Alexandra Samuel's blog | Social Signal

Back in the day, the only real way to have an online conversation was to build your own blog or online community. These days, many people, companies and organizations have their first taste of online conversation and social media through pre-established social networks like Twitter, Facebook or YouTube.

Can social media catalyze or support political change? To answer that question, you have to understand who is asking, and what they really want to know.

What's the best way to deliver online training to individuals and small businesses?

At Social Signal, we've explored a number of options over the years. Now we're developing content for an online course that launches in January 2012, and the team we working with needs your help in identifying the best courseware solutions or courseware developers/integrators.

Part of a series. Original version at AlexandraSamuel.com.

In my recent blog post about how to sustain your social media presence in just 3 hours a week, I advise drafting 3 blog posts in under one hour. That may sound unimaginable if (like me) you've fallen into the habit of turning each blog post you write into a mini-manual or philosophical essay.

Part of a series. Original version at AlexandraSamuel.com.

When it rains on a weekend, I don't bemoan my decision to live in the Pacific Northwest: I just know it's time to queue up my blog posts and tweets for the week. That's what I try to do in about two hours every weekend, and since folks often ask me how they can keep their social media presence alive in an efficient and sustainable way, I figure I'm long overdue to blog my system.

Part of a series. Original version at AlexandraSamuel.com.

Part of a series. Original version at AlexandraSamuel.com.

I often talk to people who wonder how they can get started in social media. The typical requirements are:

Part 6 (and conclusion) of a series. Originally posted on AlexandraSamuel.com.

Part 5 in a series. Originally appeared on AlexandraSamuel.com.

Organizations with a limited audience (fewer than 100,000 people) or limited budget (less than $100k) face equally limited possibilities for eliciting user-generated content.  One strategy for developing an effective social media presence within these limitations is to create a site driven by RSS aggregation.

Another option is focus on developing your own content on a regular (ideally daily) basis; for a small membership organization, 2-3 posts per week is entirely reasonable.