photo credit: BuzzShift

Last year at BlogWorld & New Media Expo (this year’s iteration is October 14-16 in Las Vegas and I’ll be there), I led a panel titled “Social Media: The Bad and the Ugly” with Amber Naslund, Robert Scoble and Wayne Sutton.

On the panel, we talked about trends in social media that concerned us and that we felt could harm the growth of the medium as a whole. These are also trends that could harm your brand, scare people away and damage your reputation. We highlighted six trends in all.

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photo credit: EverJean

I want to expand on something that we discussed on the August 8 episode of the SitePoint Podcast, about the cease and desist and how it negatively impacts brands when used poorly, especially against fans.

Strong fan communities are gold to the companies, individuals, products and things that they are a fan of. You just can’t buy this sort of promotion and marketing. Why is it so special?

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I’ve known Jim Kukral since June 2008 when I was booking interviews tied to my book. I shot him a note and asked if he’d have any interest in it or in having me on his show. Even though we’d never spoken before, he did and he eventually posted the first (and so far only) video review of the book on Amazon.com. That really meant a lot to me.

We’ve stayed in touch ever since. Now, Jim has a book of his own, titled “Attention! This Book Will Make You Money” and I’m happy to be able to support him and spread the word.

What follows is a guest post from Jim, with tips for engaging influencers within your community online (your site, the subject arena of your community, your area of expertise, etc.).

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photo credit: Nikolai O.

A couple of days ago, on Twitter and Facebook, I remarked that “if I wasn’t a professional, I’d start “forum users from hell” and share the messages I get from some people.” In response, I received messages from 7 people supporting the idea (as well as two additional people liking the message on Facebook).

When I said it, it wasn’t necessarily a legitimate site idea I was considering, but when people responded as they did, I began to think about it. As I did, I thought I’d share my thought process here, in order to get feedback from you – people managing communities (veterans and new people alike) and those thinking about doing so. After you’ve read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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photo credit: gotosira

For part two in my series on building community around your blog, I want to talk about community decentralized – or community that is built on websites that you do not own or control. In the first part, we discussed community that you have by default upon launching your blog.

This relates directly to what Chris Brogan wrote about outposts. In short, Chris spoke about building community through his “outposts” that he maintains at sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more. Sites that he doesn’t control. The idea is to offer value at thess sites, but the end game is to bring people back to the home base. In this case, his blog. This is a great way to look at it.

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photo credit: Ivan Walsh

“There is absolutely no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site.”

These were the words of Anthony Orcini, the principal of Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood, New Jersey. They were included in an e-mail he sent to parents at the end of April, urging them to immediately ban their children from using any social network. Lou Young of WCBS has the story and a full copy of the letter. This comes care of my friend James Dasher.

I’m not wholly surprised by this e-mail, but was a little stunned by the wording of it. Personally, I don’t believe that this is the right course of action – not in general and not for all families. Certainly, parents have the right to block their children from using a social network and that may be the right choice for them. However, I question whether that choice should be made due to a forcibly written message by a school principal. I just hope parents don’t read this and make any rash decisions.

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photo credit: eleanor.black

With people who are looking to advertise something, specifically, there seems to sometimes be this notion that it’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.

Heck, maybe advertising on this community is alright and the post will be met with warm regards. Or, even if it’s not, maybe the staff will miss it and members won’t care. Worst case scenario, the post is removed, you get admonished, but you can still apologize and everyone will be cool. Right? … Right?

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photo credit: jcfrog

One question I get asked a lot goes something along the lines of “how will forums keep up with [something]?” or “forums are old hat, why would people use them over [something]?” or “why use forums when you can use [something]?” However will forums survive? Let’s talk about it.

This is Limited Thinking

Forums aren’t going anywhere. Let’s get that out of the way. My great grand kids may well look back at this post and laugh at their crazy great grandfather and his talk of vinyl records, er- I mean forums. But, for as far into the future as I can possibly see, I do not see a time where structured, text based online discussion communities will cease to exist. Unless the internet ceases to exist or, at least, changes very dramatically.

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photo credit: Horia Varlan

It’s important to be proactive on matters of content theft and copyright infringement. A large part of this is text quoted from other sources. With some exceptions (public domain works, works by the Federal Government, works released under alternative licenses to copyright, and more), you can’t allow your members to post entire text articles that they did not author or hold no rights to, source or no source.

But, that doesn’t mean that they can’t quote some portions that are properly attributed. Fair use is an exception to copyright that, among many other things and without getting too legally technical, allows you to quote excerpts of someone else’s work with proper attribution. Fair use isn’t a law as much as it is a defense.

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photo credit: MPD01605

Not long ago, someone from a very well known, reputable charity spammed one of my communities. I’m not going to mention the name of the charity because it’s not important. I’m not looking to shame them and they are not the point I want to make. It’s not like this is the first time that this has happened. It’s not even a big deal. Spam is spam is spam, for the most part. But, it brought to mind something I wanted to talk about.

When a community doesn’t allow advertising, self promotion, spamming or whatever they call it, generally speaking, those guidelines apply to everyone. Google, Disney, mom and pop, personal blogs, non-profits, charities, whoever. Unless the guidelines specifically make an exception, everyone plays on the very same playing field.

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