Tag Archives: community

Listening to your community

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
1

Building community is something I’ve always loved. My first experiment in community building was this blog, my personal blog. That community has grown, and stayed with me these last 3 years. From back when I started video blogging on Viddler, when I was doing Y! Live videos every night, when I was a featured user on Pownce,  when I started a video podcast, there have been so many awesome adventures that this community has supported me through.

But when you build a community, you also need to see how it reacts to changes that you make. When I started blogging about health and food, those posts never got nearly as much positive feedback from the community as the posts I would write about iPhone apps, or my geek gift guide. Just because my personal interests shifted, I can’t expect the entire community I built to be interested in it too.

So even though this is my personal blog, I feel that the content has lost direction and I would really like to re-focus it. I will continue to write about technology, geeky things, and online communities here on Random Sarah.

However, writing about food, health and my diet is something that I have a growing interest in and while I won’t write about it here on Random Sarah anymore, I am pleased to announce that I am started a food blog called Eat Raw. I wanted to start from scratch and build a community there that is interested in learning more about raw foods, and health in general. I have different goals for Eat Raw now then goals I had when I started Random Sarah. Some of my goals are the become a featured publisher on FoodBuzz, to grow a community that is interested in Raw Foods, and possibly attend a Raw Foods culinary school and see where that takes me.

These are all things that I would love to happen, but it will take hard work and dedication to the community for it to grow. But I wanted to let all of my Random Sarah readers know about my new endeavor into the world of food blogging and to let you know that I will continue to bring you the same Random Sarah content here that you are used to.

Thank you again for supporting me and reading Random Sarah.

Everything’s already a Community

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
1

This post is going to be a variation of the review I wrote on Lunch.com’s SXSW community (client) of a panel called Community Management: Future Skills You’ll Need to Know, and the panelists were @saulcolt @glusman @thorpus @seamuscondron @ambercadabra @sarahprevette. The review I wrote was titled “You already have a community”.

My favorite points from that session were:

  • You can teach anybody social media, but for community management to succeed, it needs to be a senior role.
  • We are in danger of slinging around “community” as this big buzzword, but you ALREADY HAVE COMMUNITY, it’s called your CUSTOMERS!
  • Your community tells you when you have a community
  • If no one is saying your brand sucks on twitter, you’re doing it wrong. You want that opportunity to start that conversation.
  • You can’t tell your community what to do, you can only advise them. You don’t own your community, it’s their community.

Please read my review for more specific notes on that panel. But my big take away from that session was, You already have a community, it doesn’t matter what kind of business you are, or whatever kind of brand you are! This made me realize that even I have a community around my personal brand, and I need to actively manage my community.

I have been thinking about community a lot this last week, and I realized that I often find myself only talking about community as it refers to tech, or tech companies. But EVERYTHING is a community. Both in the physical location sense, and in the sense that you are probably a part of more communities then you realize. I realized that I am a part of the social media community, but I am also a part of the cancer community, the online video community, the vegan community, the health community and the New York City community.

I am interacting with all of these people, across all of these different communities, without even trying! Just my being myself, and that is awesome!

So I wanted everyone to reply in the comments with what communities they feel they interact with every day?

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5 things you should consider when designing your web product

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
2

Originally this post was titles 5 reasons I won’t use your web product! But I decided that these were all things that companies could change about their products so I am trying to make it a more positive post.

I get asked to try tons of new sites and services every day. Sometimes people want me to review them on randomsarah.com, sometimes people want them to be considered to be featured on What’s it all About, and many times it’s just friends and other people on twitter telling me about new tools I might not know about.

I love trying out new online tools. It is one of my favorite things to do. But there are a few things right of the bat, that will make me not want to use a site or service.

So here is my list:

1. The Sign-up process: The first thing a new user is going to go through when trying out your site or service, is the Sign-up process. If it is to complicated, or long, I won’t even continue with the process.

Tumblr‘s sign-up page is a great example. 1,2,3 and your DONE!

2. Design: both Graphic Design and User Interface Design. I am a design geek 100%. I love shiny tools. But I have said this many times before, I will not use your product because it’s ugly. When you are starting a site, PLEASE take the time to invest in a good designer. I can promise you that it will pay off. People do judge books by their cover, and they automatically form opinions about your site within the first 5 seconds. Simply based on what it looks like.

For years I did not use GMail because I didn’t want to stare at it all day. I thought it was ugly. Once GMail added themes, I was hooked.

3. Video Tutorial: I can’t tell you how many times I sign up for a service and once I am done with the sign-up process, I have no idea what they want me to do, I have no idea what the service does. This is where I look for an intro video. A simple screencast on how to get started is really all it takes. Sometimes your users need a little push to start using the site. They need to know how, and video is the easiest way to show them.

Screencast video tutorials are very easy to do, but if you can’t do it yourself you can always find people to do it for you.

4. Something like it already exists: This one is a little harder to change, but I think it is worth it when you are creating anything for the web to REALLY see what else is out there. If your site or product is not WAY better than your competition, then people will most likely not give you the shot you deserve. Imitation is not a business model. It is important to create something new and innovative that people will love, and the critical mass will come.

5. Community: While community is not something that belongs as a part of every site, there are some great communities in places when it may not have been obvious that they belong.

Take Yelp for example. Yelp is a site where most people go to find restaurant reviews and other reviews. People can read reviews and write reviews. Now this might not be screaming for a community, but the Yelp community is thriving. You can ask questions, see what your friends are reviewing, create events, there is a ton of stuff to do on Yelp.

Listen to your users, if they are asking for community tools, give it to them. Even if it is just a place to give you feedback or talk about the service, people love community. Creating a strong community will only help your company. Story communities create brand advocates that will be willing to speak on behalf of your product and practically eliminate your need to do any marketing.

Making different content for different platforms

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
6

I have decided to start making separate videos for my tumblr account and hopefully foster a community over there that is separate from my random sarah community. Maybe they will both end up being the same…we will see.

I am trying to focus on my different communities across the social web and embrace the fact that they are different. In the spirit of this, I have un-linked my twitter feed from my facebook status updates so that I can try to focus on the facebook community as something that is separate from my twitter community.

A different kind of networking

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
2

I have been in the tech/social media community for about a year now, and I have met a ton of great people in our space, but I feel as if I am not doing enough. At some point you keep meeting the same people and none of it really leads anywhere. I have attended a lot of conferences, and been a part of lots of larger networking events. I have met some great people and more importantly some great new friends.

However, I would like to start networking on a smaller level. I love talking about social media and tech, and I always seem to be full of random ideas and references relating to media. So if you are in the NYC area and have any interest in meeting up with me in any capacity let me know. Even if you want to just get together and bounce ideas around, or if you are interested in getting into blogging or podcasting, I would love to meet you!

I am also looking for a company in need of a brand ambassador to attend SXSW, so if your company, or anyone you know, fits that bill I would really like to talk to you. I would love to work at your booth or do videos for your company.

The best way to reach me is to email me at: sarah.k.cooley [at] gmail [dot] com or contact me on twitter

A few things to note:

I am also available to talk via video conference if you are not in the area.

I am available for consulting at a small capacity.

I look forward to meeting more people and expanding my view of this world we call the social web.