Sharing and Growing – A Social Framework

A social framework

So there I was, goofing around on Facebook back at the end of January, when this intriguing picture caught my eye. It’s called ‘a social framework‘ and it was being shared by sharer par excellence, William Tincup.

William used it to frame a talk he gave at The Workforce Institute about where he spends time on social, doing what, why…etc. Thereafter William stuck it on Facebook. Now I like to make my talks about the conversation – I usually just use a few photos and images on screen to provoke discussion and trigger a few thoughts in my head and I really like the way William has framed a discussion on one slide here. I was keen to learn more about what William meant by ‘promotion, 30 days’ so I got in touch and William fed back:

Doug – think of it this way… Gen 1 – it was enough to just be smart, Gen 2 – one had to be smart AND create thoughtful content, Gen 3 – assume Gen 1 and Gen 2 AND promote the heck out of stuff… so, most people create content and promote it once or twice… IMHO, that’s not enough… I suggest a promotion schedule that is more like 30 to 1… for example, create a thoughtful blog post and promote it (differently) for 30 days… rather than just once, twice or three times… or so goes the thought process…

I’ve been thinking about sharing and growing for a while. I enjoy writing this blog and I work hard at it and though still modest, the traffic volumes are picking up (hey I busted through the 4,000 visits mark last month – thanks folks). I tweet my blog posts once or twice when I write them, sometimes stick ’em on Facebook and LinkedIn too if relevant.

And I’ve played around with taking my game to where bigger audiences are. I mean – if my content is good enough, hell I don’t have to just host it here. My Waltzing Matilda collaboration with @democracyfail garnered over 10,000 hits at Human Capital League last year, compared with 800 direct hits on youtube and 134 on here. Clearly waaaaay more than I could manage by being too parochial and expecting folks to come by here all the time. So I guess I’m saying, get over yourself. If your stuff is good, find ways to get it out there as well as just leaving it on your own front doorstep.

I’m intrigued by William’s ‘3o day’ plan so I’m having a play at combining that with the ‘go to where the crowd is’ technique I’ve just illustrated. I’m using the recent report I wrote on Social Media in HR as the content for the experiment. It’s very early days, so far I’ve used this blog, and Scribd to host it. HRZone picked up on it and invited me to run it over that their place too, where it snuck into the top ten most read 😉 It’s on the CIPD Facebook page and Michael Carty will soon be providing a link from XpertHR. Thanks in advance.

So far this experiment has yielded a seven fold increase in hits to this report (comparing direct hits to here against those I can track elsewhere). I’m pretty happy with the return on investment so far.

I intend to move on and reframe the report for my customer service audience too. After all – what chance has a company of being social outside if it can’t get social inside? It will be interesting to see how this part of the experiment evolves and I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, huge thanks to William for encouraging me to look into sharing and growing anew. And to all of you I’d ask, what works for you? How do you share and grow ideas? I’d love to hear what you think. 

Author: Doug Shaw

Artist and Consultant. Embracing uncertainty, sketching myself into existence. Helping people do things differently, through an artistic lens.

6 thoughts on “Sharing and Growing – A Social Framework”

  1. Thanks Doug, a timely post for me as I’m being asked to do a few things for other blogs etc and I was wondering how that adds or subtracts from my own efforts. This has helped me see beyond that and get into how complements and perhaps energises.

    1. cool, it’s a pleasure to think my scribblings may be of help. And of course when you add to the efforts of others you grow the market. Collaboration is an overused term. When it’s done well it’s hugely beneficial. I think the challenge for most people is to ‘get’ pay it forward and just do it.

      Cheers – D

  2. Hi Doug – great post and insight into your thinking. I think it is the purple blob in the top right hand side of the image that always needs attention. Clear goal (s) and metrics to measure it and then away you go. I like William and your thinking on making the most of content and putting it where the audience is. Reusing and repackaging content is a really important and efficient approach. Looking forward to seeing how it works out 🙂

    1. Cheers Martin. William sparked this, folds back to a willingness to share and collaborate, which for me is partly about sparking each other to up our game. I try and keep my thinking simple, else I forget what it is I thought about! I’ll keep everyone posted as this unfolds. Thanks for your feedback

  3. Hi Doug,
    this experiment might also include the advice to try and guest post on a blog or outlet in the next league up to you – thus reaching a whole new/bigger audience. Promoting in different ways is also good advice – radio journos like me are used to writing trailers for the same item in 4 or 5 ways to be promoted throughout the day and within the programme itself. You don’t want to cheese people off though – hitting the same small group over and over turns into …(pink stuff in a tin). Take care – Lucy

    1. Hi Lucy – love the move up a league idea, great stuff I’ll give it a go thanks.

      And I’m intrigued about pink stuff in tins now….

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