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Connie Crosby and I will be teaching a new course at the iSchool Institute starting in January.

Introduction to Social Media for Organizations

Bring your organization up to date by learning how to develop a social media plan, taking into account its larger strategies and objectives. Learn about monitoring the web for mentions of your organization and conversations that are of interest, and joining in. Consider your organization’s key audiences or communities, where they are online and how to engage them. Learn about online community building, and measurement that is meaningful.

This is a full day introductory overview session with a focus on strategy and methods rather than specific tools or tactics.

Learning outcomes for participants:

• How social media efforts can fit into your organization’s existing strategies.
• How to monitor social networks for conversations about your organization and other topics that are of interest to you.
• How different audiences or communities have different levels of engagement online, and how to reach out to them.
• Planning your organization’s method for responding to queries and comments and engaging in conversations.
• Methods for online community building.
• Looking for measurement that is meaningful.

Prerequisite:
Participants are expected to have a basic knowledge of blogs, wikis, Facebook and Twitter.

Target Audience:
Management or executive level employees in library, non-profit and other organizations that want to start new social media engagements or improve existing engagements.

Marketing or PR staff in information-related organizations such as libraries who want a broader perspective on how their organizations can get involved in social media.

Registration is now open!

Once again, a re-tweeter has been developed for this year’s SLA conference based on the Twitter API and John Eckman’s code.  The hashtag is #sla2010.

What will the re-tweeter do?  When a follower of @sla2010 posts a tweet with the hashtag #sla2010 in their tweet (probably best at the end of the tweet) that tweet will be posted to the @sla2010 account and circulated to all of @sla2010′s followers.  The username of the person who sent the original tweet will appear at the start of the message followed by a “:”.

At conference, there will be a 2 minute delay before tweets are re-tweeted.  This year twitter has been whitelisted the @sla2010 account which means there will be limits on how many tweets can be posted to the account.  Yay!

Re-tweeting is helpful for:

• segregating your #sla2010 tweet stream from your other streams
• sending broadcast messages (2 minute delay at conference) to all @sla2010 followers
• finding out what others at conference are doing, seeing, hearing, eating, drinking, etc. (Author’s note: this will be especially important in New Orleans!)
• asking questions and getting answers
• experiencing the conference virtually – check out the virtual conference component as well
• creating an archive of tweets for future or live analysis

This is an opt-in service.  Only your tweets with the hashtag (#sla2010) will be re-tweeted and you must be following sla2010 for it to work.  Also, tweets from protected accounts won’t be re-tweeted.

Using a number of tools out there, you can also follow the #sla2010 hashtag:

• via RSS
• search.twitter.com
• TweetDeck
• TweetChat
• Many others

The re-tweeter is brought to you by the SLA Innovation Laboratory!

Using Processing and sample code from www.eskimoblood.de I have created a basic social network graph of replies sent during #sla2009.

The thicker the line the more times you sent an @reply to that
person. The more lines you have, the more @replies to different people
you sent. If you don’t appear on the graph, but know that you sent out
@replies, it’s because the person you sent your @reply to never sent
out an @reply and so that person won’t appear on the graph and
unfortunately, you can’t either! Interestingly, a few people only sent
replies to themselves, so they do appear on the graph as a line that
goes back to themselves.

The sample code from eskimoblood required that my data be in the following format:

• One array of all the usernames in alphabetical order
• A second multi-dimensional array that links the users with each other (in this case based on @replies) using an ID number.  Like this:

@amalthea67
{70, 74}

In other words @amalthea67 sent @replies to the 69th and 73rd person in the list of usernames on the wheel.  The first person in the list is at number 0.

Here is an outline of what I did:

• Queried the #sla2009 re-tweeter database for all tweets with @replies as of June 19, 2009
• Using php, created an html table of this query that lists the ID of the tweet, the username of the person who sent the reply and the username(s) of the person(s) it was sent to.  Here is a screen shot of part of the HTML table that resulted.

• Imported the html table into an Inmagic database, which allows for multiple entries in the “Replies” field (separated by a space)
• Created a secondary Inmagic database for every username, plus a unique ID for each.
• Exported the data to a report that lists the username and the ID number of the person the reply was sent to.  Here is a screen shot:

• Using Excel again, this table was copied, pasted and transposed so the usernames ran along the the first row and the numeric ID of the target of the @reply ran along in the second row.  A little bit of find/replace to get the data in the exact format (as above) and voila!  My data is in the format that I need it in.
• I made a few changes to eskimoblood’s code and ran the sketch in Processing, which resulted in the social network graph above.

Update: this graph is now available with color.

As with #sla2008, and again with thanks to the folks at Wordle (still a great tool!), I present you with a cloud based on the tweets from #sla2009.  Click the thumbnail to view the larger image.

Compare this year's cloud with 2008 and you may notice a few things:

• "SLA", "session", "conference"and "great" are again the more popular words used
• The divisions, especially IT, PAM, KM, and LMD were actively tweeting this year
• The concept of a re-tweet (using RT) didn't exist in 2008

SLA 2009 is almost here!  Since May 2, 2009 the #sla2009 re-tweeter has been busily sending around tweets as people prepare for conference.  Undoubtedly, the volume of tweets will increase as we get closer to conference and will balloon from June 14-17, 2009.

With a bit of help, I have designed a dashboard for the re-tweeter as a "one-stop shop" if you're interested in getting a bird's eye view of the re-tweeter's data stream.

The dashboard consists of two pages: home and analytics.

Home

The home page has two elements:

1. A continuously updated feed of the latest Tweets in the re-tweeter data
   stream.  As new tweets are sent, a link will appear with the number of
   new tweets, so you can refresh the page and view them.
2. A Live Cloud of words that are most popular in the re-tweeter's data stream at that moment.  The more popular the word, the larger the font.  Each word in the cloud is linked to a Twitter search for that word in the stream – very handy if you want to see why people are tweeting about that particular word.  Stop words have been stripped from the cloud to keep it as clean as possible.

Analytics

The analytics page has seven charts showing:

1. Daily tweet activity since May 2, 2009 when the re-tweeter was launched
2. Who is tweeting the most (Top Tweeps)
3. Who is receiving the most @replies
4. Who is sending the most @replies
5. What other hashtags are popular
6. What types of tweets are being sent
7. What links being sent around are most popular

There is also a handy set of links across the top of all pages to:

• @SLA2009 on Twitter
• The SLA2009 Homepage
• The SLA2009 Personal Planner
• The Virtual INFO-EXPO
• The SLA2009 Blog
• The SLA2009 Hospitality Wiki
• The SLA Innovation Laboratory

The dashboard is based on live data from the re-tweeter's database, so check back often to see how the data stream is changing over time.  I hope you find it useful, interesting and thought provoking – most importantly, I hope you find it inspiring!

Once again, a re-tweeter for has been developed for this year's SLA conference based on the Twitter API and John Eckman's code.  Many thanks to John and our own Karen Huffman for improving on last year's code!

Starting on Saturday May 2, 2009, the sla2009
Twitter account will become a re-tweeter.  What's a re-tweeter you
ask?  It's simple.  When a follower of sla2009 posts a tweet with the hashtag
#sla2009 in their tweet (probably best at the end of the tweet) that
tweet will be posted to the sla2009 account.  The username of the
person who sent the original tweet will appear at the start of the
message followed by a ":".

At conference, there will be a 3 minute delay before tweets are re-tweeted.  Leading up to conference the delay will begin at 30 minutes and decrease as we get closer.  If you are following sla2009, you will see all of the tweets that are being re-tweeted.

Re-tweeting is helpful for:

• separating out your sla2009 related tweets from your other tweets
• sending broadcast messages (3 minute delay at conference) to all sla2009 followers
• seeing what sla2009 followers are tweeting about without
  necessarily having to go to the sla2009 page
• creating an archive of tweets on the sla2009 page for future or live analysis

This is an opt-in service.  Only your tweets with the hashtag (#sla2009) will be re-tweeted and you must be following sla2009 for it to work.  Tweets from protected accounts won't be re-tweeted.

Using a number of tools out there, you can also follow the #sla2009 hashtag:

• Twitter (RSS)
• search.twitter.com
• TweetDeck
• Many others

The re-tweeter is brought to you by the SLA Innovation Laboratory!

I have seen a lot of discussion on various blogs about establishing hashtags on Twitter for the various groups in SLA. I don’t know if this list exists yet, so I am going to start one. What hashtags are out there? Add a comment with known hashtags and I will compile the list.

• #sla2008 (Annual conference in Seattle – no longer used)
• #sla2009 (Annual conference in Washington)
• #slaleads (Leadership Summit)
• #dsoc (Social Science Division)
• #slait (Information Technology Division)
• #slakm (Knowledge Management Division)
• #slator (Toronto Chapter)
• #dsol (Solo Division)

With thanks to the folks at Wordle (what a great tool!), I present you with a cloud based on the tweets from #sla2008.  The only term I removed from this graphic was sla2008. Click the thumbnail to view the larger image.

Also, here are the Top 15 Tweeps for #sla2008

1. conniecrosby
2. artquiltmaker
3. ChrisVestal
4. yankeeincanada
5. khuffman
6. nengard
7. desertlibrarian
8. leahs
9. jdysart
10. robotfrog
11. raabonte
12. CindysConfNotes
13. carolyne
14. jambina
15. lukelibrarian

Nice going y’all! There’s probably more analysis that could be done with the 1,194 tweets that were re-tweeted, so stay tuned!

I have developed a re-tweeter for sla2008 based on the Twitter API and John Eckman’s code.  Thanks John!

Starting on Wednesday June 11, 2008, the sla2008 Twitter account will become a re-tweeter.  What’s a re-tweeter you ask?  It’s simple.  When a follower of sla2008 posts a tweet with the hashtag #sla2008 in their tweet – probably best at the end of the tweet – that tweet will be posted to the sla2008 account.  The username of the person who sent the original tweet will appear at the start of the message followed by a ":".

If your mobile phone or handheld is setup to receive tweets from sla2008 (See Twitter Phone FAQ), you will receive the tweets everyone posts to your phone or handheld.  Also, you can check the sla2008 page directly to read what people have been tweeting about.  They will also appear on your "recent" tab as messages from sla2008.

There will be a 6 minute delay before tweets are re-tweeted.

Re-tweeting is helpful for:

• separating out your sla2008 related tweets from your other tweets
• sending broadcast messages (6 minute delay) to all sla2008 followers
• seeing what sla2008 followers are tweeting about without necessarily having to go to the sla2008 page (you have to have device updates from sla2008 turned on if you want the tweets sent to you)
• creating an archive of tweets on the sla2008 page

This will be an opt-in service.  Only your tweets with the hashtag (#sla2008) will be re-tweeted.

Using a number of tools out there, you can also follow the #sla2008 hashtag:

• Twitter (RSS)
• Summize (RSS)
• Tweetscan
• Hashtags.org

Further Reading

• Introduction to Twitter (SLA Innovation Lab)
• Twitter away at SLA (Daniel Lee aka Yankeeincanada)
• Twitter in Plain English (Common Craft)