Tag: Social Networking

Poachers in the Masai Mara and the social web. A great case study.

Update on ranger Leyian who was shot: In total they gave him 6 pints of blood, and are keeping him under observation in case of infections.

That’s the latest tweet from the Mara Triangle on twitter and it illustrates some simple principles of good use of social media for charities and non for profit organisations.

The twitter account is linked to this blog written by the rangers in the Mara Triangle. It’s hosted by wildlife direct, an American charity who seem to be using a wordpressmu (multi-user) installation to offer blogs to a range of animal protection groups. The blog is also supported by image accounts on flickr and video on youtube. Integrating these tools is a key element of using the social web well.

The final element in this jigsaw though is the story. You have to have a story to tell and that means that what you write should be personal.

I hope ranger Leyian recovers quickly.

Hat tip to Robin Hamman.

Gapingvoid quote on being a blogger:

From here:

“The best thing about being a blogger is the people you get to meet.” I have found this to be true and self-evident. When I was younger, the people who inspired me the most professionally were famous, dead, or both. Since I become a blogger the people who inspired me the most became good friends of mine. We hung out. We drunk beer. We ate pizza. It wasn’t a big deal, it was just… lovely. Back in 2004, my blogging buddies and I knew we were onto a good thing. Something powerful and creative and earth-changing. But that’s not the main reason we liked it. We liked it because we enjoyed it, because it was interesting, because of the smart, passionate, fun people we were starting to hang out with.

A decade from now, maybe blogs as we know them won’t even exist. Maybe they’ll call them something else. Do I care? Not really. What matters, like Loic (my link)and I talked about, is the people you get to meet. That’s where the magic lies. Ten years from now, these people will still be around, geeking out on the internet at the latest WHATEVER that’s coming down the pike. They’re not going anywhere, and Thank God for that.

Oddly enough my twittercloud got me thinking about the people I enjoy talking to and how far that is at the root of friendship.

Winding up the BBC blogging experiment

Robin Hamman and Richard Fair’s BBC Manchester Blog has just been officially wound up as an experiment.

When I first wrote about this I and others were arguing that a culture change needs to come too – and that is what Robin is setting our more explicitly in the key things they have learnt:

1 Being part of the community by participating as equals, as opposed to participating as a broadcasting organisation keen for new content but not interested in the community, brings with it many editorial and personal rewards.
2 People don’t necessarily blog or post content about the topics, stories and events that media organisations might hope they would – and, in our experience anyway, rarely post about news and current affairs.
3 As a stand-alone proposition, the amount of staff time and effort spent was high in comparison to the quantity of content generated and size of audience served. But, when we were able to use the contacts and content we found through the blog on-air that equation immediately changed. That is, in resource terms, the blog was costly as just a blog but much more efficient as a driver of radio content.
4 The best way to get noticed online is links and the best way to get links is to give good links yourself. That is, you have to play by the established rules of engagement and, online, that means linking prolifically.

I think a lot of people in the BBC now know this and understand this. The BBC guidelines on staff using social media (here and here on blogging) strike me as realistic and relaxed. Let us hope the new public interest test and governance structures don’t delay those folk making the most of their understanding of the social web.

See also:

Manchizzle “but they did good”.