Heidi Allen Digital Strategy

You’re online in the sense of using email, you might have dabbled in putting your CV on LinkedIn and played with Facebook, but how to join the conversation online?  How to connect into the matix?

This is The Influence of Landscape by Advanced Human Technology described by Gavin Heaton in his post on The Landscape of Influence. It’s a great alternative to the Visual Guide to Twitter

But how to find the time to connect and where do you start?  I have been using  three steps when thinking about using Social Media to create new ideas.

1.  Setting up

Setting up your profile gives you a unique online identifier – a web presence that’s uniquely yours when people look you up to find what you’re about.

2.  Joining the Conversation

Social networking sites often have a ‘bio’ section, and the links to a GoogleProfile, LinkedIn or Naymz is a good way to show people who you are if you don’t have a blog or website.

3.  Creating new ideas from conversations

It is the same as it has always been in the history of human interaction, new ideas often come from conversations that are now also online and global. Good ideas are infectious and I hope this one from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney catches on.

Michael Tamblyn, CEO of BookNet Canada, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to innovation in the Canadian book industry describes 6 initiatives that could make things better for publishers and those with an interest in the future of the book.  A humorous and insightful presentation, including the impact of the likes of Kindle to the Plastic Logic Reader.

Phrases that stood out for me:

• Many people stay in publishing having developed a high degree of skill but with specialization can come resistance to change
• We need creative technologists to build things
• A creative idea can often be met with: “We’re really excited about your new idea, all we need is:
  a full specification
  a fully developed test plan
  a testing model
  and if you’re not sucessful you’re fired”
• When was the last time you saw (beta) on a publishers website
• Encourage experimentation
• Let generalists in – bring people from different backgrounds
• Place a lot of little bets and place them quickly

Imagine you are researching a particular topic.  How can you tap into what others are researching on the same topic? How can you keep in touch with what your peers are talking/bookmarking/looking at? How can you do that easily, regularly, w good search facilities?
I (@dreamingspires) decided to ask the question on Twitter which resulted in a 3 way discussion:

Discussion 22nd April on Twitter:

@dreamingspires: How can you keep in touch with what your peers are talking/bookmarking/looking at? How can you do that easily, regularly, w good search …

@AllergyNotes: ‘How can you keep in touch with what your peers are talking/bookmarking/looking at?’ – FriendFeed, if they use it…

@dreamingspires: thinking from a research perspective: how would say 7 researchers share & store data/ info in a social media environment

@AllergyNotes:  Google Docs, Zoho, etc. Shared G account?

@dreamingspires: for me the key is share, store/bookmark and be able to find/search again. The latter is not easy i think

@AllergyNotes: Researchers want more than bookmarks, they need database and writing environment plus file upload

@dreamingspires: Researchers need database and writing environment plus file upload -maybe this is the next step needed for ‘social research’

@AllergyNotes: Re “social research” – But again, could anyone have predicted the Twitter phenomenon?

@AllergyNotes: Even in 2009, people still find tools they never knew they wanted and/or needed, such as Twitter…

@dreamingspires:  New tools means Global: interconnectivity, sharing, fluid, information stream = on cusp of new ways of working, info rich

@troy_anderson: on the topic of “social research”, my advisor is working on a research grid for sharing data: http://www.cvrgrid.org/ (the cardiovascular research grid)

@dreamingspires: Love the new tools and ways of working that are beginning to emerge

@troy_anderson: in research it seems the tools are outpacing the willingness to share data

@dreamingspires: it seems the “gadgets” or tools often come first and are used by the early birds before more embrace new ways of working

@dreamingspires:  I think we are on the cusp of new ways of researching and working

The upshot of this conversation for me was:

Three useful tools for keeping in touch with what information your peers are posting:

• Friendfeed — which keeps track of all the information being posted by those you are following, whether websites they have bookmarked on del.icio.us, or Diigo, or information they are posting on sites like Twitter
• Google Docs or shared Google Accounts and similar applications like Zoho
  
  
• New initiatives, such as the CardioVascular Research Grid — the need for new tools to allow researchers to contribute to a global database with a writing environment and the ability to upload.

Not bad for half an hour feedback on a question.  New ways of researching, storing and sharing information being changed by the needs of many, or as Jeff Howe might say ‘Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business’, next on my list of things to read.

Following certain steps when using twitter can yield high quality uptodate information on topics relevant to you.  Following on from my How To Use Twitter for Research Video, these are some of the steps I take.

Step 1 Find The Right People To Add To Your Network

• The most useful people to add are those who post links and information regularly on topics that interest you
• Take the top 5-10 people you find the most useful of the people you follow and look at the profiles of the people they follow and add them to your network
• Look at the profile of each of your new followers and decide if you want to add them to your network by following them back
• Don’t feel obliged to follow everyone who follows you – you’ll end up with a twitter stream that is full of twitter noise and not of much use to you
• When you get to the point you can no longer keep up with the twitter conversations go through your list of people you follow and decide if they are still relevant to your twitter info stream.  If not unfollow

A note on Unfollowing: When using twitter in this way unfollowing or following should not be taken as a personal slight (and the same goes if you are unfollowed) – your followers may be grateful for a warning if you let them know you’ll be posting on a particular topic that may not be relevant to them (eg conference proceedings) and let them know when to follow you back should they want to.  Comment by Teresa Blaes on my last post:

‘I find it interesting that you only return follow some people, while other people in the social media space like to return the twitter love. I guess, that it is as you said, it all depends on what you want to use twitter for.’

• MrTweet, or a TwitterSearch can help you find people although the results can often be too general

Step 2 Managing Your Twitter Conversations

• Applications like TweetDeck help manage and organize various twitter streams (for example I have several twitter groups I follow: Professional; twitter users who live close to me; and friends.  (Linking to twitter users who live close to you can open up new avenues of conversations and physical meet ups which in themselves can be very rich in the information they provide.)

Step 3 Finding Information

• Consistency and regular use is important in getting the most out of your twitter stream
• Depending on the number of people you follow, log onto twitter and open every link your twitter network has posted.
• To do this efficiently hold the control key and then click on the link – this opens a new window for each link while keeping your original twitter window open.
• You can then decide whether to look at the link then and there or click on all the links first and then look at them window by window (which I find is a more efficient use of time)
• A very quick scan of the website will tell you if what has been posted is useful or not.
• If the link is to a blog or website that will be useful add the RSS feed

  to your GoogleReader or Feedly or email subscription and you have added a regular new source of information to your news feed.

• Add twittersearch to your google search box – see what people have said about a particular product or situation around the globe – it’s powerful feedback

Step 4 Sharing information

• Sharing information lets people know what you are interested in and adds to your followers information stream
• Posting links on Twitter, applications like TinyURL shorten the links (TweetDeck will also do this automatically for you)
• Microblogging: increasingly twitter can also be used to post links which can then be collated together into a blog post
• Posting good information on Twitter will also mean people of similar interests find you which results in an informative Twitter network of people that you may not have yourself thought to seek out
• Use key words when you post your link.  Simply posting: ‘This is good http://tinyurl.com/d8welt‘ doesn’t tell your readers not very much: but ‘Video on how to use Twitter for Research http://tinyurl.com/d8welt‘ will not only let your readers know what the link is about but enable others who are searching Twitter to find you.  For example, mentioning the word Sydney in my posts has meant a lot of Sydney twitter users have linked to me which has been useful for me
• InstaHelp:  there has been many an occasion I have asked a question and had top rate answers and links back – far more quickly and specifically than a Google search
• Having Fun: as with most things, if you’re enjoying connecting with people and sharing information, the chances are you’ll get a lot of rewarding conversations with Tweeples as a result.

Attending a conference with Nic Lucas (@Webutaries) resulted in an impromptu video interview on how I use Twitter for research.

Having had a few interesting skirmishes with new software recently, this seemed very apt.