For the record: I still love Twitter, but in 2012 I’m giving G+ more of my time.

Follow me @rosiesherry or add me to your Circle on Google+.

1. The search baby!

The search on Twitter winds me up to the moon and back.  It’s so frustratingly hard to find previous tweets.  This is not a problem with Google+.  Infact it’s quite the opposite.  If you do a search in G+ whilst thinking about the search in Twitter it actually makes you smile.  Well it did for me at least

2. It’s easier to comment

Sure, Twitter is simple to comment on or ‘talk with someone’. You just @ people, right? But that gets confusing.  If multiple tweets are happening, it’s hard to see who is replying to what.  I’ve just found myself saying ‘aaaarrrrghhh’ too many times.

G+ doesn’t have this problem.  A nice simple commenting system is in place. It works. It’s easy to read. It doesn’t waste my time!

3. It’s not about real time

Real time is too hard. Sure, for a while it was alright. But then many more interesting people joined Twitter. And I wanted to keep up with them all. I’d say things like ‘you’re cool, I’d like to follow you?’. But I couldn’t. I remembered I had a life and work to get on with. And even if I did end up following *you* I wouldn’t have the time to read the Tweets.

And then people say to me, ‘Yo sista. Did you not see my Tweet?’ And I’m like, ‘No sorry dude, I do apologise’.

G+ is about being current, but you don’t have to check it every 5 minutes.  It’s ok.  It’s like they understand that people have a life.

4. Keeping organised

Twitter just kind of grew and then came ways to help people organise the information flow.  As a result, no matter how many times I try to keep my lists up to date – I JUST CAN”T. Honest, I’ve tried. And tried, but it just ain’t happening. As a result it’s just a big pile of mess.  Being organised is essential for such a stream of data/info.

G+ on the other hand make you add someone to a circle to begin with.  This makes you make a conscious decision on how to organise your contacts from day one.  For me, this has worked wonders.

5. There’s no limit on what you can share

140 characters has long been the ‘success’ point of Twitter, but more recently I’ve found it being a real pain not being able to share more. I feel it is actually holding me back. Sure, people can share links, but I’m never quite sure what to expect when I click them. With G+ I can share anything, right there and then.  No need to click elsewhere. Winner.

If you go to seek advice from the ‘experts’ about building a community, they will probably reel off a list of buzzwords and necessities. Oh, you must have a ________.

Fill in the blank space with social network / blog / Twitter / ecommerce / marketing plan / advertising / PR / business plan / events / content / competitions / people / a physical space.

It’s pretty easy to knock a few of the above together.

Of course none of the above makes a community. The actual community part is somewhat intangible. It’s a common understanding. It’s an ethos. It’s a shared goal. A shared interest. It’s about people and relationships. And trust.

This part is much harder. It’s not as easy. Takes time. And can be sensitive and fragile if not treated with respect.

If I relate this to Software Testing Club. It is our ethos and approach which has really made the community a success. It’s not the tools, though I would be lying if they hadn’t helped.

People know we are genuine about supporting the software testing community. They know we strive to produce the best. They (hopefully!) know we are impartial about our craft. They know they can come to us wherever we are and get a professional response. They know boring is not part of our vocabulary.

Software Testing Club as a social network is the main hub of activity, but increasingly we support things elsewhere. Our LinkedIn group is somewhat busy and doesn’t tolerate the spam that most LinkedIn groups suffer from. We are active on Facebook too. Our Meetups spread our philosophy too. We monitor discussions and participate on the likes of Twitter where possible. The Testing Planet is increasingly communicating and connecting with new people.

If our main network was ever shut off, I would like to think that the STC ethos would still prosper without it.

There’s a common saying on the web that ‘content is king’.  Without good content your website will *suck*.

I think this was more true in the *olden days*.  You know, as little as 3 years ago – when the social web wasn’t as mainstream as it is now. It is still partially true, but it just doesn’t complete the whole picture.

My theory is that content is just one of The 3 Kings.

Drawn on my iPad

So here we have:

Content

A pretty crucial part. It needs to be interesting. Engaging. Fresh. SEO optimised. Unique. Etc.

Design

Nothing worse than coming across some great content, but the design lets it down.

• Has thought been put into the layout of the content?
• Is the design modern?
• Is it structured correctly?
• Is it easy on the eye?
• Is it readable?
• Is it easy to find out about the person or people behind the website/content?
• How do you find out more?
• How do you subscribe to their RSS, Twitter, etc?

There is often a fine line between design and marketing…

Marketing

Many people will run away from this concept and I personally am not sure if ‘marketing’ is the right word.  Initally I was going to call it ‘relationships’, but felt like that was only part of the story.

Having great content that is well designed just isn’t enough.  To really make it a success it needs to be ‘marketed’. That’s the truth. Yes, some things can go viral on their own, but the average bit of content that does get popular happens because there has been some creative and effective marketing done in the background.

What’s involved in marketing?

• Relationships that have already been built – in real life and online
• Reaching out to new people, constantly
• Finding creative ways for people to talk about you
• How do you make best use of your relationships?
• Is there a strategy for specific bits of content?
• What are other people saying about the website?
• Just a tweet is not (usually) enough (especially if you don’t have any friends) – how else will you spread the word online? LinkedIn (groups)? G+? Facebook?
• And when you do spread the word online, will you make sure it is about engaging with people and following up the conversation, rather than just broadcasting your message?  Engaging takes time/effort and gets results. Broadcasting is quick and easy – the results are not usually that good.

A full list of marketing tips requires an additonal post (or book!).  Take this as a guide – hopefully the overview of The 3 Kings has helped

An interesting added feature came live for me and The Software Testing Club Facebook page today.

It’s a simple added stat that shows the number of *interactions* that have happened on the page.  Interactions include things like *likes*, comments, photos posted, etc.

The metric is worth keeping an eye on and it gives myself and visitors and overall idea about how popular the page is.

For me it gives me an incentive to figure out ways to interact and engage more with our Facebook ‘followers’.  It’s also quite handy as it is easy to check out other pages and see how well they are doing.

Most people probably don’t realise, but these interactions that people make are really important for me/STC because it helps us understand better what people like or don’t like.

So if you do ever visit our Facebook page (there are lots of interesting links there, ya know) be sure to like what we post or leave a comment with some kind of feedback or interesting thing to say

This is my daily routine of moderation with the Software Testing Club.  I’m sure this could easily put people off running a community, but it is essential to maintaining the quality of people and content.  Note that this is just spam prevention – what needs to be done before we can even start doing other more fun stuff:

• Review every member that joins STC.
• Review most posts from members, especially new members.
• Review comments on blog.
• Review comments on The Testing Planet (lots of spam!)
• Review every single comment/discussion on LinkedIn group
• Delete many posts to LinkedIn group, but first drop them an email explaining where to post their jobs, events, marketing stuff to.
• Review posts on Facebook group
• Review every job on the job board, some spam has started to leak through
• When someone joins our Meetup group I check to see they are genuine
• Every change to the wiki sends me an email – this needs to be quickly checked to ensure this is not caused by a spammer
• We have a Google map of testers – it’s a bit of fun, I don’t check in too often, but when I do there always seems to be a few sneaky spam locations.  Who would’ve thought?  I checked in there today and am convince someone has been testing it!

Luckily I can do most of this from wherever I am.  However, I don’t do it all myself.  Big thanks to The Team for helping out.

There’s a whole other list of things that need to be done just to keep people aware of everything that is going on – I guess, in the traditional sense, this is called marketing. That will have to be for another time

Quality comments is something I am always battling with. Interesting to see how Robert Scoble maintains quality on his G+ network.  How he finds the time to do it, I don’t know.

This is from a recent post he made:

OK, this is something NOT to brag about, but something we must defend every day. How am I defending the quality of comments here?

1. Report and delete all spam as quickly as possible.
2. Call out people who aren’t adding value.
3. Instantly terminate anyone who takes a comment thread off topic (I have a zero tolerance policy for that).
4. Be the change you want in the world. I try to add value when I comment. I don’t always get there, but generally I try to put the time in to say something that would add value to other people.

I also block assholes, I have zero tolerance for that (and, yes, I realize that I’m sometimes an asshole, but I try not to be too often, because I know that people have that same policy). That covers a whole lot of territory, by the way, that I’m not going to get into detail here.

Anyway, there’s a good community here. Now that Google+ is open to the public comment quality will start going down. Look at these two posts and think about how we can keep the quality we have today around for a while.

This whole topic of juggling babies with modern day life has resurfaced itself for me.  Obviously it is not a coincidence, it’s all to do with Sherry #3.

And with a new baby I think again about how I can get out and involved with events.  It’s always a tricky one, that is never straightforward and often stressful, at least for the mother involved

With my two previous boys I was never really in the position or mindframe to take them to events with me.  At that stage I wasn’t really participating in events and didn’t have the confidence to take them out with me, but that was 6/7 years ago now.  Things have changed since then where I have been much more active in organising and attending web and software testing related events for the past 5 years or so.

Now that I am juggling young baby-ness again, it has made me think about all the challenges that are involved. And also how much more willing and confident I am to just ask and/or bring a baby or kid along to an event.  This is not something I would have done in the past and probably not something most mothers would do.

I think, as a community, we should be encouraging women/families more.  Of course, this includes men wanting to bring kids along too, women is just a generalisation.  It by no way means that events would get overtaken by children, I think most parents wouldn’t let this happen

The reality is often that event organisers don’t actually mind having kids/babies around, as long as they don’t ruin the event for others, but this is rarely communicated.

I now ask the organisers of events if it is ok to come along with my baby.  No one has said no to me yet, but should I have to ask?

So, I thought why not have a sign showing an event is ‘kid friendly’?  Much like the Disabled sign we are all so familiar with. Or like a more recent ‘Breastfeeding Friendly’ sign that many public locations are promoting?

Would this encourage more women to come along to events?

I hate climbing walls.

It’s my pet hate.

“Hey you.  Yes you. We have this free digital thing. It’s worth lots of money, but we are giving it away for free. Just go here to get it now.”

They don’t tell you that it involves filling in a form that involves telling them your life story.

Or just as bad.  You’ve already signed up to their stuff, you just can’t remember the login details and the user experience of the website doesn’t allow you to reset it.

The usability options are only part of the problem.

What gets to me is that when this is done, then it’s not really free.  It’s more of a barter.

“We’ll give you this, in return for your life story and email.”

That’s not free, is it?

It’s not free because I’ve wasted x amount of minutes of my time just trying to get access to it.  And now you have my life story and perhaps worse, my email.

“It is free because you didn’t spend any money on it.”

Money = time. ‘enuf said.

“We can’t do that. Marketing wants emails. Sales want leads. We don’t have time for building relationships.”

Why not just make it as easy as possible to get it. Then I might actually read it. Absorb it. Make use of it. And if it is a good as you claim it is then I’ll tell my friends about it. On Twitter. On FaceBook. On G+. On my blog.  Then my ‘friends’ might do the same.  I might even go back to your website and sign up for that newsletter that you wanted me to sign up to.  I could go a step further and follow your tweets or blog.  I might even ‘like’ your Facebook page.

Oh and if you are really engaging you might notice that I’ve tweeted it. Liked it. +1 it. Blogged it.  You might jump on this opportunity to actually communicate with me.  ’cause hey, we probably share the same interests.  And because you helped me out.  Maybe I’ll help you out.

Sigh.

Oh, but no.  This won’t happen because in the first place you put up that big wall called a form.

If you want a really good example of this kind of practice, check this out.  I even tweeted about it, but got no response.

I’ve been using Rapportive since it came out.  If you are not, you may want to sign yourself up.

It is so useful having information on people next to emails in your inbox.  It makes it that bit easier to get to know the person you are about to email.  I find it especially useful for people I don’t really know – in email lists for example.

They recently launched a new feature where the person’s data appears when you are sending someone an email.  As they say on their website, this is incredibly useful information.  If they have tweeted they are on holiday, then perhaps you should send the email another time.

However, what I liked even more was the way they rolled out this feature.  They didn’t (at least not what I’m aware of) email their user base.  Instead, on their blog post they say you just need to visit a page to get access to the new feature.  At the click of a link there was a nice personalised (with my name) welcome message and I had instant access to this new feature.  Much better than receiving a newsletter, a ‘coming soon’ post or ‘enter your email’ to gain early access.

They then give you the option to ‘share it with friends’.

Instant and social gratification. We need more of that on the web.

It’s nice to get a LinkedIn recommendation out of the blue.

Every so often I look back on the recent relationships I have built and wonder who I can leave a surprise LinkedIn recommendation for.

It is a simple action. Takes 5 minutes. Is hopefully of benefit to them. And puts a smile on their face.

You’ll most likely get a big thank you and receive a recommendation too.  Though it is not about the receiving.  The true *joy* is about giving.

Who will you recommend today?