Community Guy – Jake McKee

One voice can change the world

As most of you kind readers know, I’m a huge Obama supporter. I’ve voted for Obama for a number of reasons, but not least of which is that I believe him to be the “Social Media Candidate”. He’s a candidate who believes in a politics that aligns directly and absolutely with the social media premise: participation. His campaign has been the largest “social media” program to date, spanning technology, process, engagement, and concept.

Months ago, Senator Obama put in short form what many of us social media wonks have been struggling to communicate, and more importantly, prove.

If one voice can change a room,
then it can change a city,
and if it can change a city, it can change a state,
and if it can change a state, it can change a nation,
and if it can change a nation, it can change the world.

The Obama campaign has started a movement; it’s generated enthusiasm and action and interest in politics and activism. It’s made millions, including myself, believe again that a single voice has power beyond itself. This is Social Media. This is Community Building. This is Customer Collaboration. This is changing the world in the way those of us wonks have been begging the world to do.

Consider what we’ve heard throughout the Obama campaign:

• “Yes We Can”. Reminds me of We are Smarter Than Me.
• “We are the change we’re looking for”. Open source culture, anyone?
• “We’ve been warned by a chorus of cynics that we can’t do this”. I know you’ve felt this pain before.

While I might disagree with many of Obama’s policy ideas, for me there was only one choice for my vote. The fully embedded community nerd simply had no other choice than to support with my vote the same beliefs that I work to impart on my clients and audiences.

I’ve written before about the deeper reasons I’ve supported Obama, but today I’d like to be bold with that support. I call on you to consider the power of social media on business and imagine that power applied to government. I can only imagine what the social engagement classroom looks like with a President Obama.

LinkedIn adds Apps….and relevance

Let me say this right up front: LinkedIn is a solid platform, and I’m a member of the site. I keep my profile updated, I happily forward connection requests, and I follow Mario’s updates. That said, I don’t consider myself a “user” of the site. I don’t visit unless I’m responding to something, and rarely do I think to open up LinkedIn to see what’s new.

Fortunately, that may have all changed. LinkedIn has jumped on the App Platform bandwagon, announcing that you can use add-on applications, similar to Facebook, to do more with the site.

By jove, I think they’ve got it!

With this addition, LinkedIn has created relevance in a way that other sites and app platform attempts haven’t. TripIt and Dopplr are great sites, but the idea of creating yet another social networking profile in order to share things like where my contacts are traveling was just a whip. Using Facebook to connect to business contacts was more than a little uncomfortable. And as mentioned, using (rather than “maintaining) LinkedIn was largely fruitless.

But being able to put that very strong business network to work automatically through add-on apps is impressive indeed. Here’s a few examples that I get excited about, just from the announcement below:

• Certainly the LinkedIn Answers was helpful at times, but never really seemed to sing. Using the Huddle app for private workspaces make it much more interesting.
• Maintaining my Dopplr account has always been a non-starter for me. There never has been a truly compelling reason to do so, and recreating my network on Dopplr is just painful. Tapping in that type of functionality via my existing (and robust) LinkedIn network and TripIt is pretty awesome.
• Using a tie-in with Six Apart to be able to skim blog posts from contacts based on my network could yield some truly interesting business opportunities.

This is an exciting development, and I’m looking forward to seeing it in action.
For the official word, here’s the LinkedIn announcement:

Today we’re announcing many more ways to interact with your network on LinkedIn. Whether it’s a new way to create projects and collaborate, share information, customize your profile, or gain key insights, the new LinkedIn Applications deliver.

Click here and you’ll be able to add applications that enable you to:

Work collaboratively with your network.

• Box on LinkedIn: Share files and collaborate with your network.
• Huddle on LinkedIn: Private workspaces to collaborate with your network on projects.

Share information and keep up to date with your network.

• Amazon on LinkedIn: Discover what your network is reading.
• TripIt on LinkedIn: See where your network is traveling.
• SixApart on LinkedIn: Stay up to date with your network’s latest blog posts.

Present yourself and your work in new ways.

• Google Docs on LinkedIn: Embed a presentation on your profile.
• SlideShare on LinkedIn: Share, view and comment on presentations from your network.
• WordPress on LinkedIn: Promote your blog and latest posts.

Gain key insights that will make you more effective.

• Company Buzz by LinkedIn: See what people are saying about your company.

Get started by clicking here to visit the Application Directory and add any of the applications listed above.

Regards,
The LinkedIn Team

SpinSpotter Community Managment Fireside Chat

Amy, SpinSpotter’s Community Manager put together a fantastic introduction video. This video is an easy and cheap way to share a bit about the SpinSpotter, but also does a great job introducing Amy, the person. When we see personality, we have a built-in human desire to help out. After watching the video, don’t you want to see what Amy’s up to?

(Disclosure: SpinSpotter is a client of mine)

Kindle: Me and Oprah Agree

My latest DigitalNomads.com post is live! Here’s the opening of Kindle: Me and Oprah Agree :

There are not many things that Oprah and I agree on, but when I heard her endorsement of the Kindle, I felt like we were nerds united. “I’m telling you, it is absolutely my new favorite thing in the world,” Oprah said. Sing it, sister.

I’ve always worn my friend-imposed “Early Adopter” moniker with pride. But as I get older, or perhaps just busier, my desire to experiment with half-baked gadgets has decreased at a rapid rate. These days my gadgets have to improve the workflow of my life.

At this year’s SXSW event in March, I had the chance to talk to Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos at length about the Amazon Kindle; the device, the business model, and the future. Bezos’ clear enthusiasm for the device and the platform amped up my own interest purchasing a Kindle, but I’d heard some pretty hefty and repeated usability concerns about the device. For six months, I swallowed my gadget lust and remained steady in goal of holding off until their new, and certainly improved version 2 was launched.

To read the rest of the review, head to the Digital Nomads post!

Rapid Fire – Wednesday, October 22

EVENT: Dallas Forrester Tweetup next week

If you’re in or around Dallas, you might want to think about attending the Tweetup organized by Alexis at Forrester. She’s pulling together quite a few people from the various interactive and marketing groups around town. Since the Forrester Consumer Forum is in town that week, you can bet there’s going to be quite a talented group of people in attendance!

To RSVP, head over to the Upcoming event.

For planning purposes, the event will be at Love and War in Texas.

Rapid Fire – Tuesday, October 21

If Grandma was on Facebook

Ever wondered what it would be like to see your grandparents using Facebook the same ways your kids do? Here’s your chance.

Rapid Fire – Monday, October 20

New book: Social Media Marketing – an hour a day

My friend Dave Evans has recently published a great book called “Social Media Marketing – an hour a day“. I had the pleasure of acting as Dave’s technical editor on the development of the book. It was a fun precursor to the creation of my own book… coming soon. No really!

Be sure to check out Dave’s book. Here’s the overview:

If the idea of starting a social media marketing campaign overwhelms you, the author of Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day will introduce you to the basics, demonstrate how to manage details and describe how you can track results. Case studies, step-by-step guides, checklists, quizzes and hands-on tutorials will help you execute a social media marketing campaign in just one hour a day. In addition, learn how to integrate social media metrics with traditional media measurements and how to leverage blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts, and user-generated content sharing sites like YouTube.

A Step-by-Step Guide

Put the buzz about your business to work for you. This comprehensive, perfectly paced guide will teach you how to make social media an active part of your marketing plan so that you can turn customer conversations about your brand, product, service, and company into a sustainable competitive advantage. Learn how you can tap the Social Web and amplify your current marketing efforts by listening and participating in conversations that drive measurable results.

• Develop and effectively pitch a successful social media campaign inside your company
• Learn how to become a genuine Social Web participant
• Build a map of your key conversation-generators as you evaluate every point of contact between you and your customers
• Get to the sweet spot of social media marketing—the consideration phase of the purchase funnel
• Leverage all the tools available—blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts, video and photo sharing, and more
• Use social media measurement tools, including the Net Promoter score, and apply metrics from platforms such as Bazaarvoice, BlogPulse, and Cymfony
• Learn best practices for launching your social media program and measuring the results

You’ll also find:

• A comprehensive look from the savvy marketer’s perspective at social sites and services—MySpace, Facebook®, LinkedIn®, and Twitter, along with YouTube, Seesmic, Eventful, and FriendFeed
• Straightforward tools for building social media into your current marketing program
• Real-world case studies that illustrate successes to learn from and mistakes to avoid