Jeff Hurt

Jeff Hurt is Director of Education & Engagement for Velvet Chainsaw Consulting. Most recently he was the Director of Education and Events for National Association of Dental Plans. He has worked in events/nonprofit arena for more than 20 years including Keep America Beautiful, Keep Texas Beautiful, Meeting Professionals International and Promotional Products Association International. He has also served on several board of directors for regional, state and national charities and organizations.

January 10, 2012

Disrupting Conferences: 6 Nonprofit Disconnects

By Jeff Hurt

Are we witnessing a digital revolution? Or digital evolution?

Can we simply adapt and apply old skills to new contexts? Or do we need to learn new ways of thinking, doing and being?

One thing is certain. Our nonprofit institutions are dynamic, complex systems embedded within an even more dynamic, complex übersystem: human society.

The Traditional Nonprofit Conference Scenario

Consider the following typical conference scenario:

After registering for a conference and paying a fee, Sue travels to the headquarters city and hotel. (The conference is closed to individuals unless you can afford to pay.)

Once onsite, she makes her way to a large ballroom with theater seating for the opening general session. (Sue is tethered to this place and time if she wants to attend the presentation.)

Talking to others during the presentation is taboo and the host organization has a strict “lids down, mobile devices off” policy to help attendees focus on the content. (Sue is isolated from her friends even though she is surrounded by colleagues and wireless Internet access is available. Leaders forbid attendees from using those resources during sessions.)

Having read the final printed conference program (analog materials) describing the experience and education, Sue joins 1,500 others in listening to a 60-minute lecture. (Every registrant is a consumer of the same one-size-fit-all generic information regardless of their years of industry experience.)

The Everyday Experience Of A Conference Attendee

Now consider Sue’s experience during the rest of the day:

From her hotel room, the conference center, the coffee shop, the restaurant and bus, Sue connects to the Internet via her smartphone, tablet device and laptop. (Sue is mobile.)

She searches for information (digital resources are open for her to freely access) relevant to the conference’s presentations.

She texts with friends to see which education sessions they will attend. In some cases, she sets up onsite meetups with people in her social networks. (She is connected to other people.)

She posts in social networks questions about conference speakers and presentations. (She is connected to online communities.)

Her social connections respond with links to related information. (Her social networks are connected to content.) She skims the electronic materials (reading only what is important to her personally).

Later that evening at a meetup, she shares with her friends what she discovered about tomorrow’s speakers and presentations (creating and participating in the teaching process.)

6 Nonprofit Disconnects With Our Everyday Lives

People’s everyday lives are often drastically different than our nonprofit programs and services. It’s critical that our nonprofit institutions recognize, understand and adapt to these changes.

(These six society categories were first identified by David Wiley, 2006. I’ve changed the headings to apply to nonprofits.)

Nonprofit institutions once held a monopoly on industry specific information, subject matter experts and communities of likeminded individuals.

Today, nonprofit institutions are being challenged in each of their major functional areas:

Access to specific content and information
Education programs
Research materials
Hubs of likeminded individuals
Advocacy issues

With no monopoly position and no bailout coming, are nonprofit institutions so arrogant as to really believe they are immune to what is happening in the ubersystem?

Tomorrow: More information about these six trends and the changing context of nonprofit institutions.

Which of these six categories will be the most difficult for nonprofits to address and why? How can nonprofit leadership help staff and other leaders change core organizational value to remain meaningful to individual’s everyday lives?

Posted with permission of Jeff Hurt. Originally posted at: http://jeffhurtblog.com/2011/09/28/disrupting-conferences-6-nonprofit-institution-disconnects/

(Photo by dogwelder)

December 5, 2011

Using Social Media to Generate Conference Attendee Registration

By Jeff Hurt

“This year we are going to start engaging with more people via social media,” your boss says at the staff meeting.

“We’re going to have a conference blog, a Twitter feed, a conference Facebook page and a Linkedin event. And I need each of you to contribute some weekly content.”

Hearts drop. Eyes roll. Some even excuse themselves from the room.

Social Media Strategy?

Many of us have heard similar words from our supervisors. The intention is good. The goal of engaging with customers and potential customers is good.

Yet, often organizations implement a social media program without aligning it to their business goals. We think that social media should be its own stand alone strategy and business objective. So we create “engagement” and “conversation” tactics with no connection to core business functions.

Your business does not plug into social media. Social media plugs into your business.

Social media is not its own function. It is a tool to communicate.

Look at your current conference business objectives and strategies. Where can social media easily integrate as part of your tactics to achieve those objectives? Instead of creating a separate social media strategy, use social media as a vehicle to support the existing business strategy.

Increasing Attendee And Exhibitor Sales

Like it or not, your conference depends first and foremost on revenue. Without revenue, your conference dies. So there’s no need to pretend that social media isn’t ultimately about generating or driving attendee and exhibitor sales.

How you use social media to make money and in what context separate the good from the ugly. Using it as push, broadcast, interruption advertising only, can create a backlash. Using it to acquire new registrants though reach and influence is smart.

Here are several ways to use social media to increase attendee and exhibitor sales.

1. Acquire New Customers

New attendee acquisition in social media usually starts with awareness leading to regular online participation with the conference organizers. It starts with awareness and reach, leading to influence and ends with conversion.

2. Develop Followers Into Customers

Using social networks to create both depth and breadth of online engagement is one way to develop your followers. Social media creates both influence (word of mouth) and scale with horizontal engagement (peer to peer) that traditional media does not. Regular online participation with your followers via social platforms can convert them from followers into customers.

3. Amplify Reach Of Conference Marketing Campaigns

Another way social media can increase sales is by amplifying the reach of conference marketing campaigns. Years ago the only way to scale a conference marketing campaign’s reach was through TV, radio, print, billboards, magazine inserts, direct mail and trade reviews.

Today, the media environment is richer and more economical. You can create your own YouTube videos. Blogs can enhance the relevance and depth of conference content. Branded Facebook pages can leverage discussion and publish posts. Not only can you scale your campaign’s reach, you can also make your messages stickier.

4. Offer Discounts And Special Promotions

Offering a special time-limited discount code with a hyperlink to the conference registration website can generate sales on the spot. Different codes can be used for different social networks so that you can track ROI.

What are some other tactics that conference organizers can use to create more attendee and exhibitor registrants? Why is online engagement important to the customer conversion process?

(Photo by Khalid Albaih)

Posted with permission of Jeff Hurt. Originally posted at http://jeffhurtblog.com/2011/10/12/using-social-media-generate-conference-attendee-registration/

October 31, 2011

Stagnant Economy, Big Shift, Great Disruption & The Meetings Industry

By Jeff Hurt

“There’s something happening here,” says author Thomas Friedman referring to the spontaneous protests from Tel Aviv to Wall Street.

According to Friedman, we are witnessing seismic changes from two overarching narratives: The Big Shift and The Great Disruption. That coupled with the systemic challenges of our stagnant economy for the next decade could have a great impact on the meetings industry.

Stagnant Economy

Glen Hutchins, CNBC’s Squawk Box, Glen Hutchins, Federal Reserve Board member and co-CEO of Silver Lake says,

“You can’t solve a problem (the Recession) unless you understand it. You certainly can’t make predictions about something until you understand it clearly. Most of the people who are talking about the economy plunging off a cliff are the same people who, several months back, were expecting some cyclical rebound and recovery. Those people don’t understand the situation. We are not in a cyclical set of problems…What we are in is a long period of long-term low average growth.”

Hutchins believes that our economy is similar to being overweight and having diabetes. It will take long-term management before we become healthy again.

A Decade Of Weak Demand

According to Steve Denning,

“A change in life-style is also due for the private sector. Making money in this economy for the private sector, once they have cut costs to the bone, is going to be very difficult for companies practicing traditional management…A probable decade of weak demand will put a lot of traditionally managed companies out of business.”

In the past, companies facing decreased revenues have responded by cutting budgets, especially those for events, meetings and professional development. If the next ten years place a financial strain on corporations, are our annual meetings and conferences also going to face a weak demand? And are we prepared to make radical changes to our traditional meetings so that people feel they can’t miss our experience?

The Big Shift

The Power Of Pull authors John Hagel III and John Seely Brown feel that we are in the beginning stages of the Big Shift, the merging of globalization and information technology revolution.

“In the early stages, we experience this Big Shift as mounting pressure, deteriorating performance and growing stress because we continue to operate with institutions and practices that are increasingly dysfunctional …

The Big Shift unleashes a huge global flow of ideas, innovations, new collaborative possibilities and new market opportunities.

It calls on us to learn faster by working together and to pull out of ourselves more of our true potential, both individually and collectively.”

The Big Shift will have a tremendous affect on the traditional, one-way transfer of information at conferences. People will want to work collaboratively on issues and share ideas. They will want more time to problem solve together and less time devoted to being talked at from the podium.

The Great Disruption

The Great Disruption author Paul Gilding argues that our capitalistic growth-obsessed system is reaching financial and ecological limits.

“I look at the world as an integrated system, so I don’t see these protests, or the debt crisis, or inequality, or the economy, or the climate going weird, in isolation — I see our system in the painful process of breaking down…Our system of economic growth, of ineffective democracy, of overloading planet earth — our system — is eating itself alive.”

Gilding feels that the middle class is the one most impacted by the Great Disruption. He believes that the Great Disruption is inevitable but that humanity does its best during crisis.

If the middle class continues to see its household income fall and debt rise, will they keep attending annual meetings? If the corporation cuts budget for travel, meetings and professional development will individuals pay for the conference from their own wallets?

What’s Next?

Thomas Friedman thinks that we are witnessing both the Big Shift and the Great Disruption. The challenge for the meetings industry is to fully understand and prepare for a challenging economy.

What are some of the opportunities facing conference organizers and meeting professionals regarding the Stagnant Economy, The Big Shift and The Great Disruption? How can meeting professional prepare for unknown economic climates?

Posted with the permission of Jeff Hurt. Originally posted @ http://jeffhurtblog.com/2011/10/17/stagnant-economy-big-shift-great-disruption-meetings-industry/

(Photo by photosteve101)

October 10, 2011

The Mirage of Conference Information Tsunami

By Jeff Hurt

Your attendees rate the learning impact of “massing” as superior at your event.

Massing in the education world is defined as receiving large blocks of information in condensed amounts of time.

Attendees feel that the more information they can receive, the higher their performance.

Unfortunately, the conference information tsunami is a mirage. It is a short-lived, instant gratification that quickly fades like a gummy bear sugar rush. And back in the office, it leaves the attendee feeling empty, drained and questioning if the conference was actually worth it.

Cramming Not A Successful Conference Strategy

Conference attendees feel that cramming information is a successful strategy to get the most for their money. They remember cramming for an exam and passing a test. So why can’t they cram conference information and take it back to the office?

Cramming for an exam placed an emphasis on minimal memory retrieval. The goal was to pass the test, not apply the information to work.

Spaced Information Waves

Learning for the workplace has a different aim than cramming for an exam. The goal is to build contextual understanding of the information and to apply it to work. Ultimately, the goal is to learn and retain relevant information.

Spacing information into intervals, like waves, and allowing attendees to connect new information to past experiences, increases the memory and learning. Allowing for a wave of information, then a time where the information can be digested, discussed and reflected upon, drives the building of long-term memory.

Our Brain’s Information Surge Protectors

It’s true that we have a lifetime capacity for learning. Unfortunately, on a daily basis that capacity has severe limits. The brain has several built in natural surge protectors that limit learning.

1. Our Frontal Lobes

Our short term memory is located in the frontal lobes of our brain. It can only entertain three to five chunks of information at a time for five to 20 seconds. Try to add more information and we either drop the previous information or miss new incoming information completely. In order for the information to be retained, it has to move from short-term memory to long-term memory and that takes time.

2. Synaptic Connections

The biological process for learning begins within 15 minutes of exposure to new information. During this process, neurons communicate with other neurons connecting new information to past information through a synapse. Within an hour, that mental connection builds and takes up to six hours to completely form. If more information is received before strengthening occurs, it disturbs the process and the memory is lost.

3. Hippocampus

All information must go through the hippocampus to be translated into memory. It learns fast but has a very small memory capacity. It evaluates new information and decides if it’s worth committing to long-term memory. If the hippocampus deems the new information important (novel, relevant, emotionally stimulating) it organizes and indexes it for later storage. At night, while we sleep, the hippocampus then codifies the learning into a long-term memory.

Unfortunately, the hippocampus is extremely fickle. Throw more information at it before it’s processed past information and it is guaranteed to short fuse.

Less Is More

Given what research shows about how our brain learns, it should be apparent that trying to gain more information per minute at a conference actually assures little is learned or retained.

Conference hosts that try to offer more content faster ensure that their attendees will simply forget more and faster. Less is more. Too much, too fast, and it won’t last.

Why do we think listening to more information at a conference leads to improvement in the workplace? Should we just go ahead and give audiences what they want with more content or should we try to help them actually learn it?

Posted with the permission of Jeff Hurt | Originally posted @ http://jeffhurtblog.com/2011/10/04/mirage-of-conference-information-tsunami/

September 5, 2011

Why Your Event Needs to Increase Its Social Media Monitoring

By Jeff Hurt

The majority of conference and event organizers are not monitoring social media. Are you?

According to a 2011 Social Media & Events Report released by amaindo, more than 60% of event organizers do not use social media to listen, connect and collect data about their customers and potential customers.

Event organizers are overlooking a lot of unused, ripe, low-hanging fruit by not monitoring social media.

Missing The Boat…And Opportunities

Few conference organizers spend the time to analyze the information that is already at their disposal. Many don’t realize that the scrutinizing the stats can help them find patterns and identify areas for improvement.

Existing data to explore include:

Repeat attendance (every year and every other year)
Regions with the most attendees
Number of attendees from each company
Audience segmentation
What type of attendee is missing?
And much more

Why Monitor Social Media

In addition to the data collected from demographics, registration and evaluations, social media provides one of the richest data sets available.

Why should event organizers monitor social media?

To find new prospects that want to experience your conference.
To understand if the language you are using in your event marketing materials is the same language being used by those you want to attract.
To harness the creativity, influence, input and insights of those online.
To find potential entertainment and speakers that are active in social media and understand today’s social tools.
To observe your competition, their offerings and their online presence.
To identify trends through the lens of the online masses and determine if you are behind, ahead or riding the wave.
To provide customer service to those venting frustration, concerns and questions in social media.

Monitor And Listen

Is there a difference between monitoring and listening in social media?

Dan Neely, CEO of Networked Insights believes so. He says, “Monitoring sees trees; listening sees the forest.”

He uses the following analogy for monitoring and listening.

Imagine a mysterious illness has struck your city. You are to find as many sick people as possible and treat them. (That’s monitoring.) You could go door to door checking each person for symptoms of the illness and treating them. (Again monitoring.)

Unfortunately, without knowing the root cause, you do not know how to prevent the sickness. A listening approach would study what caused the illness, how it spreads, what treatments work and how to prevent it.

In short, monitoring finds symptoms. Listening finds causes.

In social media, monitoring finds individual posts with keywords. It’s a scrape and dump process.

Effective social media listening analyzes the data and looks for patterns. It finds themes without keywords, so there’s no bias.

Good online monitoring tools automate the recording, analyzing, categorizing and visualizing of data. The tool creates an informative report tying all the data together and identifying the overarching patterns.

So what tools should conference organizers use? Beth Kanter provides a comprehensive list of tools for listening, monitoring, engagement and management.

Social Media More Than Listening Or Monitoring

Ultimately, whether you are monitoring or listening to social media, please remember: social media is also about building and maintaining relationships. Connecting and engaging are just as important.

Why do so few conference and event organizers monitor or listen to social media? What are some other reasons they should monitor and listen to social media?

Posted with the permission of Jeff Hurt | Originally posted @ http://jeffhurtblog.com/2011/07/07/why-your-event-needs-increase-its-social-media-monitoring/

August 15, 2011

Report: Events Have Room to Grow Their Social Media Use

By Jeff Hurt

67% of event organizers do not monitor social media platforms.

37% of conference organizers only post up to three times per week in social media platforms.

76% of German event organizers see social media as an important or very important tool for marketing their events. 81% of English speaking event organizers see social media use as relevant for marketing.

These are just a few of the findings from a new 2011 social media and events study.

New Event Social Media 2011 Report

Following their successful 2010 study Twitter For Events, amiando, a European online registration and ticketing company, has released Social Media & Events Report 2011: How Is The Events Industry Using Social Networks. Nearly 1,000 English and German speaking event organizers participated in the survey.

amiando wanted to show the relevance of social media to the events industry, understand its future potential, identify common problems and provide tips to event hosts when using social media. The report shows that social media is an important marketing tool for events and will continue to increase in importance.

amiando is offering free downloads of the report in exchange for contact information.

7 Important Findings At A Glance

Here are several important findings from the 2011 Social Media And Events Report.

1. The top four most used social media platforms for events are: Facebook (84%), Twitter (61%), Xing (47%) and YouTube (44%).

LinkedIn (35%) and blogs (35%) are underused by event organizers. Organizers should actively find ways to increase the use of both LinkedIn and blogs as social media channels. Remember: don’t just play in the social media platforms where your loyal attendees are. Also play where you can reach new audiences.

2. More than 80% of event hosts (82%) plan to increase their social media use in the future.

3. Increasing awareness (77%) for an event is the top social media goal.

Increasing awareness of their event, program, speakers is the top social media goal of event organizers. Creating a new communication medium (66%), lead generation (59%) and increasing customer loyalty (51%) are also seen as important goals.

4. 66% met their goal of increasing awareness.

45% say they were able to increase customer loyalty. 44% said they met their goal to create a new communication medium. 40% were able to acquire new customers.

5. 54% of event hosts said “lack of time” was their biggest barrier to using social media.

6. Only 37% of event organizers use social media monitoring tools.

Monitoring social media is an important part of any successful strategy. Event organizers should be listening and monitoring first before they ever start sharing.

7. According to 78% of survey participants, Facebook has the highest marketing potential.

Responders see more marketing potential in Facebook (78%) and Twitter (47%) than business networks of LinkedIn (26%) and Xing (38%).

Social Media & Events Report 2011 illustrates that many event organizers already see social media as an important marketing tool. The report also identifies areas that need improvement like social media monitoring and expanding social media use into other platforms like blogs and LinkedIn.

What surprised you most from these finding about event hosts social media use? Why do event organizers see Facebook as having more potential than LinkedIn?

Posted with the permission of Jeff Hurt | Originally posted @ http://jeffhurtblog.com/2011/07/06/report-events-have-room-grow-their-social-media-use/

June 20, 2011

Three Social Media Strategies

By Jeff Hurt

Out: Using Facebook pages and organization Twitter accounts to solely broadcast newsletters, press releases, announcements and sales.

In: Using social media intentionally, integrated with all marketing channels and crossing organizational silos, to engage people.

Who do we want to engage?

People we already know.
People we don’t know.

From Loyalty To Acquisition

Most social media strategies engage people who have an awareness that the organization already exists. The purpose is to serve as loyalty tool, creating deeper connections and relationships.

Many organizations don’t realize social media’s potential as a lead generator.

Today, organizations can connect to new people who don’t know them yet. Applying social media tools, SEO (search engine optimization) and content creation, organizations can reach new audiences.

The goal? To turn them into new customers.

Three Social Media Strategies To Consider

Author Jay Baer and Compendium’s Chris Baggott identify five 2011 social media trends to watch. Here are three of those trends that your organization can apply immediately.

1. Think Like A Digital Publisher

Historically, organizations have relied on the media and conventional printing to convey their messages. Now an organization can publish their own stories to reach their audience using social media channels like blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Organizations should think like digital publishers. Create an organization radio station (blogtalkradio), television station (live streaming, YouTube Live) and digital magazine (Issu.com, Flipbook).

2. Create Good Content

I’ll admit I’ve had strong negative feelings towards organizations that created content that was stuffed with keywords for SEO. It frustrated me. The writer’s purpose was to be found in search engines, not help the reader.

“People friendly” content was hard to find because it often had little-to-no keywords in the content.

Today, search engines know that content that is good for people is also good for search.

Good content does not have to have a lot of comments or retweets. Nor does good content need to only come from the organization or the organization’s staff. And good content does not have to be big picture or though leading all of the time.

Good content solves your readers’ problems!

Tell stories that are authentic to your organization and solves problems. People search for how to solve their problems. (They don’t know the answer yet.) Then they look for people they can trust with credibility to solve their problems.

3. Combine Traditional And Social Media Marketing

Traditional marketing strategies create a demand. Social media marketing fulfills the demand. Organizations need to learn how to do both.

Social media does not usually lead to a fast close. It is a slow marketing strategy. It may not even pay immediate dividends. However, it can build relationships that will lead to lifetime customer value.

Most traditional marketing peaks a customer’s interest. It leads to the customer searching online about the product, service or organization.

If organizations are willing to spend large budgets on creating a demand with traditional marketing, shouldn’t they be willing to spend large budgets to catch that demand online?

What barriers keep organizations from adopting inbound marketing and customer acquisition strategies with social media? What are some tips to educate executives on adopting integrated channel marketing?

Posted with the permission of Jeff Hurt | Originally posted @ http://jeffhurtblog.com/2011/04/15/three-effective-social-media-strategies/

(Photo by waponi)

May 30, 2011

Applying Industrial Revolution Ideas to People & Events Was Wrong

By Jeff Hurt

Lee Bryant of Headshift has some interesting thoughts about how the Twentieth Century was wrong.

He says:
Some people see new social technology and networked culture as dangerous and ‘new’, and they fall back on their experience of technology and organizational culture in the late Twentieth Century as the ‘established’ model. Yet, in fact the reverse is true. The Twentieth century took the ideas of the industrial revolution and applied them to people. Mass production. Mass marketing. Mass slaughter.

20th Century engraving factory manufacturing silk

If you look at a longer timeframe, you will see that our new era of social technology and social business is in fact more traditional, and continues very old, resilient models of network-based trade, business and socialization. The difference is, we now have the technology and infrastructure (and arguably the globalised world) that enables us to scale up these old ways of working to support our modern life.

I agree with Bryant on many levels and as a professional educator I know that much of today’s public education is built on the framework of the industrial revolution. The goal was to train students to sit in rows, follow a leader’s instructions, do rote memory tasks and all have same outcomes.

Interesting enough, so many of today’s conferences, events and meetings still use the command and control, hierarchy approach grounded in the industrial revolution as well. People enter large ballrooms, sit in rows and passively listen to one presenter as if everyone will leave the room with the same outcomes. Adult white space, as I call it, is rarely used allowing attendees to digest information, bounce ideas off other attendees, view those ideas from different perspectives and consider a variety of ways to apply it. It is as if attendees are to leave the ballroom and create the same intellectual widget in the same way as everyone else. Often conference organizer’s consider group think, collaboration, peer-to-peer sharing as out of step with mass production and against the grain. Attendees talking and sharing with others is seen as out of control instead of controlled chaos and engagement.

Bryant believes that network-based organizations and collaboration are actually old resilient traditional models from socialization and history. Here is his PPT presentation that he delivered to the Lift Conference 2009 that discusses how the Twentieth Century got it wrong.

As you view this presentation, consider

How can we change our education efforts within meetings and events to embrace a network-based collaborative conference.
How we can change the focus of conferences from one presenter to many with passive audience members to many presenters to many with engaged attendees.

I don’t have all the answers yet, and the more I consider this issue, the more questions I have.

The Twentieth Century was Wrong

View more documents from Lee Bryant.

So what are your thoughts?

Posted with the permission of Jeff Hurt | Originally posted @ http://jeffhurtblog.com/2009/08/10/applying-ideas-of-the-industrial-revolution-to-people-was-wrong/

May 10, 2011

Social Media Equals Human Content & Connection

By Jeff Hurt

The term social media has become fused with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

But that’s wrong.

It is so much more than those three social networking tools.

What Is Social Media Anyway?

Web 1.0 was about online delivery of information. It was static information on pages. It was one-way broadcast.

Web 2.0 is bidirectional, dynamic and about engagement. It’s vibrant with streams of information and conversations. Users pull the content they want into their personal aggregators.

Web 2.0 birthed social media, where users could become active participants in online dialogue. Users no longer were forced to read and listen to what a static website said. Users could now have their own say.

And they did. And still do.

Now if they don’t like what the organization is broadcasting on their website, users write about it on their personal blogs, in Facebook and tweet about it. They tell their friends about what the organization’s static web page says. They may “like” it. If they dislike it, they may dish the brand and its leadership. Or they publically complain.

And they wait and watch for organizational reps to respond. They expect to have a dialogue with those employed by the company in the places where they play.

Online Interactive Dialogue Equals Social Media

Social media is not Facebook. Social media is not Twitter. It is not LinkedIn. It is not ______________ (insert your favorite social technology tool here).

Anything shared online that enables a two-way, interactive dialogue is social media. It’s about the interaction and conversation that makes it social.

Today, everyone can be a content producer. Not just media. Not just authors. Not just organizations.

Anyone can produce a Facebook update, a tweet, a LinkedIn post, a blog comment or a product review. Some have their own blogs, write copy for their personal websites and produce video commentary. Some share personal photos, PPT presentations and research.

Today, we have the rise of user-generated content. And that user-generated content is usually shareable. People can respond to it. Some repurpose it. Some comment on it. Some broadcast it to others. It’s social media at its best.

Social Media Has Torn Down Corporate Walls

Social media and social networking is about being human. It’s about moving away from corporate speak and headquarters spin, to authentic, transparent communications. It’s about realness and showing the social self.

Social media is human content. It’s about sharing content generated by the people for the people.

Post a generic, corporate-sounding post on your Facebook page and you’ll lose credibility with the community. Distribute a typical corporate sound-bite, self-promotional tweet and your followers will probably ignore it. Ask an egotistical, self-serving LinkedIn question and watch people remove their connection to you.

Social has torn down the walls, forcing organizations to use systems of engagement, becoming more human in their connections and communications.

Today, internet users want to connect to each other, people at your organization and fresh, relevant content.

The challenge for most organizations is that humanizing their brand means they must first humanize their business.

What barriers keep organizations from implementing social media internally in an effort to be more human externally? What are some of the traits of successful social organizations?

Posted with the permission of Jeff Hurt| Originally posted @ http://jeffhurtblog.com/2011/04/19/social-media-equals-human-content-connection/

April 18, 2011

Live Streaming: Hollywood Production Value or Good Enough for Learning?

By Jeff Hurt

It’s the end of the (meetings) world as we know it. ~ Paraphrase, R.E.M.

“This might be the beginning of the end…and the dawn of a new era in which people think recorded video as passé and demand live streaming of events,” says Priya Ramesh on The Buzz Bin Blog.

YouTube Going Live

“With over 2 billion views a day, it’s easy to think about YouTube as a place to watch videos recorded in the past. But you’ve told us you want more – and that includes events taking place right now,” says YouTube’s Joshua Siegel and Christopher Hamilton.

Enter YouTube Live.

Now you can use YouTube for recorded and live streams from your conference or event. Since the average person spends 15 minutes a day on YouTube, think about the impact of your event live stream on YouTube.

Slick Production Or Good Enough?

Most people who think about live streaming from their conference struggle with this question:

Do we go with a polished, high-end Hollywood-style produced live stream or a do it yourself, just good enough version?

The quick and easy answer is: it depends on your budget. If you have an extra $10,000 available, you can hire a third-party team to create a slick, sophisticated, refined live stream. Or you can DIY for less than $1,000.

Ultimately, it depends on your goal. If you goal is to provide information that leads to education and learning, “Good Enough Video” may be the right choice for you.

8 Traits Of Good Enough Video & Live Streaming

Learning expert Elliot Masie says that people have shifted their expectations for the production quality of video used for learning.

About 18 months ago, people expected corporate training videos to be refined and sophisticated. As more of us have watched YouTube videos, our expectations for Hollywood-produced videos have declined. We now watch short, to-the-point, homemade videos.

Masie says that if learning is the goal, learners thrive on “Good Enough Video.”

Here are eight traits of “Good Enough Video & Live Streaming,” five of which Masie identifies.

Authentic
There is something honest and genuine about homemade, good enough videos. They validate our experiences and depict realistic life.
Real-Time Speed
They reflect the most current and up-to-date changes and observations.
Voice Of The Field
The voice of practitioners feels more legitimate and above-board than the smooze and spin of headquarters.
Duration
They get to the point faster with less pomp and circumstance. Often recordings are reduced to short chunks to aid learning instead of 30-, 60- or 90-minute sessions.
Quantity
Due to lower production costs and overhead, there is a wide range for learners to choose.
Rankable
Viewers are able to rank these videos and live streams. The best and most viral rise to the top.
Shareable And Spreadable
Viewers are able to share and spread its message when not located behind a fire wall. They can embed the videos on their blog, Facebook page and share via other social networks.
Good Audio
More than the visuals, the audio needs to be of high quality.

How will “Good Enough Video” impact your conference or event? What are the pros and cons of using a third party vendor to produce your live stream?

Posted with the permission of Jeff Hurt | Originally posted @ http://jeffhurtblog.com/2011/04/12/live-streaming-hollywood-production-value-or-good-enough-for-learning/