Matt Haughey, the founder of Metafilter.com and a certified expert on creating and sustaining online communities, had a great post last week on the idea of social media. He’s actually talking about the online presence of a swingset manufacturer, of all things, but I think his point is applicable to nonprofit communications, as well, and worth a read. Here’s the nut of his argument:

So maybe instead of getting your company on twitter, paying marketers to mention you are on twitter, and paying people to blog about your company, forget all that and just make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products, hire people that represent the company well, and when your stuff is so awesome that friends share it with other friends, you may not even need “social media marketing” after all.

One of the biggest questions many of our clients have these days is “What does the online piece look like?” They have a vague notion that there are different rules for communicating online– that you can’t just email your press release to a bunch of bloggers and expect to get a good result, that you need to think about starting a real conversation where your audience talks back to you instead of just beaming your message out and hoping for the best– but the actual mechanics of it all are still fuzzy.

[True story: a colleague recently asked, in all seriousness, "So, how much have we got budgeted for paying bloggers to blog about this?" Short answer: this is not a line item.]

Here’s the thing. Real success in the online world is built on having something that people want to talk about, share with their friends, and generally obsess over and/ or snicker at. In the corporate world, that’s a shinier widget, or a bit of foolishness that’s just perfect for forwarding. In the nonprofit world, it’s a new idea, communicated clearly, or a cause that reminds our audiences of the values they hold dear, all wrapped up in a viral video, or a community-fostering web site. Sure, you need to understand who your audience is, and where they are online, and you need to make it easy for them to share your story and spread the news. A good set of web banners or a viral video is key to driving traffic. But you can’t buy social media, and you can’t fake it.

Say you’re a presidential candidate who wants to reach a nontraditional audience– maybe young men who aren’t engaged in the political process. How do you do it? Well, if you’re Barack Obama, you advertise in the XBox racing game Burnout Paradise.

And if you’re John McCain? You probably just yell at them to get off your lawn. (via Talking Points Memo)

when was the last time you read an article online? now when was the last time you read a FULL article online, without skimming?

reading this post should take you about 3 minutes. if you read this entire post you will have spent approx as much time reading as most people read in an entire day. that is, if you consider reading to be moving your eyes over every word on the screen, absorbing their meaning, finishing the post, and considering the entire piece as a complete thought.

i, it seems, have become most people.

a couple days ago, i posted an article about storytelling and the elections. about the storybook narratives constructed for obama and mccain, and the role of story in politics and our decision making. i found a link to the article on a newsfeed.  the title line sounded interesting, i clicked on it, read the first few paragraphs in full, then skimmed the rest of the piece for theme. the content seemed relevant to what we do here at underground, seemed like something that visitors to our site would find interesting, and so, i posted (see post below).

yesterday, it was brought to my attention that this post was not all-together, shall we say, undergroundish. the author was, shall we say, not a believer. and i felt, shall we say, stupid.

no big deal. this happens all the time. (misposting, buddy. not me feeling stupid.)

but i was shocked that it happened to me.

i shouldn’t be.

Read the rest of this entry »

a couple highlights on the internal conversations (conflicts?) i see a lot of designers, artists and communicators facing these days.

1.
a talk given by the well known designer Philippe Stark at TED in 2007 on the evolution, mutation and purpose(?) of design in the world today, and opening up possibilities for the future.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/197

2.
“Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.”

this article, just published in the Atlantic Weekly, discusses the way our interaction with the internet is altering not only what we think about, but HOW we think. buy it or not, matters not. social network internet hopping junkie or long-hand writing library stack lover, matters less. this has incredible implications for all of us, and esp. for those of us involved in communications. (and mcluhan smiles.)

http://www.theatlantic.com:80/doc/200807/google