Tag Archives: social media

social media, workshops

Workshop: social media strategies

I am running a pre-Online Information conference workshop about social media strategies on Monday, 29th November 2010 at the Olympia Conference Centre, London –  “The real-life guide to using social media to promote your organisation and services”.

In essence it will cover:

  • how the major search tools are incorporating social media and real time information in their search results and how you can use this to increase awareness of your organisation and its services
  • the importance of identifying relevant platforms and applications for your organisation and tailoring content for them
  • ways in which you can generate and re-use content to reach more potential users
  • engaging with existing and potential customers and users
  • how you can monitor the effectiveness of social media
  • technical and human resource issues and the skills needed to implement a social media strategy

Further details are at Online Information 2010, http://www.online-information.co.uk/online2010/conference/conference-programme/workshop_presentation.html?presentation_id=1266

If you wish to book a place but are not attending the conference you need to click on the “Book Conference Place” link. Fill in the your details on the first page and on the next you can select the workshop only option.

If you have already booked a conference place then you need to call Jo Letts (Joanna.letts@incisivemediacom and +44 (0) 207 316 9361).

Prices are  £195 + VAT if you are attending the conference and for the workshop only £399 + VAT

social media

Social Media in a Corporate Context

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I’ve just returned from one conference and now about to go off to another. Last week it was Internet Librarian International which looked at  how internet technologies, and social media in particular, are being used  by libraries and information centres as tools for research, to provide better services and support users. It was a well attended and very interactive conference with social media being put to good use to share the event within and outside of the conference. On Friday the hashtag #ili2010 was trending on Twitter in the UK. If you would like to catch up with tweets, presentations, photos etc. the links below should give you a head start:

Twapperkeeper #ili2010 tweet archive  http://www.twapperkeeper.com/
Socialmention http://socialmention.com/ Search on ili2010
Addictomatic http://addictomatic.com/topic/ili2010
Twazzup http://www.twazzup.com/ Search on ili2010
Flickr http://flickr.com/ Search on ili2010

This week’s conference is Social Media in a Corporate Context and starts tomorrow (Tuesday, 19th October 2010) in Manchester. Organised by Communicate magazine this event is very different from Internet Librarian in its emphasis and concentrates on corporate communications and reputation monitoring/management:

  • How can you keep your company’s integrity and reputation intact when control is harder to manage?
  • How can you effectively use the information gained from social media evaluation?
  • How do you catch the attention of the tech savvy internet generation?
  • How do you ensure you have the planning, expertise and resource to manage communications during a crisis?
  • How can companies reach out to dispersed employees and keep them engaged?

The full programme and list of speakers is available at http://communicatemagazine.co.uk/events-mainmenu-29/107-smcc/1670-agenda . I am particularly looking forward to Karl Brookes, head of NHS Salford communications and marketing, presenting “The NHS – Reaching disparate audiences: a case study”. They may well be using social media to reach their audiences but for most of those working within the NHS social media is usually blocked!

I understand that there are still a few places available so get in quick if you’d like to attend. If you are attending the main part of the conference on Tuesday there is an option to attend a free half day workshop on Wednesday on “Reaching and engaging journalists through social media”. Details are at http://communicatemagazine.co.uk/events-mainmenu-29/115-workshop-reaching-journalists-through-social-media

The hashtag for the event is #smcc10

A tweet archive has been set up on Twapperkeeper at http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/smcc10 and there is a Lanyrd at http://lanyrd.com/ctbh

Presentations, Search Engines, social media

ILI2010 – social search presentation

My presentation on using social media search tools as part of research, which I gave at Internet Librarian International on 15th October 2010, is now available on the sites listed below. I have uploaded it to several different sites and services as I know some of you are not able to access one or more of them at work.

PowerPoint Presentation (6.3 MB) (download from rba.co.uk site)
authorSTREAM
Slideboom
Slideshare

If you want to catch up with #iili2010 tweets there is a Twapperkeeper at http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/ili2010

health care, social media, Web 2.0, workshops

Social media in health care libraries – wikis and Netvibes win

I recently ran a version of my social media workshop for a group of health care librarians and information professionals in Liverpool. The group were LIHNN (Library and Information Health Network North West) and HCLU (Health Care Libraries Unit). (For further information about them see their web site at http://www.lihnn.nhs.uk/). I was forewarned that many of them have limited access to social media. Several confirmed that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs were all blocked in their workplace, yet most of them came from organisations who had set up YouTube channels, Twitter streams and Facebook pages! This raises an interesting question: if they receive a query about, for example, an event listed on their Facebook page or the content of a video on YouTube how are they supposed to respond if they are not able to check the content at the time of the enquiry? I find this mass blocking of social media web sites by organisations totally bizarre and ludicrous. The blocking is not even consistent. Slideshare may be blocked but other presentation sharing sites are often accessible. Add to this the antediluvian technology most of them are forced to use – in particular IE6 – and we end up with organisations that are out of touch with their users and communities, and have no idea what is being discussed or said about them.

But health care librarians and information professionals, and  health care practitioners are an inventive lot. There is plenty of evidence of them having circumvented the barriers put in their way. The excellent Liz Azyan published a series of blog postings on social media and health care just before the workshop took place and they provide plenty of examples and support for those putting together a case for access to social media.

The postings are:

The Liverpool workshop participants were equally innovative. During the practical sessions they were able to test out social media for providing up to date information on their services and current awareness to their users. The winners were wikis for creating mini-websites and Netvibes for presenting RSS feeds and current awareness. The NHS Bolton Library wiki at http://boltonpct.pbworks.com/ and Shrewsbury and Telford Health Libraries Netvibes Team Knowledge Update at http://www.netvibes.com/sathlibraries are just two examples. There was also a great deal of interest in Twitter and blogs for at least monitoring “conversations” on health related topics and their own organisations, and word clouds for analysing the content of documents.

Facebook did not win any converts, nor did Second Life.

My PowerPoint presentation for the day is available in several places, and you should be able to view or download it from at least one of them:

http://www.rba.co.uk/web2/2010HCLUSocialMedia.ppt

http://www.slideshare.net/KarenBlakeman/social-media-for-libraries-health-care-information

http://www.slideboom.com/presentations/169731/Social-Media-for-Libraries-%28Health-Care-Information%29

Presentations, social media, Web 2.0

Presentation: A day in the life of…

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Phil Bradley and I are doing a double act on social networking tools tomorrow (May 10th, 2010) at the Dental Librarians Group Annual Meting 2010. My presentation is a run through the tools that I regularly use in my personal and working life. I’ve called it “A day in the life of…” but is really “2-3 days in the life of….”!  Some I do use on a daily basis but I may access others every other day or just once a week, so I suppose it could be one day if I picked the right one.

The presentation can be found on the following presentation sharing sites:

authorSTREAM
Slideboom
Slideshare

You can also download it from the RBA web site at http://www.rba.co.uk/web2/2010KarenBlakemanBDAADayintheLife.ppt

Presentations

CLSIG Debate: Web 2.0 – the truth behind the hype

The presentation that I am giving at this evening’s CLSIG meeting in Birmingham is now available:

PowerPoint (download from this site – 3.2 MB)
Slideshare
authorSTREAM

I have given the presentation a Creative Commons 3 non-commercial by attribution license, which means you are free to download and re-use it as long you cite me as the author and you don’t sell it for a heap of cash!

The other speaker in the debate is Phil Duffy, Information Services Manager at Hammonds LLP.

Google

Google testing new options interface?

Twitter followers of @daveyp and myself may have spotted a brief exchange of tweets between us and Phil Bradley (http://philbradlel.typepad.com/ Twitter name @philbradley) about additional icons appearing on Google results pages when ‘Show  options’ was selected. An example of what @daveyp was seeing is at http://www.daveyp.com/blog/stuff/google.jpg . He was using Google.com, the “search provider” box in IE and running IE8.0.6001 on WinXP SP3. It did not matter whether or not he was signed in to a Google account.

Phil Bradley and I attempted to replicate this on our various machines, operating systems, browsers etc but could not and neither could anyone else in @daveyp’s twitterstream. Phil Bradley wondered if @daveyp had stumbled upon some unique, bizarre experiment. In the mean time I had turned to the email discussion list of the AIIP (Association of Independent Information Providers), one of my professional networks. One hour and fifteen minutes later, fellow member Donna Fryer responded with a link to http://blogoscoped.com/forum/163640.html, which suggests that Google are testing a change to the format and layout. The posting also refers to http://searchengineland.com/google-streamlines-search-options-30143 . By this time @daveyp had reported that the icons had disappeared and the layout returned to normal!

I subscribe to the Blogscoped RSS feed but had completely forgotten about the posting. In a follow up tweet Phil Bradley echoed my own thoughts when he pointed out that the Blogscoped article was written in November 2009 and asked why they had started testing again now. The answer may be in the Search Engine Land post: “the cleaner display may be launched across Google after the New Year.” So keep your eyes peeled for a new layout in Show Options.

As well as alerting me to a potential change in the Google results layout, this whole exchange reinforced to me the power of networks and social media when one is faced with a problem – and I include the good old-fashioned, traditional email discussion lists. One person reports an oddity on their preferred social network (in this case Twitter). Members of that person’s network pick it up, investigate and pass it on to members in their preferred networks  (in my case the AIIP discussion list). Suggestions, advice and information are passed back to the original enquirer and problem solved!