Online Communities – What are they & How

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Online Communities - What are they & How to get involved

Frank Arrigofrankarr@microsoft.comhttp://blogs.msdn.com/frankarrGroup Manager, Technical CommunitiesDeveloper & Platform Evangelism

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Agenda What is an Online Community What is a blog Why is it important How can you get started Tips to help

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Definition: online communities A virtual community is a group of people

communicating or interacting with each other by means of information technologies, typically the Internet, rather than face to face. Virtual communities are also known as online communities or mediated communities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_communities

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Definition: Blog A blog is a website for which an individual or a

group frequently generates text, photographs, video, audio files, and/or links, typically (but not always) on a daily basis. The term is a shortened form of weblog.

Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called "blogging".

Individual articles on a blog are called "blog posts," "posts," or "entries".

The person who posts these entries is called a "blogger".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

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Blog basics A blog is typically made up of the following

components: Title - main title of the post Body - main content of the post Trackback - links back from other sites Comments - comments added by readers Category - category the post is labeled with (can be one

or more) Permalink - the URL of the full, individual article Post Date - date: time the post was published

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

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How are Blogs different? A blog provides many advantages over a standard web page,

including these: It allows for easy creation of new pages: new data is entered

into a simple form (usually with the title, the category, and the body of the article) and then submitted. Automated templates take care of adding the article to the home page, creating the new full article page (Permalink), and adding the article to the appropriate date- or category-based archive.

It allows for easy filtering of content for various presentations - by date, category, author, or other attributes.

It (usually) allows the administrator to invite and add other authors, whose permissions and access are easily managed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

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Plus you can subscribe!!! 3rd wave of the web

Browse, search, subscribe

RSS Really Simple Syndication

Information comes to you Lots of ways to represent this Need application to read feeds

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Why is this important?

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It’s all about having a conversation

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Case Study : Learn Dog Venture by former MSFTee, Mike Seyfang Mission

Help kids through recognition How

Join lots of dots All happening online

http://www.learndog.com http://learndog.typepad.com/learndogpup/ http://spaces.msn.com/members/mikese/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeblogs/friends/

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So, what has been the result? Personal support through connections via

personal blog Growing community of supporters around the

learndogpup blog (including advisory board) Connections to professional development support

networks (e.g. the edTechTalk community) A 'loud/strong' voice that has achieved a high

level of PR exposure for free (local, national press, 7news TV)

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How to get started Spaces

http://spaces.msn.com

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Control Panel Posts & Comments Add/Change/Delete Change layouts

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Add a Post Web based WISYWIG Easy to use

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Cool integration Little Star (gleam)

added to MSN Messenger contact when their space is updated.

Always know when there is new stuff to see.

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How to read blog feeds Browser

Windows live : http://www.live.com Bloglines : http://www.bloglines.com

Standalone News Reader Sharp Reader : http://www.sharpreader.com RSS Bandit : http://www.rssbandit.org

Integrated into Outlook Newsgator : http://www.newsgator.com

Integrated into Internet Explorer Pluck : http://www.pluck.com

Many Many More alternatives….

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Some tips

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Building Relationships on Your Blog

Don’t scoff at small audience size… Suppose you knew Steve Ballmer read

your blog? What if Bill Gates did? Steven Levy from Newsweek? The CEO or CTO of your best customer?

Consider the relationships real

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Promoting Your Blog Find blogs you like and subscribe – and

read the blog rolls of those bloggers until you have 25-50 you feel you’d want to read every week

Comment on their stuff and only if relevant, link back to yours

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See what’s the blogosphere saying Blog search tools

Technorati : http://www.technorati.com Feedster : http://www.feedster.com Pubsub : http://www.pubsub.com

General search tools ninemsn : http://search.ninemsn.com Google : http://blogsearch.google.com

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Building Momentum Study techniques for getting more readers

– aim for 40 influencers Figuring out how to get them to talk about

you How to use other people’s comments Using your referrer log to find people who

want to engage with you

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Blog Credibility Real person, not FLOG (Fake Blog) You are judged by the conversations you

keep Link to and praise others, even enemies The only comments you delete are porn

and spam

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What are you waiting for?

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Final Word

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Some of My Blogs Work

http://blogs.msdn.com/frankarr

Personal http://radio.weblogs.com/0124955 http://spaces.msn.com/members/frankarr

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© 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This presentation is for informational purposes only.MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.