socialADDICT

I wanted to give a little shout out to a wonderful lady who has just recently come onto my radar screen.  Her name is Beth Kanter and she is showing the world how to advocate through social media and how to create true, poweful change through those advocacies. Her blog, How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media, is what she describes as “A place to capture and share ideas, experiment with and publish links about nonprofit technology, educational technology, adoption challenges, information design, visual thinking, creativity, ICT in the developing world, and much more”.  Well said, Beth!

There are so many people who say they want & wish for social change yet only talk about it.  Beth is actually out there making a difference, teaching, training, showing compassion and love, and I bet she’s loving every minute of it. I know I would!

Good luck to you Beth and keep us all posted on your campaigns!  To check out more about Beth Kanter and her nonprofit initiatives click here.

I absolutely LOVE awards shows and the Oscars fall nothing short of my expectations!  This year was a tad bit dry on the humor (I like it a little juicer & shit talking) but I still enjoyed the show.  Except why did they insist on having the Enchanted crew perform? Ugh.

So here’s a quick recap of the winners from the 2008 Oscars:

Best Actor: 

  Daniel Day-Lewis in “There Will Be Blood” (Paramount Vantage and Miramax)

Best Supporting Actor: 

  Javier Bardem in “No Country for Old Men” (Miramax and Paramount Vantage)

 Best Actress:

  Marion Cotillard in “La Vie en Rose” (Picturehouse)

Best Supporting Actress:

  Tilda Swinton in “Michael Clayton” (Warner Bros.)

 Best Animated Feature:

  “Ratatouille” (Walt Disney) Brad Bird

Check out the rest of the winners and nominees here!

As Internet marketers all know Web 2.0 is all about the user. Users are the ones generating the content; uploading their ideas in the form of blogs and podcasts, sharing pictures and music with the community, and taking the initiative to share their knowledge and exert energy into some kind of niche network. With so many communities sprouting up continuously, we as marketers and mediators of communities need to learn how to distinguish our blogs, our podcasts, and the design experiences of our community. We need to differentiate our ideas, design our conversations, develop relationships and promote the community. Ultimately become a conversation architect.

Think of it as a site mediator on steroids. Constantly promoting the community, building up a great user experience, developing relationships and nurturing those relationships is what makes the new generation of marketing so exciting. The conversation architect is also about acceptance. Marketers must accept and understand the shift in power from marketer to consumer (user). And in order to understand, marketers need to talk with the users. Sounds simple right? You’d be surprised how little conversing goes on between the people behind the website and the end user. In my opinion those will be the sites that ultimately FAIL.

Even with a shift in power, marketers and designers are still developing the interface but they are now giving up the control of what should be done inside the site. Instead, successful sites have extremely dynamic content, offer endless potential to their community, and embrace fresh and funky user generated ideas. On top of accepting this idea of fluidity, marketers should be the conversation architects to facilitate the conversations and ideas with all members of the community. At this point you will begin to thrive a vibrant community full of active, loyal, and influential members.

I’m continuously working towards becoming a great conversation architect.

Also, can I get my business cards updated?