Alexandra Samuel's blog | Social Signal

Part 3 of a series. Originally appeared on AlexandraSamuel.com.

The 90-9-1 principle popularized by Jakob Nielsen says that if you have 100 visitors to your online community site or social media presence, your visitors' participation will look like this:

Part 2 of a series. Originally appeared on AlexandraSamuel.com.

"How can our organization create a social media presence?"

The latest person to ask me that question was a dear friend who is on the board of a 2,000-member non-profit. Their next board meeting was coming up, and social media was on the agenda. What kind of approach would I recommend?

Part 1 of a series. Originally appeared on AlexandraSamuel.com.

By now, virtually any organization that is committed to the web has asked: how can social media and online community strengthen our relationship to our members or customers, and help us fulfill our mission?

Go directly to the latest Open SoSi release, How to create budget estimates for proposals and project management. >>

I'm hosting a conversation today at SXSW, Breaking it Open: Open Source Consulting Models. So this seemed like the right moment to return to the job of open sourcing our consulting materials.

As it turns out, the biggest challenge of open sourcing is actually organizing our materials in a form that is useful to share. Any programmer can tell you that documentation is often the most onerous part of sharing code, and we've found the same thing is true in our own open sourcing process. We could just dump a pile of documents onto the Internet, but we want to release them in a form other people can make sense of and apply to their own work. That takes time.

Today we're releasing the budget estimating template we use to generate cost estimates and project plans for The Concept Jam. We use similar templates for all our budgeting processes, so we expect that the attached template will be relevant to a wide range of budget, estimating and project planning needs. Whether you're a social media agency (like us) or in an entirely different sector and service industry, these files and notes can help you define or refine your estimating and project management system.

Rob and I have been together for 12 years this month, but I still remember what it's like to get over a previous love. Back in the day when there was a little more turnover in my love life, I found that moving on to a new relationship wasn't enough to cure the heartache of a breakup. It wasn't until I was two breakups removed that I'd really get over a previous love and stop thinking about him altogether. I'm wondering if the same might be true of social web sites. I've loved delicious, the social bookmarking site, for almost five years now.

Two months ago, Rob and I decided to refocus Social Signal on social media capacity building. We recognized that we have the most impact -- and the most fun -- delivering the workshops, training and content that helps organizations find and realize their social opportunities. And we decided that one way to help build social media capacity was to open source our consulting practice, even though we didn't know what that would mean for our business.

Twitter lists have been around for all of one week and already there is a site that exists to make a list of lists. So I am hereby inaugurating my new Twitter destination site, consisting of this one page, on which I will offer a definitive list of the lists of Twitter lists.

Listerfluous: the list of the lists of Twitter lists

1. Listorious
2. Read Write Web's 10 Twitter Lists You Should Follow

The following post appeared in The Mark News earlier this week.

When I was a kid I had the shortest hair of any girl in my class because my mum couldn't face the hassle of hair maintenance. As soon as I got old enough to take care of it myself, I grew my hair as long as possible, and by the time I graduated from university it reached halfway down my back. Then I got my first real job and needed a grown-up look, so I gritted my teeth and asked for a modest trim. Instead, my stylist sheared me back to my ear-baring elementary school years, and I left the salon in an emotional state usually reserved for breakups and natural disasters.

That trauma led to an important discovery: hair grows back.