I talk a fair amount about creating and marketing digital products here on Hedgehog & Fox. I don’t do this purely from a theoretical or consultative perspective: digital products in the form of research reports are actually an important part of my own business over at Tagoras. So, I am happy to announce the publication of our newest report: Association Learning Management Systems.

You can get the full scoop on the  Association Learning Management Systems report page on the Tagoras site, but I’ve included some of the key details below for readers here who may be interested. Also, we’re offering a handful of “social media discounts” via Twitter, LinkedIn – and this blog. Enter the discount code “hedgehog” in the shopping cart at Tagoras before the end of the day on Wednesday and you will receive a $25 discount.

Whether of not you want the full report, I recommend downloading the table of contents and sector overview. It’s got some good content in it. Here are a few of the key details on what the full report – which is more than 400 pages long – includes:

• An overview of LMS usage in the association sector
• An extensive set of guiding questions for LMS selection
• 29 tables that compare systems across a variety of areas
• In-depth vendor profiles based on 243 questions covering 28 different areas
• Brief reviews of each system based on answers to the questions and a demonstration session with each vendor

Companies included in the report are:

• Avilar (www.avilar.com)
• Blackboard (www.blackboard.com)
• Digitec Interactive (www.digitecinteractive.com)
• GeoLearning (www.geolearning.com)
• iCohere    (www.icohere.com)
• LearnSomething (www.learnsomething.com)
• Meridian KSI (www.meridianksi.com)
• Peach New Media    (www.peachnewmedia.com)
• Results Direct (www.resultsdirect.com)
• WBT Systems (www.wbtsystems.com)
• Web Courseworks    (www.webcourseworks.com)

Jeff

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This Tuesday I’ll be speaking at the Association New Media Summit hosted by Peach New Media. My topic is Learning 2.0, and as I have been working on the presentation, I’ve been trying to come up with a brief way to explain why I think it is such an important concept – one that goes right to the heart of strategy on the social Web.

The image above is how I usually illustrate “Learning 2.0″ as it plays out in the world of traditional education and professional development. (If you are viewing this on e-mail and can’t load images or otherwise to not see the image, click through to the original post.)

In the world of Learning 2.0, walls between classrooms break down. There is not the sort of teacher-student hierarchy like you find in traditional, formal education. Rather, everyone is a student, and everyone has the potential to be a teacher. What drives the connections – the arrows in the illustration – is a desire to learn and a desire to share expertise. These are, I believe, very basic human desires, and all the new tools of the social Web – blogs, wikis, social networks, etc. – help us satisfy these desires in ways that were never possible before.

It’s important to recognize that this dynamic isn’t really all that different from what you find across the social Web as a whole. Here, for example, is how connections across the worldwide user base for the photo-sharing service Flickr mapped out just a few years ago. It’s the same sort of thing as above, but on a massive scale:

Why do people make these connections? In the case of Flickr, the obvious “social object” is photos: people connect with each other because they have photos to share and they want to see other people’s photos. A similar thing happens with videos on YouTube.

Aside from the obvious social objects that exist in these networks, I’d argue that there is a higher level object – call it a “meta” object, if you want to get academic about it – that often drives interaction: namely, learning: People in these networks are learning from and about each other, and the core objects – photos and videos – help make this possible.

Important caveat: To accept this argument, you’ll have to get past the idea that “learning” is equivalent to formal education. I’m talking about learning in a fundamental, psychological sense.

And here’s the thing – if you understand that learning in this fundamental sense can be a highly effective glue for holding social networks together, you can focus in on maximizing the network’s potential for providing valuable learning experiences. You can use an understanding of learning to drive strategy.

Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the most effective ways to engender learning in the informal, psychological sense of the word is to provide for formal educational objects within the network. Articles, videos, tutorials, etc – these are often great catalysts for the informal learning connections that generate value in a network.

I think there are great opportunities for membership organizations to leverage formal educational activities as a way to generate more value within their social networks, and conversely, to make their formal educational offerings more valuable by making them more social. That is part of what I will talk about at the New Media Summit.

I also think there are interesting ways that an understanding of learning can help commercial organizations cultivate customer communities and even create new, revenue-generating products that leverage Learning 2.0. Stephen Covey certainly understands that. So does Brian Clark.

Bottom line: Learning 2.0 is woven into the fabric of the social Web, and vice-versa. I think a Web strategy that doesn’t take it into account will most likely leave many opportunities on the table. What do you think?

Jeff

P.S. – If this is a topic that interests you, you may also want to check out the free eBook, Learning 2.0 for Associations.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

SocialFish has recently released its much-anticipated white paper Six Online Community Vendors for Associations: An Analysis. I’m in the midst of a very busy couple of weeks, so have not had the chance to fully digest it yet, but it looks like the usual great work from Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer. In it, Maddie and Lindy take a look at “six fabulous vendors who are committed to the association community–Higher Logic, NFi Studios, The Port, The Social Collective, Socious, and SusQtech.”

Even if you are not necessarily an association, you will find much of this report helpful. You can download it, scroll through it, and generally find out more at: http://www.socialfish.org/whitepaper.

Jeff

P.S. – I also send out links to great resources like this over Twitter – Follow me!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I was listening to the Alan Watts Podcast recently when I was struck by a distinction that Watts drew between a view of the world as having been “made” versus a view of the world as having “grown.” Watts, for those who are not familiar with him, was a philosopher who dealt, as philosophers typically do, with metaphysical matters. But it struck me that his distinction between making and growing applies well to the practical business of marketing on the new Web.

The traditional view of markets – much like traditional Western views of the world – is that we “make them.” We concoct our plans, develop our products and services, and foist them upon the world. In many cases, we even put all the mechanisms in place to make transactions possible. This is a role at which Wall Street, for example, has failed so miserably in recent history.

Traditionally, “making” has worked best for those who had capital and could manage to get the numbers on their side. Making is the world not only of Wall Street, but of Hollywood, the big Three automakers, big Tobacco, big Pharma, and all the MadMen who serve these types of organizations. Making still works, but it has gotten a whole lot harder.

One reason it is harder is because it is so much easier. Nearly anyone can engage in the traditional “making” process now for a fraction of what it used to cost.

But a related, and more important reason that making doesn’t work as well, is that “growing” is what customers, members, donor and all the other constituents that make up a market are coming to expect.

The Cluetrain Manifesto guys, to their credit, recognized long ago the way in which the Web was transforming markets into communities that grow rather than things that are made. This was, in a sense, the oldest new idea possible: back before the age of mass production and mass media, markets were pretty much always about conversations, always about a close relationship between buyer and seller, always about growing.

Growing is a trickier business than making, mostly because the person who wants to grow something does not have nearly the level of control that the person who wants to make something does. The grower is always dependent upon what she attempts to grow. But think of the potential rewards. I can make a widget, and as a result, I’ll have a widget. But if I take the time to carefully cultivate a widget plant, it may well produce a thousand widgets for me.

This last point seems particularly important in times when resources are tight, because it speaks directly to the type of return you might expect off of your efforts to connect with a market for your products are services. It’s worth pausing for a minute and asking yourself: Am I making, or am I growing?

- Jeff

P.S. – If you like the “growing” metaphor you might also like Annuals and Perennials – Cultivating Your Blog Content. And if you like what you read here on Hedgehog & Fox, in general, I’d truly appreciate it if you would tell others and also subscribe by RSS or by e-mail.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Earlier this week a person who attended one of my recent speaking sessions on social media e-mailed to ask me a question about converting his organization’s Web site over to blogging software. As I was writing back, I realized that when I speak I always advocate using blogging software, but I haven’t really written much about it here. Specifically, for small-to-mid-sized organizations, I highly recommend using WordPress not just for blogging, but for powering your entire Web site. Here are 10 reasons why:

1. It’s free!

Free as far as licensing costs go, at least. You can sign up for an account at WordPress.com and get the hosting for free, too, but what I recommend is your own installation of the WordPress software at a hosting provider of your choice. (I use Netwisp for this site and have been very please with them so far.) WordPress isn’t going to look like what you want it to right out of the box, but that leads to my second point…

2. You can make it look like pretty much whatever you want

There are who-knows-how-many free and low cost “themes” available for Wordpress. (Themes are the piece of WordPress that control most of how your site looks to an end user.) You can find these by searching right within the WordPress administrative panel or by using Google. In either case, installation requires just a couple of clicks.  Or, you can go the custom route and hire someone to trick it out for you (which is what I did here on my site, as well as on Tagoras (e-learning) and Mission to Learn (lifelong learning)). Naturally, that means laying out some cash, but that leads to my third point…

3. There is a vibrant services market

As with any mature, successful open source software, a huge community of designers and developers have cropped up to provide services related to WordPress. That means you have a wide variety of choices, and the pricing is very competitive. I got the design and custom template coding work done on this site – which is entirely WordPress driven – for about $600.

4. There are extensions galore

Related to the last point, there are any number of developers out there who are creating and releasing new plug-ins and themes on a daily basis. If you need WordPress to do something it doesn’t already do, chances are very good that someone has already created a plug-in that fits the bill – and yes, that even includes handling membership. Most of these are free, but even the ones that cost don’t tend to cost all that much. And while installing plug-ins to WordPress used to be somewhat complex, the latest edition has turned it into a search, point, and click process. Which leads to my next point…

5. It’s incredibly easy to use

Yes, there are some complex areas of WordPress that help give it such incredible flexibility, but for the average user, creating content is pretty much like working in Microsoft Word or any other “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” (WYSIWYG) type environment. Need to make a change to your site? Just log in, navigate to the page you want to change, click edit, make the change, and save it. You are done. No need to call a developer and pay $100+ per hour.

6. It’s easy to get started

Most major hosting companies – and even most minor ones – these days provide for “one-click” installation of WordPress as part of their standard packages. You don’t really need any significant technical ability at all simply to open a hosting account and install WordPress. One word of caution, though, if you expect a high volume of traffic, I’d stay away from cheap “shared” hosting packages. Get a virtual server or dedicated server package . Or, maybe try out GoDaddy’s grid hosting. The grid approach is supposed to ensure that extra bandwidth and server capacity is made available to you as demand rises. I am not endorsing it at this point, but I’ve been using it over at Mission to Learn and have so far encountered no issues during big traffic spikes.

7. It’s easy to stay up-to-date

Another feature that came available in one of the recent updates is “one-click” updates of the WordPress platform from with the WordPress administrative panel. That’s right – click one button to update your software installation. A word of caution, though – if you have done any customizations to the core WordPress code, this will wreck your site. That’s why I like the Thesis theme so much – it offers an approach to putting all customizations in a separate directory that is not touched during WordPress updates. I’ve been using Thesis on three different sites for quite a while now, and it has been a dream.

8. The search engines like it

WordPress provides for good search engine optimization (SEO) right out of the box. And readily available plug-ins and/or premium themes like Thesis, help fill in the few gaps that are left. Even Matt Cutts, basically Google’s voice when it comes to SEO, say that WordPress is one of your best bets when it comes to creating a site that Google will like. (Related: Here is a good video of Matt giving Google tips related to WordPress.)

9. The support is good

No, you wont’ have the dedicated support team than you might (in theory) get if you license a full blown content management system or or go with some other approach, but most decent Web hosts will provide at least basic support, and with the huge network of developers out there – many of them blogging daily about WordPress – and WordPress’ own support site, you are likely to find that WordPress is the best-supported approach to Web site creation and maintenance that you have ever experienced.

10. It’s free

Okay, maybe this one is cheating . But really, after reading everything above, isn’t this a point worth repeating?!

If you have questions or experience with using WordPress for your site that you are wiling to share, please comment!

Jeff

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

It’s the $64,000 question these days (for those who remember media back in the days before it got social): How do you know that all those bucks you plow into blogs, and Twitter, and Facebook are doing anything for you? And for that matter, how clear are you about how much you are actually spending on these things? (You do know that “free” is hardly ever truly free, right?)

Olivier Blanchard of BrandBuilder has posted a very solid – and entertaining – presentation on the Basics of Social Media ROI. It’s worth viewing just for the photos and captioning in the slides, but it does also deliver on explaining the basics of social media return on investment. The core argument, I’m sure some will complain, is nothing new – i.e., you have to connect media measurements like “eyeballs” and subscribers to actual financial data like increases in sales if ROI, in its true ALL CAPS corporate sense is really what you are talking about – but I suspect the deep need for repeating this argument will not disappear anytime soon.

(Note: Blanchard doesn’t address ROI in situations where some of the most important metrics might be other than financial – i.e., for mission-driven organization -  but the same logic applies: You have to know what those metrics are, and you have to be able to establish a clear connection between social media tactics and any movement of those metrics if you expect to make a convincing argument about ROI.)

I’ve posted the slide presentation above for your convenience, but I encourage you to view it on Slideshare to see the comments – to which Olivier, to his credit, seems to be responding promptly.

Thanks to the Marketing Over Coffee guys for pointing this one out.

Jeff

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Facebook page frustration is on the rise!

Like many people (based on quite a bit of searching), I am becoming increasingly frustrated with Facebook. For the past few days, what has really gotten to me is the way that Facebook pages work.

Here’s the rundown:

It is possible to create a “fan” page in Facebook that enables you to promote an individual or organizational brand – kind of like a Web site for a specific purpose within Facebook. To do this you either:

• Add a page onto your individual account
• Create a business account specifically for the purpose of managing pages and advertising

Sounds simple enough, but as many of us are finding out, nothing is really ever simple in Facebook if you scratch below the surface. A couple of the major issues – and these are just the major ones – that arise as you start to dive into pages are:

• There is no way right now to transfer ownership of a page from one individual to another. So if Bob in marketing has set up the fan page for your organization, guess what? Bob continues to “own” that page even after he leaves your organization. Or if you want to sell your small company and transfer the fan page to a new owner…good luck!
• Well, but of course the simple solution would be just to set up a business account instead of an individual account (it’s an option in the page set-up process). Not so fast, though. If you already have an indvidual account, Facebook’s policy is that you are not allowed to set up a business account. So, you have to find the one person in your organization who is not yet on Facebook and does not ever want to have an individual account to set up your business account. Then you have to deal with all the headaches of your business account stepchild not really working as well as the better-loved individual account in Facebook.

You have to wonder why more people aren’t screaming about this one. My theory is that they will be soon – Facebook for business is still a new enough concept that relatively few people have run into the need to transfer ownership of a page. And many people still aren’t even aware that the business account option even exists.

The natives are getting restless, though. In the Facebook Help discussion forums, there is a thread titled “Transferring a page to new ownership?” that was posted at the beginning of April. Since then, a total of 146 people have chimed in. As far as I can tell, all of them are looking for an answer and nobody has one.

Where are you Facebook staff?! (Is there a Facebook staff?)

I’m sure the issue will be addressed eventually. Maybe it has been already and some kind reader will chime in to tell me where the secret answer is hidden. (Please!) In the meantime, though, this seems to be yet another instance of Facebook simply not being in tune with the needs of users – and apparently not caring.

All in all, I agree with Douglas Karr’s view that Facebook is a lot like AOL 10.0 and that it will ultimately “fail unless it can correct one universal weakness.” Namely, the majority of time spent in Facebook – at least for business users – is “spent managing Facebook… not using it.”

One final note: If you have set up your business as an individual account, woe be unto you – Facebook could choose to shut you down at any moment given that this approach is a clear violation of their current policies.

Here’s hoping that Facebook sorts through these issues soon.

Jeff

P.S. – Interested in these kinds of issues? I encourage you to sign up for my newsletter. A new issue comes out next week.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

You could rack up a pile of debt attending a top notch MBA program and then try to land a job in a classic product management position somewhere like Proctor & Gamble

Or, you could fork over thousands to an Internet marketing “guru” like Jeff Walker to get access to his formula.

Or you could buy Dave & Naomi’s book. (Which at $97 really is a bargain.)

But why not just learn for free?

Study Aid 1

The guy over there to the left is Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger. If you want to learn how to launch a product successfully, it would be hard to beat simply studying him closely in his native habitat – the Web.

And you can do this for free.

Study Aid 2

Currently, I’m most concerned with what Brian is doing with Teaching Sells, which at the moment is in stealthy, pre-launch, lots-of-great-stuff-for-free mode, but I should back up for a minute to where I first came across Brian. It wasn’t even on Copyblogger, which now sports an enviable subscriber base of 73K+ in its Feedburner ticker.

No, where I found Brian was in my native habitat – online learning. Brian helped launch the Articulate Rapid E-learning blog and take it from 0 to 6000+ subscribers in a single day. Subscriptions are now north of 40K and the blog and its launch have become a standard case study in my presentations about doing business on the new Web.

I found the Articulate blog before I found Brian, but it didn’t take me long to discover who was behind the launch, and I’ve been on Brian’s trail ever since.

Study Aid 3

Which brings me to Teaching Sells.

When Brian, with the Articulate triumph in his pocket, announced that he was launching a site that would teach people how to create and market successful, revenue-producing learning communities…well, I was intrigued.

But intrigued is one thing. Actually forking over the $197 (if I remember right) that Brian and his partner Tony wanted for a charter membership was another.

Articulate alone would not have done it for me. But Brian provided so much more. First of all, Copyblogger in itself represented a wealth of information. I’m a subscriber to this day.

And on top of that, Teaching Sells offered up some really valuable content before so much as a penny was asked of potential members. Wow – hadn’t encountered that before.

I started to feel like Brian was a trustworthy guy who was willing to give plenty to make sure it was clear he knew what he was talking about. In fact, I felt like the Teaching Sells community he offered promised knowledge I simply would not be able to get anywhere else.

Hmm…what a great value proposition for a member community.

Study Aid 4

And so, I plunked down my money, and here I am today – a passionate member of the Teaching Sells tribe. And like many other passionate members, I am now evangelizing you on the prospect of joining.

That, ladies and gentleman, is A+ material in the world of product launches.

And the fact is, you can stop there if you want to. Take what you have read here. Take the highly valuable free materials that Brian is offering over at the Teaching Sells site. Digest it all, and go forth and prosper. You almost certainly will.

But…

Study Aid 5

If you want more excellent content. If you want a community of peers to support you as you venture forth. If you want additional input from Brian himself. In short, if you want a complete road map and support system for building a successful, revenue-producing online learning product offering (!), I’d recommend you get over to the Teaching Sells site up for early bird notification of the official re-launch (you will have the chance once you register at the site). In the meantime, you will receive – absolutely for free – the following great content:

• A 22-page report Forget Everything You Know About Making Money Online (And Start Making Some)
• A bonus report about building quick and easy membership sites with licensed content.
• A 20-Step Process Map to building an online training business.
• An instructional video that reveals the solution to the “traffic dilemma” every online entrepreneur faces.
• And a complete course listing of the entire Teaching Sells program.

Odds are very high that Teaching Sells will sell out before the official launch ever happens sometime later this week. You could hold out for the next time around. I’m sure there will be one, but it’s not clear when – Teaching Sells was closed to new enrollments for months before this current re-launch. In the meantime, there’s a pretty good chance you are looking for way to add or increase revenue.

Seems crazy not to at least check it out, eh?

Jeff

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Teaching Sells, a program developed by Copyblogger Brian Clark, re-opened today. And while I don’t tend to use Hedgehog & Fox as a site where I promote third-party products or post ads, there are a couple of reasons I can’t let this one pass without mention.

First, the Teaching Sells program falls squarely in the area where I do so much of my consulting and research – i.e., the sale of online education and the strategic use of education as a tool for marketing and building community. These are exactly the things Teaching Sells teaches, and it does it very well.

How do I know? Well, that’s the second reason I can’t let the re-launch pass without comment:  I have participated in the program pretty much since it first launched nearly two years ago. At first, I was simply interested to see what Brian and his partner Tony could pull off. I was amazed to see them quickly build a vibrant learning community that the average education director or educational marketer would die for. Thoroughly impressive.

In my opinion, if you have anything at all to do with selling online learning, or if you have subject matter expertise you have been trying to figure out how to monetize, you’d be crazy not to sign up for this program, even if only for a while. There is no quicker or better path than Teaching Sells to understanding educational content and community as a business model. Period.

So what does Teaching Sells give you?

I encourage you to visit the Teaching Sells site for more detail, including a great video and a number of highly-valuable, free resources (I’ve actually signed up for all the free stuff again myself!), but basically what Teaching Sells provides is:

• A thorough and customer-centric process for developing and marketing online education and training. Teaching Sells provides what I consider to be a roadmap for creating a successful e-learning business.

• Specific information and instructions on the use of low-cost and open source software to create and manage your online learning site. Using the tools suggested, you can be up and running in relatively short period of time for less than $500 in software and hosting costs. Considering what the returns can be, this is an incredibly low investment.

• A very active and vibrant community of colleagues who are all engaged in creating successful sites for offering e-learning for members. This highly active community is one of the things that has impressed me the most.

It is worth noting, too, that the knowledge that Teaching Sells delivers can help drive high e-learning adoption rates for any interactive learning program, whether you actually plan to sell online learning, offer it for free as a member or customer benefit, or even use it for a public education initiative.

To be clear, this is not a free program, and I know some people will balk at making this kind of investment. But you have to ask yourself – what are the potential returns you are giving up by not learning what Teaching Sells teaches? Up to you, but I’ve found it worth every penny.

To find out more, visit Teaching Sells today. And feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Jeff Cobb
Hedgehog & Fox

P.S. – Yes, those are affiliate links throughout this post. Look around this site and you will see that I promote no other third-party offerings here other than the Thesis Wordpress theme, which I use, believe is a great product and which – not coincidentally – is another project of Brian Clark. In short, I trust what Brian Clark does, I’ve also tried what Brian Clark does, and I am highly enthusiastic about being an affiliate for Teaching Sells.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is not really the core focus of my work, but I do quite often help clients with improving search results and traffic for their Web sites. The process can be incredibly clarifying, because it goes straight to the heart of creating value and connecting it with a market.

Here’s why:

1. SEO begins with understanding what the prospective market wants.

Every keyword or keyword phrase – i.e., the words your prospective customers or members might type into a search engine – is a stand in for a community of Web searchers who want something related to that keyword. If there aren’t many people searching on the keywords you feel describe the products or services you offer, you need to take a hard look at your strategy. Can you align to a more viable market or market segment?

2. SEO requires clear, concise communication of a value proposition.

Assuming the market is out there and you are able to catch a few eyeballs in the search engines, you have seconds to convince a searcher to click on your link. What do you say that most effectively and efficiently conveys the value of your offering? What’s going to make them click? You need to be able to hook them with the small amount of language that fits into a Web page title and meta description. A great exercise for any organization to try!

3. SEO ultimately depends on delivering value

Any respectable search engine optimizer will tell you that getting a large number of links from other sites trumps pretty much everything else when it comes to ranking high in the search engines. And why would other sites link to you? You got it – because you provide something of value. Something so valuable, in fact, that people want to tell other people about it.

So there you have it: know your market, communicate value, deliver value. Good strategy in a nutshell – and also a great way to improve your search rankings.

By the way, SEOMoz recently ran a great post on How Do I Build the Perfectly Optimized Page? And you may also want to see Checking in on SEO Essentials.

Jeff Cobb
Hedgehog & Fox

P.S. – If you enjoy what you read here on Hedgehog & Fox, I encourage you to subscribe to the feed or use the form at the upper right corner to subscribe by e-mail.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.