SiftGroups - Insider - August 2009

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Welcome to SiftGroups Insider

Welcome to our second Insider, which is also the last one that will be sent from our Victoria Street offices. The orange paint was shiny and new when we moved in nearly ten years ago, but we’re bursting at the seams now and it’s time to move on.

So the fast-approaching Bank Holiday weekend will herald the arrival of hundreds of crates (orange ones, funnily enough) and after a herculean effort from our IT team and assorted volunteers we’ll be back in action first thing on Tuesday morning.

The view will be different, but the people will be the same, and to me that’s the most important part of any business - whether those people are colleagues, clients, members or advocates.

I look forward to welcoming many of you to our new home over the coming weeks. If you make it a Friday, you’ll probably find that the Beer Trolley has made it too.

James Skinner
COO, SiftGroups

SiftGroups News

We have a number of exciting events coming up that we would like to share with our Insider readers before anyone else:

We will be joining forces with Madgex once again after our Publishers Breakfast that was held in June and which saw nearly 100 publishers coming together to discuss ‘100 ways to win through in online publishing’.

Scheduled for the 8th of October, we will be joining leading industry players to discuss the importance of online recruitment. Please contact us for more information. .

Following the hugely successful Publishers Breakfast in the summer, the DPA have invited us to re-run the presentation as part of their Annual Conference and Awards ceremony being held, as always, in the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Part of a packed programme, the “practitioner” stream of the event is designed to raise skills in online publishing.

This is a great event and really informative day and we have negotiated a special conference day rate for Insider readers of £250 with just £100 per additional colleague. To take advantage of this rate please use the code “MONETISE” when booking.

In the mean time, the next event that we are planning to hold will be in conjunction with The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) around the end of September, details to be confirmed so watch this space!

What is Social Media?

By Lawrence Clarke

What makes ‘social media’ especially social is its potential for immediacy and instant gratification. The telephone (Skype) and instant messaging, usually one-to-one, are instantaneous.

What distinguishes the online networking applications from their industrial equivalents is that they cater for asynchronous communication, usually one-to-many, where the delay in response is measured in minutes or hours, not the days or weeks associated with newspapers and magazines. This makes the sense of communing and sharing especially powerful.

The characteristics of a community – a collection of people who are more interested in sharing than personal branding – emerge from individuals grouping themselves by topic (one of the defining social networking characteristics in China) or from individuals who have met, or could meet, face-to-face. ‘Community’ media by definition works best as hybrids between industrial and social media. At the industrial end it encompasses community-owned channels such as community radios (I’ve recently experienced the delights of hospital radio) and community TV and newspapers.

So when we at SiftGroups describe ourselves as ‘The social media people’ what we really mean is that we are your potential professional partner there to help you define, sustain and reap, the rewards of a vibrant online community that reinforces your brand and delivers lasting value both for you and your audience.

Read more about Social Media at SiftGroups.com

talk about autism

TalkTalk & TreeHouse, the national charity for autism education, launched an information and social networking website called talkaboutautism.org.uk in April 2009. The aim of the community is to provide a safe and supportive space where parents, carers, families and people on the spectrum can discuss issues surrounding autism. As well as delivering the technology, we're also helping TreeHouse manage and nurture the rapidly-growing community.

Sponsored by TalkTalk, the website provides expert information and advice about autism and how to navigate the education system, covering key times such as diagnosis, admission to an appropriate school, the statementing process, tribunal and exclusion as well as a moderated online community for all parents and carers of children with autism to share experiences, ideas and support.

Each month the SiftGroups Insider will offer up the best snippets from our bloggers.

To blog or not to blog

For many blogging is a bit passé – the new blogging is Twitter with all the attraction of immediacy and connection with others that a ‘classic’ blog would struggle to provide. So what’s the point of a blog? Define a blog as a piece of personal publishing, then one thing a blog stands for is the opportunity to expand on something and be listened to by anyone in the world without the need for an expensive intermediary (the publisher) and cumbersome and costly distribution channels. In that sense it does represent a genuine revolution in publishing.

Online publishing

It’s all about niche - Publishers exist because authors and journalists cannot afford to manufacture, distribute and sell their creations. The publisher will bear the costs in exchange for taking the lion-share of the rewards. It’s not surprising that any book publisher stands or falls by backing ‘best sellers’ or any controlled-circulation magazine publisher needs to mail out to a significant proportion of the target audience as defined by its advertising clients. What online social media demonstrates is that those with the creative urge can publish to a worldwide audience for free – no manufacturing, distribution or sales costs.

Social Media Expert

Some more gems from our community management experts

6. Find the money for your advertiser

Help your advertising client get more budget for future campaigns by helping them prove ROI from the previous campaign - through delivering qualified (and trackable) leads not click-throughs.

Read four more tips