Socialwiki.org – ReLaunching the Open Social Media Resource Directory (WIIFM)

By jmacofearth On 02/16/2013 · 20 Comments

WIIFM – what's in it for me? < The driving force behind all collaborative efforts. Especially if they are not for pay or fame. Socialwiki.org is not for either. At this point, anyway.

Why spend time, launching a wiki about social media? Why, if it didn't gain traction in 2008, launch it again in 2013? What's the point, really?

Let's see if I can capture a bit of the vision that had me launching about a site a week back in 2008 and 2009.

My driving vision for the project:

“Through leadership we all become leaders.”

And the primary talking points I used to get people on-boarded and contributing.

Provide an open wiki platform and community tools to dialogue, collect, annotate and educate ourselves
Create, track, and share thought leadership
Access and tools without advertising, marketing or corporate sponsorship
Total transparency – no hidden elite
Shake up the status quo

The SocialWiki.org program on Slideshare.net: SocialWiki – General Information 2013

And I think most of the points are still valid.

Premise: You and I will have very little chance of becoming a Seth Godin, Chris Brogan, or Gary Vaynerchuk if we don't have a starting point, and entry point. This wiki project is an entry point.

Solution: Start and contribute to the Wikipedia of Social Media. Become an authority by building content, sharing learning and knowledge. Develop into a thought leaders by leading. My executive sponsor at Dell used to say, "If you want to become a thought leader, you have to lead. It's all in how you write about stuff. Are you teaching or pontificating?"

A wiki is two things. 1. democratic; and 2. a process.

Maybe you don't believe in social media. And that's okay. You need proof. You need numbers. You want information about how to do social media in the shortest amount of time, in the most efficient way, to impact and improve your small business. Industry leaders like Dell, Coca Cola, and Pepsi, don't have to sell computers and drinks as a direct result of their social media efforts. And their lessons, while insightful, are not the best examples for your remodeling business in your small town. Is there something you can do on FACEBOOK to have a positive impact on your business? Is Twitter worth learning and tweeting? And what about all these other things, LinkedIn, Blogs, Pinterest, e-Mail marketing, SEO, content marketing? Do they really have an ROI model for the small business?

My answer is YES. Certainly.

And your next demand is, "Show me."

Hopefully, over time, the contributors to SocialWiki.org will provide case studies and best practice guidelines for small businesses as well as B2B and B2C corporate programs. There is a lot of data out there. And very little time to read or search for meaningful articles and numbers-driven results.

So, while uber.la has been my proving ground, I hope that SocialWiki.org will become a community project that I don't have to pull along. Maybe now is the time. Maybe now the technologies are here to make this thing go.

Google Docs, Google Hangouts, Skype, and Agile Project Management, are the tools we will build this dream on top of. If you get involved I promise you one thing. You will have a voice. You can make a difference. You will build authority by participating. And as we grow, your reputation grows with us.

When I started 5-6 years ago I picked and pursuaded several friends and colleagues to be involved. But it was a labor of love and a process that didn't move forward unless I championed the activities of others. The idea behind a wiki and an agile team, is self-directed projects and distributed action items, so we share the load of ownership and task-based requirements.

I can't do this alone. It failed before, but now I have a bit more of a platform for evangelizing the concept. I have a steady business and a social media blog that averages 100+ unique visitors a day. So if 1% of the visitors look into the SocialWiki.org process and 1% of those people decide to attend an agile meeting and contribute some content to this project. Well, I'll have a few more people working WITH me by the end of 2013, and we can reassess how things have gone at that time.

CALL TO ACTION: Join us. Email me at jm(at)uber(dot)la and let me know you are interested in the relaunch of socialwiki.org. And stay tuned, we are migrating the sites and the old content over from the mediawiki site. And will we have the wiki/wordpress connection in place over the next week. And you can simply begin adding and editing and contributing.

I hope you join me in this dream.

@jmacofearth (also seen on Google+: jmacofearth)
permalink: http://uber.la/2013/02/socialwiki

Reference: SocialWiki – General Information 2013

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