This is the first draft - sharing for feedback. Slides are for a one hour webinar on social media tool evaluation and adoption practices, using Twitter as a case study.
Twittering or Frittering: assessing the value of a social media tool in your life
1. Twittering: frittering or fabulous? Or…Twitter as a case study for assessing the usefulness of a social media tool in YOUR work context. Nancy White Full Circle Associates http://www.fullcirc.com
2. With seemingly endless opportunities to try yet another social media tool, how do we assess the value of any one of them in our work ?
3. Let’s look at as a case study to experiment and develop practical social media tool assessment and adoption approaches .
4. A couple of ways into the topic… Item Possible Measures Comments Purpose: WHY use it Supports identified organizational/personal goals Or…simply an experiment? (that’s ok!) Target “audience” – who do you want to engage with Value creation (how you’d identify/measure) – supports work Getting Started: Find/install Ease of download (if applicable) - Product and related apps, etc. Successful registration (personal? org?) Firewall issues Device compatibility issues (PC, Mac, mobile…) Getting Started: Figuring it out Useful vendor materials/examples Ease of experimentation Getting Started: Who can I learn from/with Someone around to show me (my favorite!) Active user community Findable case studies/examples Available practice tips Experimentation Small “Safe – Fail” experiments, iterate (Beth Kanter’s “15 minute test”) Workflow Am I really integrating it (reality check) How it integrates or competes w/ my current tools/practices/workflow (ready for uncertainty?) How it fits with time/attention availability Dependencies & risks Who needs to be involved? Willingness of intended target audience? Viruses, against organizational policy, risk of saying something stupid, other risks, etc.
5. Item Possible Measures Comments Purpose: WHY use it Supports identified organizational/personal goals Or…simply an experiment? (that’s ok!) Target “audience” – who do you want to engage with Value creation (how you’d identify/measure) – supports work Getting Started: Find/install Ease of download (if applicable) - Product and related apps, etc. Successful registration (personal? org?) Firewall issues Device compatibility issues (PC, Mac, mobile…) Getting Started: Figuring it out Useful vendor materials/examples Ease of experimentation Getting Started: Who can I learn from/with Someone around to show me (my favorite!) Active user community Findable case studies/examples Available practice tips Experimentation Small “Safe – Fail” experiments, iterate (Beth Kanter’s “15 minute test”) Workflow Am I really integrating it (reality check) How it integrates or competes w/ my current tools/practices/workflow (ready for uncertainty?) How it fits with time/attention availability Dependencies & risks Who needs to be involved? Willingness of intended target audience? Viruses, against organizational policy, risk of saying something stupid, other risks, etc.
We all learn and practice in different ways, so I want to show a couple of examples… rather than just one way to assess a social media tool like Twitter.
We can look at this from the perspective of a rubric… a set of criteria to assess an activity. I’ll show you a second one in a minute – one that groups questions into areas, and a terrific 7 question set from Beth Kanter. You will find similarities but you, personally, may prefer one form over the other. Lets take a look at the grouped one here. We always start with purpose. Why would you explore a new tool… what do you want to accomplish. Most of us won’t experiment just for experimentation’s sake. (However, make sure you make friends with people who DO do this. They are great explorers to find out what is up and coming!) Then we progress through technical, practice and assessment issues. Now lets look at a second approach…
You can see Beth’s list starts with the same sort of “purpose” question. The table gives you something a bit more analytical. I like Beth’s list because it is more informal and VERY personal. So if you are exploring a tool for yourself, you might prefer this tool. If you are evaluating for your library or organization, you might prefer the chart. Whatever works!
Let’s start with the purpose question as it is shared in both approaches. Throughout this webinar, I’ll be asking YOU these questions. You can type in the chat box or grab the mic to share your ideas. Don’t worry if something sounds half-baked. That’s always a great place to start! See a similar process described for educationalists and choosing social media tools http://web2survivalguide.wordpress.com/web-20-and-education/choosing-the-right-tool/ For a deeper example about dependencies with your target people, see this interesting article on the social justice implications of social media tools http://www.freireproject.org/blogs/putting-social-justice-social-media%3A-assessing-tools-trends
If you were using a table like this, you would start filling in the comments side.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eleaf/2536358399/sizes/m/in/photostream/ Next we get into the technical fiddly bits. Since most of you are librarians, there are always organizational questions to ask. But it is also important to examine the tool in the context of YOUR existing tool set. (I like to call this my “personal tool configuration!” All the tools I use. Have you ever listed yours out? It can be amazing to consider…)
What sort of “technical fiddly bits” do you run into? Worry most about?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/beardenb/59207597/ Next come the bits about USING the tool. Let’s talk about some of these… I personally enjoy little getting started checklists. Speaking of checklists, there are tons of existing resources you can tap. From a quick Google search or from recommendations from friends and colleagues…
I like to draw on what others have already learned and shared. That saves me a lot of time.
Here is yet another resource from Beth Kanter on effective Twitter habits.
Here is a very off the wall video introducing Twitter practices… yes, with a puppet.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/abrinsky/3754792367/sizes/z/in/photostream/ As with most social media tools, we can think of the listening and talking sides. Start with the listening. http://bethkanter.wikispaces.com/Listening+101