Monday September 7, 2009
Social Media Mob goes Ning
It was a good turn out for the Social Media Mob on Thursday.
Colin and Fred were the veterans, joined by Lynn (Probus), Graham (Probus), Hans (Mosman Camera Club), Linda (Mosman Orchestra) and Warren (councillor). As we were light on volunteer champions (just me this month) we had a wide-ranging round-table discussion!
But at Graham’s suggestion, we might look at focusing on a specific tool in the near future – maybe a WordPress session – as well as an introduction to audio and video editing and uploading. (Any champs want to put up their hand?)
There was also a fair bit of discussion about Google, search engines and how people find you on the web. We looked at the excellent sites for Mosman Orchestra, Probus Club of Neutral Bay and Mosman Camera Club.
But how to get people there?
- Optimise your website for search engines – see Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (PDF) – and;
- share content on networks like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook (some interesting stats).
At our first Social Media Mob meet-up in August, Colin, who is part of U3A and Probus, suggested that local groups band together to promote their organisations and attract new members. We discussed how this might be done online – specifically, going beyond web sites to build web networks.
On Thursday, we kicked this along a bit further. The idea of a community web space took shape, and Life in Mosman is the result. It’s built on a free third-party application called Ning, took minutes to set up and allows anyone who registers to add events, post information and contribute to discussions. Over to you!
Update: Ning network is offline due to spam and Ning phasing out free services
