When I first heard of the term 'Social Media Producer', I was puzzled. What on earth was the SMP? I could only gather from 'Producer' that I was probably supposed to do some research and produce something out of it. And then when the tutors elaborated more on 'Social Media' and the upcoming task at hand, I began to understand and have a clear idea of what was going on.
With POOL developing as an ABC beta community project, we the students in RMIT were assigned to become SMPs - study the social media landscape, recruit followers, contribute pieces of 'art' and publicize POOL with a theme of 'my tribe'. We were given a 'to-do' and guide list of sorts to do an SMP back in week 3.
Summarise and evaluate your activities as a Social media producer.
1. Details of your proposed individual Social Media Producer task
a) I’m looking into the possibility of trying to tap into the web designer community that I’ve known for quite a few years, being the administrator of an online forum. I would want to get them to post up their web designs. At the same time, it would encourage other website designers across the Internet to post up their designs as well, creating a tribe in the process.
b) If Plan A does not work out, I will to another group in which I’m also closely knitted to on the forum – the photographers. Like myself, I’m an avid photographer and have my own share of networks of photographers. I will look to publicize mytribe as another outlet for them to post up their photos as well as to build up more networks.
The first idea did not go to plan and I was forced to go with plan B. It worked well...initially. As I have mentioned in previous blog posts, there are tons of photography websites out there like Flickr, Picassa etc. I wanted to apply a mass advertising tactic but decided against it. Being a forum goer myself, I know what it's like to be annoyed with random forum users promoting their webpages and websites in their posts. With the exception of a few interesting ones, the majority are not eye-catching.
I contacted all my photography peers - to limited success. I had realistically planned to 'recruit' at least 5 peers.. but in the end, I only managed to gather 2 peers and sustain the attention of 1 of them. These 2 are 'NJW' and 'rubberduck' on POOL. NJW has submitted quite alot of her photos and 1 of them has been featured on the mytribe blog:
The rest of the peers who didnt join gave me the same 'excuses': 'I'll try to join' 'I'll look it up' 'I'll upload as soon as I get home'.. One reason was pretty interesting: 'This looks like an Australian website. And I'm not Aussie.'
There lies in the one missing factor that POOL has.
Global appeal.
I know that it is in the beta stages and has to start from somewhere. But once it has managed to successfully appeal locally, surely there will be a plan hatched to try to tap into the global scene?
I hope the POOL team can look into this and expand on it. POOL has the potential to be on the same level as the other established community websites in the web.
2) Details of your individual contribution to the tutorial specific tasks
- As my tutorial is in charge of the facebook/twitter group for mytribe, we decided to have 2 people in charge of the group in slotted weeks. I would contribute by monitoring the number of people daily joining the page. To encourage people to join the group, I would stimulate interest, interaction and publicity by posting up relevant links. This will not only apply to just my allotted week, but it will be ongoing throughout the semester.
This was another task that I was very vague about when it was first introduced to the tutorial. As part of the effort of promoting POOL, there were various areas in which each of the tutorials would cover.
Most unfortunately, our tutorial was given the 'easiest' and perharps, the most 'let-down' assignment of the semester. We were in charge of monitoring and maintaining the facebook page of POOL: my tribe.
To be honest, I was stunned when I first heard of it. A Facebook page being monitored by close to 14 people? Comparing the effort to my daily maintenance of my own Facebook profile page, it was simply ridiculous. Still, we came to a consensus that the monitoring of mytribe duties would be a weekly one. 2 people would take turns to be admins of the page, promoting POOL through relevant links and stimulating interest in the process.
Being the admin for the debut week, I went into it with hardly any expectations. Don't get me wrong, I did have plans up my sleeve. However, the fact that it was debut week meant that it was the first stage of publicity. Garnering the attention of curious onlookers and make them wander what the fuss of this my tribe page. As described in an earlier blog post the week after my admin duties:
"I reckoned that the promotion of POOL shouldn't start with a BANG! or people will be wondering what is all the fuss about this POOL thingy.. rather, a slow start would create awareness. The future pairings would then have a chance to make POOL 'the next big thing'.
To kick things off, I set up a separate photography FB group and publicized it on mytribe FB page. From there, I put up a description of the group and encouraged to share their photos/works of art on POOL. To set an example, I myself logged on to POOL and posted up some of my works.
The purpose of this was to create the first awareness of POOL and have a 'feeder' photography group in FB that would act as a link. I did not just target my photographic contacts, but opened 'membership' to anyone who liked to take photos.
It went rather well. I managed to garner 63 members, exceeding my original goal of 50 members. An encouraging and fulfilling start!
On maintaining and promoting the mytribe FB page, I did a daily check on POOL and posted any interesting reads on the page through links. I was not expecting a BOOM in membership and I was proven right.
Only 13-15 people joined within the week... that was even lesser than the amount of people that joined my photography group. And as to what our tut group voiced, most of the people that joined were all RMIT students.
Another issue to think about: how to get people to 'commit' and post links/images/audio/video on the FB page at least twice a week. How do we retain their interest in the FB page and ultimately POOL. The POOL site is also full of RMIT students, making it seemingly like another school project.
One can post as many links and dive into other groups and publicise about mytribe and POOL, but at the end of the day, will people still join?
I guess the main issue here is finding a strategy to RETAIN and STIMULATE their commitment and interest respectively. I hope the rest of the tut group manage to come up with something, as do I will contribute throughout the semester.
I guess being the admin for the debut week proved to be a stepping stone for the rest of the guys in tutorial. They managed to get an overall idea of how to make the FB page look more exciting and engaging. Credits to them!
Should I have put in a little bit more effort? Perharps so. Perharps I could have been more pro-active and posted up more links. The end result could have been slightly different. Still, I am very satisfied with what I did during the week as admin of the mytribe page.
3) Personal project goals and self-assessment criteria
- Be aware of the realistic things that can be done and assess the areas that went wrong during the course of the semester.
I think I have fulfilled this part of personal goals by knowing what to expect during debut week of the admin of the mytribe FB page.
- Interaction and constructive criticism to fellow mytribe members.
To be honest, I only managed to comment on a few pieces of work. I guess I should have done more in this area - fulfilling one of the key aspects of an online community website.
- Contribute at least one piece of work to the POOL and mytribe media.
I'm glad to say that I've done more than a job in this particular personal goal. Being an avid photographer, I love to show my photos and love to have comments and constructive criticism on them.
To date, I have uploaded and shared 8 photos.
A particular photo was very well-received:
Other than having insightful comments, it got featured on the mytribe blog as well on the official POOL FB page. I felt extremely happy that my work got featured. It only encouraged me to spur on in my photography skills and achieve my dream of being a freelance photographer in the future.
- Be participative, be it in tutorial or group work
I believe I have been rather quiet during tutorials, engaging only in the occasional discussions. But there wasn't much interaction to begin with.. this perharps can be attributed to the fact that there was a bad feeling towards the whole idea of maintaining the FB page. After week 5, there wasn't much class participation as we all went into our own content producer groups to discuss our individual project.
Extrapolate what you have learnt about the role of a Social Media Producer
Despite the ongoing semester assignment, I feel that I have only attained a semi-understanding of the Social Media Producer role.
At times, I felt I was just another user on POOL. I was only uploading my own works and getting comments here and there. I didnt feel like a moderator or a promotor.. the fact that POOL was consisted mainly of RMIT uni students did not help either. Even if there were people from outside the school, they did not make themselves actively known as our own students.
I was not filling the role of the SMP - stimulating public interest and involvement. I did some individual research of the role to help me in my understanding. They all had one similar thing - be well versed in the social media network and possess a deep knowledge of the demographics of online social media users.
This online advertorial is a great example of the roles expected of the social media producer.
It was thanks to the week that i was admin of the Facebook group that I had a taste of the SMP role. Setting up the separate FB photography group and stimulating interest was a difficult task. Yet it opened my eyes to the challenges of an SMP - breaking the comfort zones of netizens in the extensive network of established social media websites and then bringing them to another social media website. The role would only get tougher as technology advances further.
A part of me feels i have not fully justified the role of an SMP this semester. If such an opportunity were to arise in my working career, I would definitely love to have another go at it.
Self assessment for your SMP task
In light of what I have done for this semester, I believe I stand somewhere between a high mark of a distinction (75% and above) and a High Distinction. Although I have not fulfilled all of the requirements, I believe my contribution to the POOL community cannot be overlooked and deserves some recognition.
