Corporate Social Media Strategy
It is impossible to argue that every company does not need to create and implement a social media strategy. There are however a few aspects of social media to avoid when implementing a social media strategy. When consumers who are savvy to all kinds of marketing and advertising gimmicks think about corporate social media strategies they are inclined to, at best, think of some stupid astro-turfing attempt or at worst they might think of a cheesy ploy some companies may implement to get their friends to spam them.
Because of this I think some of the most important things companies can do is to avoid faking communities or giving anyone an incentive to make false claims about how much they like their products. Instead what they must do is make sure to create a space in which people who like the brand can congregate and then support this organic community in ventures they deem important. An example of this kind of social media strategy I observed recently was a "555-timer" contest , for physical computing and electronics enthusiasts. This contest was sponsored by a circuit components vendor named element14.
Sometimes I am NowEverywhere and NowEverywhere is me: Views on Personal Branding
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I used to have no opinions on the concept of personal branding. "Personal branding" is one of those Web 2.0 phrases that I used to hear bandied about on radio and television during the mid 2000's. That was YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and other social media services were emerging in the collective consciousness. No matter how hard I tried, I could not manage to comprehend how these online services would affect how others perceive and behave towards me.
Now that I am trying to establish my professional identity in the area of web development; and I have had the pleasure of attending a lecture by DennisVanStaalduinen on the topic of personal branding I feel comfortable enough to say the following about personal branding:
Your personal brand is:
- a tool.
- something you can use.
- something outside of yourself.
- a set of relationships.
- something you can help define by how you behave
All of that is to say that the semiotics of personal branding gets pretty confusing sometimes. Basically there are four major aspects to personal branding and your personal brand. Your personal brand is something you can use to identify yourself. Whether it is a visual asset, something about your appearance like that hat you always wear, or the work you do. At the same time your personal brand is also defined by the relationships you have with the world and others. If you have a good or bad online or offline relationship with an acquaintance or a client and they share their experience with you to others this will also affect your personal brand.
}
Arduino Community in Ottawa
Over the course of the previous six months I have discovered the world of physical computing. I was introduced to physical computing by several paths. First when I attended Flash In The Can (FITC) Toronto in April of last year I learned about how Jared Ficklin had made an interactive augment reality showcase at a SXSW party. Later that year, when I wanted to create time-lapse videos of the Alberta prairie skies I learned about Nerdkits and how the ATMega micro-controllers (colloquially called "microchips") can be used to create intervalometers and other custom electronic interactive projects.
Untitled from raymus on Vimeo.
Since June I have been actively learning about and creating physical computing projects. One of the coolest aspects of this is the community that has developed around the Arduino platform of physical computing development. In a nutshell Arduino is an open source project designed to make physical computing as accessible as possible to people with various levels of technical and artistic skill.
Initially my involvement in the community was primarily via blogs maintained by various Arduino distributors (Adafruit, Sparkfun) and enthusiasts. I learned about things called hacker spaces where individuals in a geographic location pooled their resources and knowledge to pursue their passion for physical computing, art and technology. In November I learned that there is an active community of artists/hackers/programmers in Ottawa, working on creating an environment similar to a hacker space where members of the community can share knowledge and resources. This effort has manifested itself in biweekly meetings held on the first and third Wednesday of every month called ModLab.
The backbone of the ModLab is Artengine an incorporated non-profit artist-run centre. Artengine provides a meeting space to hold meetings, workshops and other gatherings, as well as the server space/capacity to host a blog, a wiki and a mailing list. Thus far I have attended two ModLab gatherings and enjoyed the discussions facilitaed via the mailing list. For more information and an opportunity to meet the community please come to one of the ModLab gatherings or attend one of the free workshops that we are currently organizing.
For more information on Arduino, watch this 30 minute documentary:
Arduino The Documentary (2010) English HD from gnd on Vimeo.
Arduino The Documentary 2010
Using Social Media to Advance Career Opportunities
In the breathless manner that media outlets often talk about social media one would think that every person under the age of 30 relates to their peers through social media exclusively. Social media is a different kind of social than what our parents grew up with. When Sally wanted to visit with Esther she would have to plan the visit, call before coming over or just show up when Sally happened to be home. This allowed for a certain kind of intimacy lost in web2.0 communications. voicemail, email inboxes, Facebook accounts, Twitter pages and texting services are always available to mediate communication at a distance. This makes communication through social media extremely convenient; but in my experience social media alone leaves me feeling distanced and alone. You may write killer blogposts but what matters more is the community you develop in person.
The best way to get readers for your blog is to take a step away from the monitor (even if it for just a moment) and meet people in person. This will differentiate your blog and opinions from all the anonymous sources of content on the woolly wordy web. In my opinion, your real life social interactions with people is what will win you real friends and the big contracts.
If I look at the way digital natives, such as my sixteen year old sister, use communication technologies it is to intensify and affirm their offline relationships. This is the strategy I plan on using with my online presence. I am not saying that social media has no value. To the contrary I believe it is an invaluable tool for making connections with potential clients and employers; my point is that social media is just a medium through which to be social, and very few things can create as strong a connection as in-person contact.
My Faviorite Blog
BoingBoing.net
My favourite blog by far is Boing Boing. I do not remember how I discovered this blog, but I have to say that since finding this blog my web browsing habits have changed significantly. Before finding this blog I used to browse mostly by entering various search terms into the Google search engine, now my go-to source of interesting reading material is the boingboing.net feed on my permanently open Google Reader tab.
What I love most about boing boing is the unexpected gems of interestingness I find there every day. The importance of this blog, for me lies in notions of what it means to be a "flaneur" of the online and offline world. By this I mean that the boingboing blog provides a somewhat detached survey of all kinds of online life keeping me in touch with many aspects of online culture. Some of my faviorite features includes the guest bloggers and special features that helps to keep the content blogged and blogged about from becoming narrowly defined. They also have a wicked flickr pool filled with all kinds of interesting or strange images.
One very cool thing boingboings authors recently did, to commemorate the blogs 11th birthday, was to release the entire archive as a creative commons XML file, allowing anyone to dig through the archive of 11 years of interesting material.
My Favourite Social Network
This past week in my social media class we were asked what our favourite social network / social-web-tool is. I do not have a favourite, but there is one network that stands head and shoulders above the rest. I am sure that without providing the name you already know which one it is Facebook. 
Supposedly Facebook accounts for about one fifth of all webpage requests on the web, making it the the world's largest website. I use Facebook almost every day, but it only accounts for 5 to 10 percent of my time spent browsing the web. For me the most useful features are the event organizing features, where it is easy to create an event and send invitations or messages to all your guests without having to try and remember or find stupid email addresses such as pink_pony1234@hotmail.com. The other aspect of Facebook I like is that it is easy to carry on a discussion via the comment buttons. I enjoy posting links to cool or interesting content on my own or friends' Facebook profiled and seeing who likes it or what my friends have to say about it.
What I dislike most about Facebook is that everybody is there. Sure you can adjust various privacy settings but I find the tools fairly limited. It is like using a sieve to keep various aspects of your life separate when what you really need are different bowls/containers. Even if I created lists of friends that I trust with more personal information than others it does not help when when these friends don't know that they are put into these specific categories. Perhaps I am just paranoid, but I do not trust people to know when they are privy to information of an extra-personal nature.
Some alternatives to Facebook I want to explore in future posts include Twitter, blogging and Diaspora (once they get up and running).
Introduction
My name is Marinus Swanepoel.
This blog is about me and my professional development. Here I will document my path to becoming a web developer. Currently I am starting my career as a web developer. My second semester of studies at Algonquin College is nearly complete. I am enrolled in their two year Interactive Multimedia Developer program.
I created the website NowEverywhere.ca as an exercise in learning how to bring content to the web as well as to have a tool to showcase some of my latest work.
I invite you to follow along on the journey as I forge a path to a future of community engagement, employment and success.