“Punch Above Your Weight” with Social Media

By Lisa Harris, Lorraine Warren and Alan RaeUniversity of Southampton

15th June 2010

For HEEG Conference, University of Greenwich

Lisa Harris

• Teaches Digital Marketing at the University of Southampton • Programme Director for the MSc in Digital Marketing. • Qualified e-tutor for the University of Liverpool online MBA. • Lisa has run a research project with Alan Rae called ‘Punch Above

Your Weight’ which tracks how small firms promote themselves, network and grow their businesses using Web 2.0 technologies.

• Running various projects to integrate aspects of open learning into the MSc curriculum at Southampton

• Lisa’s current work is investigating the growth of digital presence for career or business development

Session Objective This session will outline how you can develop your digital presence in order to

stand out from the crowd, by using blogging and social networking to build your profile and that of your business.

We will be running HEEG-sponsored workshops in the Autumn at Universities

across the region – please contact me if your institution would like to host one:

l.j.harris@soton.ac.ukwww.lisaharrismarketing.comwww.twitter.com/lisaharriswww.uk.linkedin.com/in/lisajaneharriswww.delicious.com/lisaharris1www.slideshare.net/lisaharris

Cloudworks Community

How many of these activities are you developing…?

Rationale

• Entrepreneurial activity increasingly involves understanding how today’s networks work and how to deploy them effectively, both online and offline.

• Building and maintaining digital presence in this way is becoming a critical aspect of business development

• It is essential to make sure that the nature of the information displayed online is going to encourage rather than discourage potential customers, partners etc.

• James et al (2009) found 72% of early career researchers were NOT using web 2 tools in their work

• Browne et al (2008) found that poor digital skills by university staff were inhibiting change

21st Century Careers (Hughes, 2009)

• Competition for employment in a global knowledge economy

• increased levels of self-employment and portfolio working• growth of multi-disciplinary teams focused on specific

tasks whose members might be physically located anywhere in the world

• life within a networked society • blurring of boundaries between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’, public

and private• increasingly ubiquitous use of digital technologies.

Business Networking Trends Survey (UK)

• 80% of UK entrepreneurs had achieved business wins through social networking sites

• LinkedIn was preferred to FB for business networking• 92% said that they would recommend networking professionally online to their

business contacts• 24% of small businesses are now using sites like Twitter for business networking. • More traditional face-to-face networking continues to grow with 36% regularly

attending networking meetings. • 50% plan to maintain the same levels of F2F networking in 2010, 55% plan to

increase the time they networking online. Source:

http://www.b2bm.biz/News/SOCIAL-MEDIA-NEWS-SMEs-shy-away-from-Facebook/ (Jan 2010)

Digital Wisdom

• The generational distinction (digital immigrants/natives) is a myth – Prensky (2009) now refers instead to ‘digital wisdom’:

“Digital wisdom arises from the combination of the mind and digital tools; what the unenhanced mind loses by outsourcing mundane tasks will be more than made up for by the wisdom gained”

“While the need for wise people to discuss, define, compare, and evaluate perspectives is not changing, the means by which they do so and the quality of their efforts are growing more sophisticated because of digital technology”

• Some argue that digital enhancements make our natural minds lazier and less able (Carr 2008a). This attitude is not new. In Plato's The Phaedrus, Socrates objects to writing on the basis that it undermines the memory…

“Digital presence” is about branding...

• According to Olins (2003), a brand is “a symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to a company, product or service”.

• Chris Brogan (www.chrisbrogan.com) notes that a strong personal brand is a mix of reputation, trust, attention, and execution:

“A personal brand gives you the ability to stand out in a sea of similar products. In essence, you’re marketing yourself as something different than the rest of the pack.”

What does social networking bring to entrepreneurs?

• Agility• Foresight• High velocity• Peripheral sensing• Trends• Rapid prototyping of new possibilities• Be active outside of existing sphere of

influence

Linchpin

Your online portfolio• A blog. Plenty of good advice here:

http://www.slideshare.net/demler1/developing-your-personal-brand-through-blogging

• Twitter guides can be linked from: http://www.twitip.com/personal-brand-how-to-build-yours-in-twitter

• www.teachertrainingvideos.com useful beginner guides (by @russell1955)

• LinkedIn http://www.thewebpitch.com/social-networking/are-you-linking-in/

• Slideshare – for presentations (and now video aswell...)• Be creative! See Ed Hamilton’s CV on Google Maps (45,401 views

to date) http://tinyurl.com/ycvcfcx and Jay Foreman’s video history of London’s tube stations http://tinyurl.com/36rkt7k

How social media has helped my work

• Developing new contacts (joint article in progress with BCU, guest speakers)

• Sourcing newly published articles, calls for papers and relevant events to attend

• Tracking and commenting on the blogposts of key contributors to the field

• Keeping in touch, real time, with project participants and other key contacts

Many uses for Twitter...

• Provide feedback. Become known as a reliable and informative source of help to your network

• Get Feedback. Ask for advice and you’ll receive ‘collective intelligence’ from your network

• Direct traffic. Include links in a tweet to direct traffic to your blog or to the recommended posts of others.

• Read News. subscribe to feeds for specific websites/conferences, or from content providers such as the BBC.

• Make New Friends. Twitter allows you to befriend and track the messages of other users.

• Network for benefits. Interact with other like-minded people, or experts in your field. Develop relationships for future mutual benefits such as testimonials or peer recommendations.

• Find Prospects. Twitter can be used as a means to find potential customers or clients online. Do a search for keywords related to your product on Twitter Search and then follow users.

• Provide Live coverage. For example to provide real time coverage of conference keynotes

• Set Up Meetings. An informal and casual way of arranging adhoc meetings.

‘Givers gain’

• Ask not what the community can do for you, but what you can do for the community…

• The best long term way to build brand influence is to be seen as a ‘giver’ of good quality practical information and advice.

• An authentic personal brand therefore delivers both a track record and a promise of the ongoing delivery of value.

• How exactly will *you* deliver value??

Challenges

• Ongoing time and effort is required to develop and maintain online profiles, learn new tools and ascertain when best to integrate them into the mix.

• F2F brand building elements should not be forgotten – Harris and Rae (2009) show that it is not a zero sum game, because good online networkers also tend to be effective communicators offline.

• As with most things in life, you get out what you put in, and persistence pays off.

• It is critical to be authentic. If an online profile is developed at only a superficial level, for example by basing it simply on ego, spin or piggybacking off the work of others, then it will not be enduring.

Action Plan

• So what exactly are *you* going to go away and do to develop your personal brand ?????????????? http://socialnomics.net/2010/05/05/social-media-revolution-2-refresh/ (Eric Qualmann update, 4 mins)

• Thank you for participating – I look forward to keeping on touch with you online or at one of our HEEG workshops

References• Carr, N. 2008a. Is Google making us stupid? What the internet is doing to

our brains. The Atlantic 301 (6): 56-63. Archived at http://www.webcitation.org/5eBJxMMM3

• Prensky, M. 2009. H. sapiens digital: From digital immigrants and digital natives to digital wisdom. 5 (3). http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=705

• Browne, T., Hewitt, R., Jenkins, M., & Walker, R. (2008) “Survey of technology enhanced learning for higher education in the UK” Oxford, UK: UCISA.

• Hughes, A. (2009) “Higher Education in a Web 2 World” retrieved from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/heweb2.aspx

• James et al (2009) “The lives and technologies of early career researchers”, retrieved from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/vre/earlycareerresearchers.pdf