Why don't we reflect more? (Social Web Post-Mortem)

I'm really glad we have to do post-mortems in my social web class. For all the personal reflection that is incorporated into the BGI curriculum, it's rarely the sort of reflection on one's work that I think breeds a good practice of iteration--something that we've been taught the value of in our marketing class but have not been required to implement into our projects.

Definitely, the biggest challenge was keeping up with my blog postings or spending too much time on each post. I guess this class really verified for me my tendencies toward perfectionism. I really am surprised to learn this about myself because I generally do not think of my work as very good, but rather sloppy (oh wait, isn't that exactly the sign of a perfectionist? Doh!).

In the end, I simply had to get over perfectionism. But that's not exactly an answer. Getting over perfectionism really requires a lot of personal awareness and consciousness. It seems to be a daily practice...as well as a daily commitment. I don't think I really got over it, but I know that I forced myself to post by putting the assignment in context of other larger assignments. At least, I would tell myself, a blog post is not a final 30p research report.

Also, having to edit video quickly and for brevity, really drives home the learning that one can shoot from the hip when choices need to be made quickly with less deliberation. Anything that fails, can always be redone. I wish we had more opportunities for 3 hr assignments with actual deliverables in our other classes.

Fail fast and often. Iterations. -----> These have been my greatest learnings in this class.

Iterative Improvement


I found myself wanting to learn more about social media campaigning. We sort of did this with the social change project, but it was a bit more than we could chew. I can see the next installment of this course being for people who are now comfortable using the social web. In that course, I can see us learning social media metrics and designing campaigns. This class ignited my interest in the social web and I am ready to take the more advanced version of the class or be directed to the equivalent outside of BGI if necessary.

Overall, BGI could really benefit from incorporating more social media into their curriculum. However, this would require more interaction from faculty and I'm not certain that faculty either have the will or capacity to interact with students to the degree that social media would allow for. For instance, if I write a blog post every week about my learnings in the class before the Elluminate, will a faculty member have actually read my post and quoted it in that day's class lecture slides? I don't know. If anything, the Social Web for Social Change class definitely makes the case for smaller classes.

Check out my post on Best Elluminate Practices for more ways to incorporate the style of Christopher Allen's Social Web for Social Change class.

Using Metrics in Strategy and the De-Evolution of Using the Social Web

This academic year, I find my personal use of social media to be declining. I'm attributing this trend to my increased use of social media for professional and academic work. In all honesty, it's no fun when you *have* to use it and you're attempting to use it for specific or (worse) unspecified purposes. My marketing project, which will rely a lot on the social web, has taken over my daily thoughts to the point that I'm no longer wasting time on the web surfing. And if I do find myself taking that odd break, I'm not as inclined to share what I'm reading with my personal network. In a way, that would be creating yet another obligation on my to-do list. The obligation would be to respond or discuss what I'm posting with anyone who has a reaction to it. Of course, I'm still posting but not to the extent that I was last year. I'm also more interested in using the web for research over entertainment. I've definitely got some goals to meet and find that there is always more and more avenues that I have not fully vetted.

Happily, I just got a book in the mail for my winter break "fun" reading, which is on Social Media Metrics (actually that's the title).  I've been engaging social media for a while now and wish there were more information on how to measure one's impact or success. So far, after cracking open the first few pages in the book, I'm delighted to see a list of 100 ways to measure social media. There were many that I had not thought of or considered. The book also frames metrics for social media as a way to meet social media strategy goals. Goals like, "increase web presence" are a bit too broad and this is an issue I've run into while working on strategy for a local start-up. Social media goals should be in line with your concrete business goals, which could include things like:

• increase revenue
• lower costs
• increase customer satisfaction

Ask yourself every day, "is our strategy leading us to acheiving these goals?" I've read on several blogs that there is no way to measure social media ROI and that anyone who claims they can, is selling snake-oil.  Well, I hope to find out more about this and implement it over the break. I'm sold on the importance of social media. But now, I want to see how well I am using it. Why can't personal pages on FB have stats like they on other pages?