guest posts

Together Again ? 25 Years Later: A Social Media Success Story by Debbie Kipp

Our story was set in motion during those wonderful college years. It starts long before the term social media was coined and meanders through graduation, relocation, marriages, children, careers, and over 25 years of life. It ends, or rather begins, with LinkedIn and Facebook.

During the early 80?s, as students at Missouri State University in Springfield, MO, my (now) husband joined 17 other men and founded the Zeta Nu chapter of Delta Sigma Phi fraternity. Their chapter survived on campus for eight years before college antics forced the hand of their superiors and ultimately closed the chapter.

During that time over 180 men became active members with the love and support of nearly as many wonderful women. It was a surprisingly close-knit group comprised of students from all walks of life. We loved, we laughed, we shared, we studied (well, some of us did), we supported, and we played. In short, we were together during a time in our lives where strong bonds formed friendships that would last a lifetime.

As we each graduated, moved on, started our careers and began the ?adult? chapters of our lives, we somehow managed to let life get in the way. Sadly, many of us eventually lost touch.

Fast forward to March 14, 2009. I received a message from my LinkedIn account that read, ?So what?s new in the last 25 years?? Blink. Blink. OMG! It was from a friend that I hadn?t seen since my last party as a college student.

That evening, I excitedly told my husband about the LinkedIn connection. Our conversation ignited a curiosity, the result of which would not have been possible without the assistance of social media. Who else might we find on LinkedIn? And what about Facebook?

We began what most would refer to as an intense search, spending every evening and many weekend hours for several months on a mission to find as many old college buddies as possible. We plugged name after name into the Facebook and LinkedIn search fields. If we couldn?t find someone on either platform, we turned to Google and the Internet. We created a database of current contact information and continue to share regular updates with everyone.

It wasn?t long before reconnection conversations turned to talk of a reunion. A planning team was formed and on July 24-26, 2009, we held the first-ever Reunion of the Zeta Nu Chapter of Delta Sigma Phi. Old memories gave way to new and all enjoyed a truly delightful weekend!

In the end, we reconnected with over 150 friends, had almost 100 join our Facebook group and another 25 connect in our LinkedIn group. Today, our renewed relationships are sustained through social media and we continue our search for those not yet found. Tomorrow . . . another reunion, of course!

About the Author: Debbie Kipp is a Production Manager at Paradowski Creative in St. Louis, Missouri by day and a social media nut and amateur genealogist by night. Learn about life on the production side of the advertising/marketing/graphic design community by visiting her blog The Production Side. Or, follow Debbie on Twitter at @DKKipp.

Social Media and Travel ? A Social Media Success Story by Jeanne Dee

What could be better than traveling the world on an open ended tour?

At Soultravelers3, we have been amazed to find absolutely stunning opportunities, beautiful connections and world wide collaborations through social media.

When we began our open ended, family world tour in 2006 we had no idea that it would play such a big part of our journey? and our lives.

We travel the web 2.0 while we travel the world and it expands our benefits as well as the benefits of our audience that travels with us virtually.

We are the opposite of geeks, don’t own an iphone or ipod, yet our world traveling digital lifestyle as a family led us to be early adopters in some ways, primarily in social media. We knew nothing about blogs when we began, but wanted to share with family and friends, plus create a memoir for our child, so we are shocked that out of the estimated 200 million? travel-related websites on the net, that we are in the top 20 today. We were stunned when our first Youtube travel video went viral with over a million views.

We live richly and travel the world on just 23 dollars a day per person and find ourselves to be accidental trail blazers for a new way of being. Social media has also played a huge part in our daughter’s education as? a 21st century global citizen which is the primary goal in our journey ?(as well as wanting to spend more time together).

The very best part has been the people that we have met that have enriched our journey beyond measure in so many unique ways.

Before leaving, I researched information about what digital piano to buy on a piano forum and by chance the most helpful person was a man from Spain who lived an hour away from where we would winter. That family became one of our best friends in Spain and our guardian angels.

Our daughter takes piano and violin lessons via Skype webcams with teachers on a different continent, both found through social media. We find great travel secrets by asking on social media and we share the great secrets that we discover.

The positive stories are truly endless and I wrote about some a while back in a popular post called “Twitter and Travel 2.0”. We’ve had a lot of fun meeting up with some of the people we’ve met online, like Wendy Perrin from Conde Nast Traveler who invited us to do Hallowe’en with her family when we were in New York City meeting the thousands of disadvantaged school kids who followed us virtually through a non-profit. Her kids were fans of ours because of our Youtube videos and they all had a blast together.

When I had a bike wreck on the Danube and landed in the hospital in Austria, a quick tweet on Twitter allowed my mom and sister to find us and call us. When I tweeted about my daughter taking an online? class with John Hopkins University’s CTY program, a teacher sent her the books she needed from London,? gratis because he was a fan.

Perhaps the biggest way social media changed our lives is when we got a Twitter Direct Message out of the blue which resulted in a featured story in the New York Times from one of our favorite writers. That led to many literary agents finding us and now we are writing a book. Social media makes it a small world today!

About the author: Jeanne Dee is an internationally recognized travel guru and creative lifestyle design consultant, via her award winning website Soultravelers3 that National Geographic Traveler called “One of the best Family Travel Blogs in cyber space”. Find us in Social Media via our Google Profile.

Community doesn?t mean hippie love by John Haydon

Everyone’s talking about community. Brands are shifting strategies to demonstrate how much they care about theirs. Small businesses and nonprofits are being told that engaging with theirs leads to more sales and donations.

Not just hippie love

If you haven’t defined your community, you could be wasting a lot of time pulling the wrong levers.

Think about it. If you define community as everyone who follows you on Twitter, you’ll waste time tweeting with folks who will never buy and never tell others about your company. A little hippie love is nice, but it won’t pay the rent.

Sure, it would feel pretty great for me to claim that my community is over 14,000 strong. But I’d be lying myself and I’d be looking like a fool to everyone else.

The quickest way to define community

If you define community as?the people you share common interests, resources and needs with, then you’re getting somewhere.

I like to keep things simple. Simple is easy to manage and easy to scale.

In my business, people who talk about what I do are like gold. And I do my best to treat them so. I promote what’s important to them. I retweet and share things that they want me to share. We go back and forth on Facebook, Twitter and comments about a number of topics – both personal and professional. The more I do this (and I’ve measured the hell out of this), the more they’ll talk about me to their friends.

So I define community as: People who are talking with me about shared needs and interests.

Is community conversation?

If someone is talking to you and about you, it means that to some degree you both matter. You become part of a community when you talk about what’s important to that community. But what about people who just read your blog and don’t comment? What about the Lurkers?

How do you define community?

About the author: John Haydon advises non-profits and small businesses how to implement inbound marketing strategies with the social web and social media marketing strategies. Follow @johnhaydon on Twitter.

It?s Not Rocket Science. A Retrospect at One Year of Community Building

This is a guest post from Matt Cheuvront and is part of the Guest Blog Grand Tour over at Life Without Pants ? an epic journey of over 75 guest posts.

Want to learn more about Matt & see how far the rabbit hole goes? Subscribe to the Life Without Pants RSS feed & follow him on Twitter to keep in touch!

I?m still a newb to this whole blogging thing.

Those of you who know me might think I?m talking crazy, but no, seriously, this is still a relatively new scene to me when I think about the fact that a year ago ? I wasn?t here, I didn?t have a blog, I knew none of you reading this, and I was at a completely different place in my life.

But in the past year ? some pretty amazing things have happened both on and off my blog. I?ve met some amazing people, established a steady secondary income as a freelance designer and consultant, and have developed a fully interactive and thriving community of readers who genuinely push me to be at my best.

Recently I?ve had the pleasure of sitting down with a couple of people I really respect who wanted to interview me as an ?up and coming? thought leader. It?s extremely humbling to be considered in that light ? and in each of our conversations, I?ve been asked one common question: ?How did you build your community??

That?s the $100 question isn?t it? As bloggers we all want to know how to get people talking, how to get more RSS subscribers, more followers on Twitter, and so on. For most of us, we establish a niche, and they we start thinking about how to grow our community and spread our voice to a wider audience.

Now first and foremost ? while flattered by what some may think ? I?m no thought leader in this area. I have no professional credentials to back anything up ? but a little bit of real life experience can go a long way. Looking back as I approach the one year anniversary of my blog ? here are seven things I?ve done to build and nurture my blog community.

I set out to create ?more than a blog? from day one

This was imperative for me. I?ve had my share of blogging flops in the past ? with Life Without Pants, in what was maybe a desperate initial attempt to not become TOO specific in my overall theme, I set out to create a platform that was free form ? much more than a blog ? but rather a pedestal for people to come and share ideas. My style of writing actively promotes discussion ? even going so far as to objectively ask questions in every post to get people thinking about a response. A blog should be a learning experience for both you and your readers ? thus the more you can promote that level of engagement, the better.

I?ve found ways to relate personal experiences to applicable scenarios for my readers

At the end of the day ? your readers care much less about your actual blog and much more about the person behind it (that would be you). I recently wrote a post on the topic ? but in a nutshell, while you need to find ways to relate your content to the audience, you should never forget the one thing that makes your blog unique ? YOUR perspective. Share personal stories, be opinionated, take a stance, use real life examples ? and then open the floor for discussion.

I?ve replied to 99% of every comment received

From day one I told myself that I would respond to EVERY comment I?ve received and, for the most part, I?ve stayed true to this mantra. Even on posts that have had 100+ comments, I?ve invested the time into responding (thoughtfully) to every comment. The goal? Not to say ?thanks for the comment? ? but to take things a step further ? ask another question, get people thinking even more. If you look through my archives ? the comments section is always much more valuable and interesting than the post itself.

I actively promote the members of my community

Promoting, appreciating, and thanking the people who take the time to visit your blog is so important, yet often forgotten. We are absolutely inundated with the amount of content that is thrown at us from every direction, so for someone to pick YOUR blog read out of the million other ones out there should mean a lot. Take time to go the next step OFF your blog ? send a personal email, follow up with your readers ? visit THEIR blogs and get involved in their communities. Building a community is much easier when you have a group of readers who know you actually care about them.

I?ve gotten everyone involved with projects and ideas

E-books, video projects, guest posting ? just a few of the things I?ve done over at my blog to involve my community. A community isn?t led by one dictator, but rather should be a place where many people can come and share ideas ? not only in replying to comments and being good readers, but in creating some of the content itself. Share the wealth and volunteer your blog as a place for community to assemble and collaborate. It?s a 100% win-win situation for everyone involved.

I invent new ways to share content

Traditional blogging is still the way to go most of the time ? people like to read and respond to blog posts ? but I have integrated new media into my scheme as well. By using video and podcasting, I keep the content fresh and offer unique ways for people to enjoy the things I?m doing. Plus it challenges me as the manager of my blog to think of new ways to share perspective.

I see my blog as an investment

This is THE bottom line when it comes to blogging. A blog is a commitment, a community is an investment. You get what you give. You can still have a life outside of these online walls, but building a community comes down to being present and engaged in what?s going on throughout this space. Budget time every day to work on blogging initiatives, without distractions. Make it a real investment and when you do ? the results will speak for themselves.

Are You Online Right Now?

This is a guest post from close friend and writer?Christina Kingston, who blogs over at CtKingston.com and is one of my 10 Bloggers to Watch in 2010.

If you’re online right now then?

Who’s watching rickety, old, near-death grandpa?
Who’s feeding the children?
Who’s French kissing the wife?

I was chatting with good friend and fellow blogger, Danny Brown, randomly discussing a multitude of topics. We touched upon one that made us both laugh.

The questions above, though harrowing, propelled a few snickers in regards to the “topic” we chuckled over, which boils down to web time spent versus real life squandered.

Danny suggested I write it up as a guest post on his site, but as time passed and rough drafts got cranked out, scattering by my desk side, I began to feel this particular blog might be too offensive for many of my career-oriented, married-with-children friends. It might even be offensive to my very close single friends who are sadly barren, unloved, lonely, and all alone without a clue how to survive in the workplace. I love these people.

Normally I have no problem being aggressive in prose or real life. I can easily blame my parents for this failing and that’s always a relief. Someone to blame. Once in a while I phone my folks, thanking them profusely for being such rotters. So rotten that their actions provided me with an infinite excuse. They hate those calls, but so be it, suck on it Ma and Pa! They know what they’ve done.

But this blog thing? I thought maybe I could just soft-pedal the initial idea so as not to appear accusatory of anyone I personally know, the ones who give the web their undivided attention, meanwhile habitually ignoring their wives, husbands, bfs, gfs, friends, children, jobs?

But no way, that’s what the whole piece was supposed to be about — the anti-social aspects of social networking as it pertains to the love showered on strangers, as opposed to the rampant disregard for those closest to us.

Although I see this kind of neglect often, I certainly wouldn’t map out anyone’s Internet timeline to prove how nearly impossible it’d be to find space where they might have had a moment to ask, “Hi kids, how was school?”? Or even microwave a meal for themselves. And the married ones, do they ever talk with their spouses? They are online far too often to have sex with them, that’s clear.

And is the company they work for paying any attention to their sloppy work ethic? How much longer can these people keep a job? How many of these human animals once had an active social life, solid relationship and successful career only to blindly watch it dwindle while they squander away the hours on a social networking site? This question seemed like a good, possibly very serious blog idea.

But the more I spun it the more it felt potentially a tiny-bit rude.

I’m sure others will and or have tackled this dilemma. However, this kind of dicey subject will probably never be written by me.

But I’ll still wonder, “Who is feeding the children?” I also might think, “It’s no wonder your mate is cheating on you,” and occasionally imagine, “Of course your company flounders and you have zero job security.” I kinda might ponder such things every once in awhile, but I sure won’t be bringing it up in public.

Maybe Danny will? You’ll have to ask him. Actually don’t ask him, I doubt either one of us has much interest in that sort of discussion.

Please leave your thoughts below.