On Thu, 2009-05-14 at 08:56 -0700, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 8:22 PM, Bryen
wrote: Today, we had a very lively discussion about the use of Social Networking in promoting openSUSE. We came to several conclusions as well as identifying some areas we'd like to explore in more depth.
[snip]
So, what did we talk about?
1) Facebook It is clear that we need to address the growing presence of openSUSE supporters on Facebook. There are approximately 4,500 supporters spread out across two groups. And in our opinion, they're neglected and a valuable pool of supporters that we need to bridge.
What's also interesting about the Facebook group members is that there seems to be a strong presence of U.S. people. Something we lack presence in most other areas of openSUSE Community.
I'm not on Facebook, and I don't plan to join. I know it's popular, and I know it's a much more "flexible" platform than most, but I am spending so much time on line now that I don't have the bandwidth to give to Facebook. I *am* on LinkedIn and Twitter, and intend to stay there.
Then you should come to our meeting and give your thoughts on the tools you do use. No matter if you're not on Facebook.
2) Digg We would like to set up a monthly Digg party where we gather up good and useful articles and everyone diggs those articles. If we can find a method to spread the word to digg a list of articles (not just any openSUSE articles, but good and relevant ones) then we can boost our presence on the web and in google searches.
So can everyone else. :) The "action" at the moment seems to have moved away from "traditional" social media like Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, RSS feeds / readers, etc., to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. I hang out with social media marketing types and there is plenty of free advice on how to use the tools.
What's most important is that you *first* establish metrics, goals, campaigns, adoption funnels, key performance indicators, etc. for the openSUSE web sites. Once you have that, you can measure the effect of campaigns in Digg, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. in real time. It's part art and part science.
So what *are* the goals of openSUSE marketing in general and the web sites specifically?
That's a very good point and something we should address in the meeting. Would love to hear your thoughts on this.
4) Blogging tips We will create a new page that provides advice to our community for how to increase traffic to their sites. Effective plugins that help, tips and tricks, information about SEO, etc. This one could be a bit of a challenge and anyone who has ideas about SEO, please step up and offer your advice.
I am just learning this stuff, but I can find you people who have this in their blood. :) Having Zonker on ZDNet is a big win. :)
Having Zonker is always a win-win. But having all of us on all things spreading the word of openSUSE is an even bigger win.
5) Other areas to look into: Twitter, Laconica/identi.ca, dzone.com, LinkedIn. Any others to suggest? What about social networking services in non-English speaking regions? What can we tap into there?
There are new services springing up like weeds, but Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are the big gorillas. Writer time and reader time are finite. I only speak English, so I can't help you there.
And should we appoint a "guru" for each of the different services? Someone who can study and understand and provide guidance to the rest of the marketing team about a particular service? It is very difficult for any one of us to become experts on all services, but if we divide and conquer :-), we could cover a lot more ground.
What I would suggest is for one person for each of the three majors -- LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. I think you're going to be severely constrained in availability of people because they either need to have a well-paying day job with a company that allows, or better yet encourages, involvement in open source communities, or is on the payroll of Novell.
That's what we need to find out, who in our circle knows what.
Looking forward to hearing back from you all and getting to a meeting on Friday!
-- Bryen Yunashko openSUSE Board Member openSUSE-GNOME Team Member GNOME-A11y Team Member www.bryen.com (Personal Blog) www.planet-a11y.net (Feed aggregator of the Accessibility Community)
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-- M. Edward (Ed) Borasky http://www.linkedin.com/in/edborasky
I've never met a happy clam. In fact, most of them were pretty steamed.
-- Bryen Yunashko openSUSE Board Member openSUSE-GNOME Team Member GNOME-A11y Team Member www.bryen.com (Personal Blog) www.planet-a11y.net (Feed aggregator of the Accessibility Community) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org