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Social Media Summit: What Is the ROI of Social Media? Part 1 featuring danah boyd, Harvard Fellow & Researcher at Microsoft Research New England

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danah set a blistering pace in her talk yesterday morning in Cambridge. Packed with great information and enthusiasm, if you have a chance to hear danah speak, you must. Unlike many experts, she speaks plainly and on-target to her audience. Please check back for other segments of her talk you may find interesting.

These are notes and are not indicative of final copy. Comments, questions, discussions are welcome!

Social Media Summit: What Is the ROI of Social Media?
Mass Technology Leadership Council
4/30/09
http://www.masstlc.org/clu/socialmedia/

Speaker: danah boyd (all lowercase, stet) Microsoft, Harvard Fellow
http://www.danah.org/

Various Social Media interest groups and where they’re at:

Technology: Shifts from development and deployment of technology, integrated processes, to nothing ever finished, real-time, open source, user-generated content

Business: Trying to re-inflate the dot-come bubble

People:     Connecting with people you know, meeting people you don’t
               Create a public realm and engage with others
                Meet those you already know, meet people like at a dinner party, friends of friends

How did SM dev in US?

2003 Friendster: online dating site, taken over by digerati, developed “fakesters”
then indie rock bands took over to connect with fans → got to MySpace

MySpace welcomed the indie rocker crowd: bands and fans, which intrigued teens

Facebook: Started with Ivy League, then “lesser” colleges

Facebook vs MySpace perceptions: boring vs elegant, intelligent vs cheesy
Division of class, or as in HS cliques: Facebook good, MySpace bad

Adults joined Facebook, reconnected w their friends from high school, very different than teen use

Features in both sites are similar, early adopters matter, the tone they set, the flavor. These are the places people go to with the people they know.

Clusters, how people connect and who they connect to, driven by barriers between different platforms

Network affect: network density, the new form of stickiness, uniques, frequency of logins, clusters

If someone is using it and their friends aren’t, they’re a one-hit wonder

Community managers/monitors measure health. Health of neighborhood driven by relationships

If all your friends are there, are you really going to leave?

What’s new with social media with Chris Bennett @ SMX West 2009 third of three parts

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Please enjoy these notes from the SMX West session “What’s new with social media” with Chris Bennett.
Note: Not intended as final copy.

Chris Bennett of 97thFloor.com

Some sites to keep an eye on:

Tip’d
Kirtsy
Sphinn
Digg: lots more traction lately

Focus on niche sites related to your site

Links, branding, promotion = have a goal before you get into social media because your goal will dictate where to go

Start with research
By url: Digg, pick website and search to see how comes up
Keyword: reddit, see what’s showing up by that keyword
Sort by top or historically, recently rated

See what’s working, what’s working in your industry

Niche sites: top 10 social networking sites for women (kirtsy)

Send you authoritative links

Digg isn’t the only option

Good content will get you some visitors. Watch up & coming feature!! The “Linkerati” is

Infographics: work really well

Creating really good content can do a lot and can make up for junky site

—> Social Media for Firefox

Tool to build strong sm accounts
Use to track and find content
Free!

Build a good account on Stumble and wait for ppl to pick it up

Twitter
Great launch pad, good post will spread it
Have to have really good content, ask ppl to retweet, comment

Create great content, which can generate thousands of hits

If you’re working in an industry that isn’t there yet, get ahead of everyone

Twitter.com/chrisbennett

Best stuff in social media is current events, talk about something that’s going on, do a little research about it

“15 most expensive divorces”
“Al Gore vs the Hummer”
sell screws “100 ways to screw someone”

use social media to boost organic search, builds links for keywords

Linkerati will get you exposure

People misunderstand the benefits: it’s not about the direct traffic from Digg

It’s just a viability platform: get yourself in front of people who will want to link to you

Social media is a tool for SEO

Learn and understand, participate in a way that creates value

Twitter: people will follow you when follow them

Easytweets: suggests who you should follow based on what you’re interested in
Keywords, automatic tweets

MrTweet.net: follow it and it will direct message to you who you should be following

Bbgeeks.com: search twitter for ppl with blackberry problems, offer free support

Get ppl to do your link-building for you

Be helpful; social media is an extension of customer service

Delicious: whole networking section, have groups and participate to get content much more visible

Roboforms: helps get you registered

After get traction, email the person who linked to you and thank them, get repeated links, watch links, reach out to them, thank them & connect

Never automate submission, titletag most important