonder what else is broke in the code?

They Built A Walled Garden
There is no contact page. As I can’t sign in I can’t contact any of the admins to message. I have sent them half a dozen requests through their Quora presence and as yet got no replies :

Guidelines vs Rules
I had a quick response from one of the admins on the site who cited how the ‘guidelines’ forbid any lower case use (I forgot to use a capital “I”). I’m being pedantic here but guidelines are different from rules surely? Call a spade a spade!

Only Browser Based
The web is increasingly become mobile and without any apps to quickly check responses, validate friends requests, research other questions etc the service is somewhat limited.

It’s Boring
After a few days on the site, searching and participating you quickly get bored. Obviously this is subjective but after talking to some of my peers they feel the same way. Also it’s only text with no allowances for images or embeds like videos.

They Don’t Do Personal
I posed the following question : What is your blogging strategy?. An admin went in a changed it to “What are some good blogging strategies?”, I changed it back after personally replying to the gentleman stating the change altered the specifics of what I was asking. He said my question was against the guidelines (again) because it was a survey question:

Survey Questions aren’t allowed on Quora right now. Try to rewrite this question so it doesn’t address the answerer and is generalizable or more directly addresses the information you are looking for. For example, instead of “What is your favorite beach in LA?” ask something like “What are the nicest beaches for families in LA?”

I get it. Although my question directly relates to the individual who has that experience and information. Don’t know about you but asking what strategies work for individuals is much more powerful than generic responses… maybe they will change this going forward and allow this option to ask 'personal questions', maybe it will be too late when they do.

Reaching Critical Mass
There's been a huge take-up amongst the web 2.0 crowd. Big players banging the Quora drum and letting everyone know how cool this is. Outside of this group though I haven't seen anyone else take it up and tell others they need to be on this new platform. Therefore, it will never reach critical mass and capture a foot-hold.

(Haven't a clue what the critical mass is by the way, I just know there are far more groovier things to participate in on the web than answering / posing questions on a platform which have the above limitations.)

Then again, for exactly the above reasons Quora might succeed and I'll stick my hand up and say I was wrong. What do you think?

Are you boring?

I constantly find organisations who are not aware how much they talk about themselves and if they are aware, don’t know what to replace that dialogue with. In this post I’ll give you a simple guide to remember and reframe the balance in your head.

Historically we’re used to broadcasting in monologue through gatekeepers such as news organisations, print industries or PR agencies. All these restrict our ability to react to society quickly and to be specific to audiences.

A great little exercise that we advise clients: strip out your current written social content (blog posts and/or twitter stream) and drop in to the tag cloud tool Wordle. If the frequency of your company or services name is the largest item in the tag cloud, it illustrates immediately what turns off your audience, it’s all about you. How boring it is to hear someone talk only of themselves all the time. Don’t forget the golden rule of social media.

One solution is my own little 1990 rule of content: 1% 9% 90%

1%—your company / project / organisation
This allows you to inform and promote in your usual manner, there’s nothing wrong with this, we all need to do it and let people know our priorities and objectives. However remember you are talking to people—which means they will expect to hear some opinion and point of view on the subject you are talking about.

9%—your sector or industry
What is happening in other countries, innovations, new developments, materials, techniques and/or show the manufacturing processes. If you are an Arts organisation, people are interested in comedy, dance, theatre and music from all over the world, sticking to your selected schedule and locality is so limiting. Talking about your industry places you in the same boat as your competition. Remember you are not in a battle against them, if policies, politics, economics or cultural events shift customer purchasing decisions.

90%—other people
This should be about your best customers and clients and their great stories related to buying decisions, happy products and services. Bad experiences are also a chance to show that you aren’t ignoring people and are keen to fix any problems. Feature employees that are doing interesting things, have side projects, learning new skills, or developing better service features for the end user. Notice that this blog post isn’t about MediaSnackers, it’s about you, improving your business, not us pushing our services. Give knowledge away (like our book that you can read for free online), people will still pay you to personalise it for them or buy from you because you clearly know and show your expertise in that sector.

These percentages are only a guide. 1% can be 5%, 9% can be 2%, but the balance should stay roughly true. Talk about yourselves only a fraction of the time seeking opportunities of great people stories instead. Gradually you will change to this way of thinking permanently, your tweets will start getting more interesting, the dialogue will open up, retweeting will increase, blog posts will get comments, video’s will get rated and photos will start being shared.

I hope this guide is useful to someone out there. Please re-read this post, write the numbers down on a post-it note, type it into your phone, bring it up in your next meeting. I’d love to know the reaction or if you have a better guide for content creation.

Oh and why 1990? It was the year Tim Berners-Lee invented the web as we know it, of course :)

The image is from our development day, where Matt shared his T-shirt on Advertising

Creating captivating content

During my time wandering around the country helping people grasp social media for their businesses and organisations, I often find myself rattling off the same information. This had lead me formulate my own 5 senses of social media. I am aware that others have created the same in a similar fashion, (read what Michael Durwin has to say on the topic) but I wanted something for myself.

I want to be able to look at a marketing plan or press release and easily be able to assess what is relevant for content creation.

For that, we need the big 5:

• video
• audio
• photos
• text
• downloads

How you use them and why you don’t, may not be as obvious as it sounds:

Video:
So much can be summed up if only we captured it on film. The trick to utilising this medium when you aren’t used to it, is to make a light hearted game about it during the day, adding ‘can I get that on film?’ to random statements from other peoples words. Carrying a camera on you at all times. Practice setting it up quickly, capturing a small quote and converting the files to the format you need to drop it online.

The biggest barriers we face is individuals being concerned how they look, sound and what they say on camera. Basically everything. But once people are comfortable with their look and sound in a trial situation which is often deleted, getting over the camera is just a matter of time and practice.

For MediaSnackers, we are keen to stress that we don’t do feedback forms in our workshops, we use video and capture only 20 secs of footage per person. Creating an easily manageable file and film as a record of our day. Take the same model and try it yourself.

Photo:
Remember the saying ‘Kodak moment’? Yet again, like the video, just repeating the words ‘that’s a photo’ or ‘that’s a front cover’ or even ‘someone capture that’ gets the mind in the right space to start building it in to your day. Our phones are our biggest assets with regard to creating dynamic content, yet we let great shots slip by us time and time again. Another classic is missing an opportunity, because the moment has passed. Get into the habit of saying ‘do that again’ as a statement, not a question. Speaking converts into action. That change might not happen immediately, but it will if you keep pressing it. We use photography to document all our travels and have fun throughout the training day.

Audio:
Our phones are the saviour again. We often use text quotes in documents, meetings and proposals. Could you recapture that great piece of knowledge directly from the source on your phone? Embed the audio straight in to your website? Have you tried? Many people are not comfortable with their photograph being used, however an audio response is much more favourable. Just like the video example, explore the equipment you have and create test files first. What file formats do you end up with? Can you upload them to Audioboo? Try it out in the office and inject it more and more in to your project work. You’ll be surprised at the results and how it influences other people to do the same.

For MediaSnackers we create audio interviews as podcasts and make them available on iTunes

Copy
With all this visual and audio dynamic content, lets not forget about the written word. The podcast example above is always transcribed into text to allow for search engines to pick up on keywords. It also allows for quotes to be copied and shared. Copy should also reflect the social web by being more friendly and informal but with the content quality always staying high. Putting emotion, opinion and humour are normally the things left out of corporate copy, so please try and shoehorn some in to give it personality. Take a stance on your subject too, make it clear which side of the fence you fall. You may pull in advocates which support you and challenge those who don’t, but a (comment) reaction of any sort becomes a chance to engage with your community.

Downloads
Think about what can people do and share with your information. Showing is great, but doing is engaging. Can people download something, share it with friends, send it to their phone and read, listen or view it on the move? Many media creation software allows exporting in a variety of formats, don’t just offer the format you would like, offer formats that many would like. Check out the download options on Scribd.com, offering a whole host of document formats ready for mobile phones.

Ok, we’re not licking screens and smelling websites just yet, but the web has a lot to offer our senses already. Try to show people not tell people how good you are and challenge ‘dry’ content when presented with it. Sometimes it’s not always possible or practical, but when we’re reminded and get a second chance, it often produces better posts, comments and updates.

What’s your biggest barriers to creating more engaging content?
Are you comfortable with your voice and image enough to be on film?
Do you have any tips to share about creating more dynamic content?
Or what piece of technology has made your life so much easier to do so?

Let us know in the comments below.

View the Cable Matrix photo on flickr

I did a couple of masterclasses to illustrate how social media fits in with all this—check out my full session below:

DK, has the ability to deliver captivating keynotes and presentations. His style is modern, personable and addictive, with content relevant to audiences at all levels. DK + MediaSnackers are a must see and offer great value to anyone that needs to enhance or understand how to exploit further their online existence.

Marc Davies, Communities 2.0 Project Manager at Wales Co-operative Centre

MediaSnackers Speaking/Masterclass

Managing the online profile and content of New Zealand rugby

Kicking off a new series of video podcasts (vodcasts) focussing on those interesting folks who manage social media for their brand / company / organisation.

David Barton-Ginger is the Online Manager for New Zealand Rugby Union.

0.00—0.24 intro
0.25—1.15 current role and focus
1.16—2.15 what platforms (allblacks.com, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter)
2.16—4.27 the numbers
4.28—5.44 content creation for different spaces
5.45—7.09 measuring success
7.10—9.05 impact of fan interaction / engagement
9.06—10.30 partners
10.31—13.10 managing players content creation
13.11—15.57 who creates the content
15.58—17.37 social media strategy
17.38—19.34 executive buy-in (CEO Steve Tew blog)
19.35—21.35 future
21.36—23.20 Rugby World Cup
23.21—23.47 outro

Subscribe directly to these vodcasts through iTunes by clicking the ‘subscribe’ icon opposite (download iTunes for free here).

Not using iTunes? Then just copy / paste this feed and drop it into your vodcast aggregating software.

Find out how to easily subscribe by watching this short video.

Feast on our other MS Vodcasts

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