building and leveraging social networks

Building & Leveraging Social Networks LAURA GOGIA, MD - @GOOGLEGUACAMOLE

VCU ACADEMIC LEARNING TRANSFORMATION LABWWW.LAURAGOGIA.COM

@googleguacamole / #VCUSMClass

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BEFORE WE GET STARTED: • Please feel free to have your digital devices in

your hands at all times. The research suggests most of you are using them for good reasons when you are using them.

• Please feel free to live tweet or take pictures of anything you see or hear.

• When I ask you what something means, please feel free to google it for an answer. Please don’t leave me hanging. Long silences are boring for us all.

Slides are available at www.slideshare.net/LauraGogia


Q: What does it mean to “leverage” something?


Q. What does it mean to “leverage” something?

A: To use something to maximum advantage


Q. How do we define influence in social media?


Q. How do we define influence in social media?

A. Ability to drive action or behaviors in others

What does this look like in professional contexts?


Q. What does this look like outside a celebrity context?


Business - ZARA NonProfit – British Red Cross

Klout defines influence…Number of people who will see your message

Number of people who will relay it to their networks

Number of times other people with influence will relay your message

https://klout.com/home

1. Reach

2. Amplification

3. Impact


Impact is the endgame of influence.The ability to impact someone’s behavior or opinion; to affect change.


An example.


Evidence of Influence•I had reach. •900+ people had access to my message.

•I had minimal amplification.• 1 retweet.

•But I had serious impact.•People did what I wanted them to do, which was help me think about this presentation.


So how do we “get” influence?

R e a c h – A m p l i fi c a ti o n - I m p a c t


To contribute to the conversation is to participate.

“To contribute and curate resources on an area of interest.” --Bonnie Stewart


Know your network. Know yourself.

Make yourself useful.


#1. Know (your) network.


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#vcusmclass



#curiouscolab



Network theory is the study of graphs as they represent relationships between

people or things.


A Need-To-Know Tutorial in Social Network Analysis

Who has influence and why?


http://www.orgnet.com/sna.html

Diane is popular. Diane has degree centrality.

Has highest number of unique contacts.



Ferdinando & Garth are the first to know. They have closeness centrality.

Shortest path to the most nodes. Monitor flow.



Heather is important.Heather has betweeness centrality.Connects clusters within a network. Controls the flow of information through the network.



Message: Be a Heather. Know where you are and who you connect. Who are the key players in your network? Who is talking with whom? Who aren’t they talking to but maybe should be? How might you introduce them to each other?


Aim for betweeness. People who bridge different groups stand to benefit from:

•Collective IQ•Seeing more ideas•Being useful to others

Rheingold, H., & Weeks, A. (2012). Net smart: How to thrive online. MIT Press

Howard Rheingold says…


#2. Know yourself (online & otherwise)


Stewart, B. (2015). Open to influence: what counts as academic influence in scholarly networked Twitter participation. Learning, Media and Technology, 1-23.

What online qualities make you more likely to have influence?•Individually-centered (not institutionally centered)•Metrics matter, but not as much as you’d think•Commonalities of interest are key•Automated signals = low-influence



METRICS SAY I SPEND TIME ON

TWITTERAVATAR SAYS I’M SERIOUS ABOUT

DIGITALLY NETWORKED

PARTICIPATION

PINNED TWEET SAYS I’M IN FINAL

STAGES OF DISSERTATION

RESEARCH

HASHTAGS TELL YOU MY PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS. TEXT

TELLS YOU MY PERSONAL INTERESTSMY DIGITAL PORTFOLIO

BACKGROUND:I LIKE ART

Message: Don’t be the egg.•Be thoughtful about your profile.•Be aesthetically pleasing.•Be human.•Be consistent BUT •Don’t feel like you can’t experiment or evolve over time. Humans do that. Resumes do that. You should too.


#3. Make yourself useful.


Howard Rheingold says...• Pay it forward.

• Don’t just consume, create.

Rheingold, H., & Weeks, A. (2012). Net smart: How to thrive online. MIT Press


Message: There are many ways to make yourself useful. They all start with listening.


Pay it forward.• Find answers.• Amplify their message.• Live tweet conferences.• Summarize webinars, articles, books on your blog.• Curate.

“To contribute and curate resources on an area of interest.”

Create.


Content Curation•Transforming the massive amounts of information found on the web into something organized and useful for a specific niche.

•Arranging things so it is easy to access and relevant.

http://www.verticalmeasures.com/content-strategy/examples-of-content-curation/


You don’t have to be an established knowledge expert to help, curate, and become a discussion

leader. In fact, students excel at these activities.


Take Home Points• Influence is the capacity to get people to do things.

• Greatly increased by your ability to get the message out through other influencers.

• Know your network: Trends, key players, their needs• Know yourself

• Your location and (real and desired) role in the network

• Your goals, skillsets, and strengths• Contribute to the conversation

• Invest the time• Do favors• Create/Curate


building and leveraging social networks

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