On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 6:27 PM, Theo10011 <de10011(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 5:47 PM, Gautam John
<gautam(a)prathambooks.org>wrote;wrote:
As always Theo, thank you for your incisive analytical insights.
Assuming one were to use social media for outreach, how would you do
it differently?
Thank you.
And you are Welcome. :)
I won't do it actually. As memory serves, WMF has never used Social media,
or hired one of those "social media experts". The community might have an
opinion or two, if that approach was taken aggressively. Regardless, being
located in SF, having an abundance of native-English speaking, social-media
gadflies, puts the SF staff in a much better position to try these
approaches, yet they never did it aggressively, in all the years I
followed. The official twitter handles existed, but were rarely used to
promote or do outreach in an aggressive manner, they have a moderate number
of followers and links. I kind of appreciate that, it doesn't smell of
desperation, makes certain things look reserved and official. I still wish
they had slightly higher visibility and control over them, but that's jay's
preference.
Hi Theo, If we are trying something in India that chaps in SF have not
concentrated on, i would not necessarily label it as a negative approach.
Gut instinct tells me that fb, twitter outreach might be more successful
here as we are riding the social wave with people just discovering and
exploring the new world that smartphones and 3g open out to them.
These platforms can easily extend the social collaboration that goes on in
wikipedia to an extended audience if done properly. What i think would be
useful way of measuring these things is to release statistics monthly on
the number of retweets or shares that could indicate the actual reach of
these outreach efforts. Util then however, this is nothing to boast about.
Then comes the Indian staff, at the count of 4-5, I fail to see how
re-inventing the wheel and venturing into a territory, better men didn't
would be a smart approach. Is there something unique for FB within India?
or a different platform that didn't exist universally, that might justify
it. Does Social Media have to be a priority? You barely have a
communications person writing emails, following up on meetings with the
least bit of consistency, to have a quarter of the staff resources wasted
on FB and twitter. I don't know who handles administrative work on staff,
who handles reporting; the bulk of the official work and communications
still appear to come from Hisham after almost an year. For example, I still
recall the community meetings which were intended to become consistent and
regular at one point, they just disappear for a few months, re-start and
stop. There are other vital tasks that need to be performed at this stage
by such a small team, rather than go into excursions in the wide world of
"social media".
Regards
Theo
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