SM

From simple charts to complex maps and infographics, Brian Suda's round-up of the best – and mostly free – tools has everything you need to bring your data to life...

A common question is how to get started with data visualisations. Beyond following blogs, you need to practice – and to practice, you need to understand the tools available. In this article, get introduced to 20 different tools for creating visualisations...

Via Lauren Moss, Baiba Svenca, Content, David Hain

This piece was written by Belinda Stinson for Jeff Bullas's blog

 

Jan Gordon: My commentary

 

This is one of the suggestions that was mentioned in tis article but I can't stress this enough, it should be #1

 

After you've discovered who the right influencers are, always look for ways you can sincerely contribute to them that is meaningful, then find ways to leverage the relationship and make it a win/win for both of you. 

 

Intro:

 

 "if you want to grow your business, you need to know who the influencers are in your field, learn from their expertise and build a productive professional relationship with them".

 

Why leverage influencers?:

 

"Influencers are hubs of information, they have many followers who respect their recommendations and opionions and being featured by them sends a powerful amount of targeted traffic your way - It's good old fashioned word of mouth recommendations on steriods"

Here are a few ways to discover influencers that I personally do myself:

**Twitter Lists - Twitter is a great untapped resource for finding influencers and keep track of what they are posting

**Groups and Forums - These are valuable sources of information.

**Podcasts and webinars - This is a great way to find key influencers - whether it's through interviews, presentations, information products of their own or curated information by others

Here are a few ways to build relationships that I've found very effective in finding influencers in my industry:

 

**Connect through the social media platforms they use

 

**Share the posts that are of value to your audience, retweet & quote their content, share, comment and like their Facebook posts

 

**Help promote what they are involved with, including charity causes, seminars, conferences, publiations and promotions

 

Selected by Jan Gordon covering, "Curation, Social Business and Beyond"

 

See full articles here: [bit.ly/Nw9xqY]

Via janlgordon

I chose this infographic and article from Blackbaud because it helps you go from social media to social business. It was written for non-profits but it definitely applies to any business as well.

 

By understanding how to evaluate people by their degree of influence and their ability to help change behavior in others can be invaluable to you and your organization.

 

**It's also important to use this information to understand how you and your organization fit into this mix. They say knowledge is power, once you have a clearer picture, you can shift what you're doing and take your business or cause to the next level for greater results.

 

Intro:

 

"Understanding the Value of Your Social Media Influencers: How to Identify and Empower Those Who Can Engage an Entire Community!

(Download the White Paper Today!)"

 

Here are some highlights:

 

**Learn how to use the information your consitiuents are sharing to attract more people to your mission, campaign.

 

**Learn how to analyze your database and assign social scores to engagers that represents their ability to interact with and influence others across their online networks

 

**Based on the social score you assign to these individuals, you can then segment them into one of four categories, each of which plays a diferent role on social networks, relevant to your business

 

Here are the categories:

 

Key Influencers - They have a powerful impact not only the people they know but also others they don't know. Their posts are widely spread and shared by more people than many other people

art

 

Engagers - These people have well-established social networks and are strong influencers of people they know personally

 

Multichannel Consumers - They enjoy keeping up with social media conent and occasionally participate. Their influence is not a dominent part of their persona

 

Standard Consumers These engagers read and watc updates more than they create new content or make comments. They are more influenced by family and friends.

 

Selected by Jan Gordon covering "Content Curation, Social Business and Beyond"

 

Read article and see infographic here: [http://bit.ly/N4a2Km]

Via janlgordon

This post was written by Melonie Gallegos for iMediaconnection

 

In this piece, there are 8 tips to help marketers get in on the social curation boom in a meaningful way - that means Pinterest and beyond!

 

Here's an excerpt:

 

"Curation is a long-standing tradition of collecting, saving & organizing objects. Today it takes on a different meaning. Organizataions have evolved from collecting artifacts to digital curation of media and content"

 

When human behavior shifts and it certainly has, (more about that in the article), brands are quick to follow suit.

 

Here are some highlights:

 

There are a lot of websites offfering curation-type services

 

To get a clear sense of how a brand might leverage curation in this article, they have broken them down into categories.

 

**social bookmarking and news

 

**sharing

 

**Aggregation and syndication networks

 

**There are 8 ways your brand can get in on the action

 

Here are a few that caught my attention:

 

Become a curator creator

 

**Create your own Pinterest board and it's more than just slapping images, it takes thought, strategy, being part of the community and continually showing up

 

**appreciating other people's content and having two-way conversations

 

Create an Interest-based content strategy

 

**Focus on the interests of your audience, not your products and services!

 

**Allign their real-life interests with your brand position

 

Curated by Jan Gordon covering "Pinterest Watch"

 

Read full article here: [http://bit.ly/IXNQQB]

Via janlgordon

Let’s be honest, we don’t like to read big pieces of text. Text-heavy graphs are rather difficult for understanding, especially when dealing with numbers and statistics. That is why illustrations and flowcharts are often used for such kind of information.

An infographic, or a visual representation of study or data, like anything else, can be done right or wrong. How to create a successful infographic? A good idea and a good design.

 

Stop by the link for more on what defines an infographic, what contributes to its popularity, as well as the various types of infographics and references for tutorials and best practices.

 

Additional topics covered include:

The major parts of an infographic How to create an infographic Developing ideas & organizing data Research & sources Typography, graphics & color Facts & conclusions Designing & Editing
Via Lauren Moss

This article and infographic was posted by Ted Nguyen for his blog.

 

Intro:

 

One of the most pressing questions whether you're new to social media or a social media maven is: What's the best way to post information or share content to optimize your reach

 

Compendium, a content marketing firm conducted a study of more than 200 companies to determine how social media professionals may optimize their engagement with both business-to-business-to-consumer conversations.

 

What they found is consistent with what Ted Nguyen has experienced and he has demonstrated that he clearly knows what he's doing

Here are some highlights:

 

"My experience in sharing more than 21,000 tweets and Facebook posts to my more than 82,000 Twitter followers and Facebook friends is consistent with the study’s findings"

.

**I recommend the hours between 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. (Pacific Time) or 1 to 4 p.m. (Eastern Time) are the best times for Twitter and Facebook to optimize social engagement engagement.

 

**I find that tweets shared earlier in the week do better than those sent later in the week. I also have discovered that Facebook posts do best Wednesday early afternoon.

 

**if you look at Ted's social shares, they run around the clock. he tries his best to engage with people in real time or near real time.

 

 

Selected by Jan Gordon covering: "Curation, Social Business and Beyond" 

 

Read article and see infographic here: [http://bit.ly/VG0xGL]

 

Infographic by DKNewMedia

 

Survey by Compendium

Via janlgordon, Matmi

This guest post is by Beth Kanter for Socialbrite and this is great for curators just starting out or a refresher for those of you who have been doing this for a while.

 

She tells you why curation is an important tool in your content strategy and gives you some good suggestions on how to do it effectively which I'm going to focus on here. Curation requires time and energy, and Beth's process really works because I'm doing this myself.

 

Here's what caught my attention:

 

Manage you attention, not just your time

 

**Don't just create a to-do list; lay it out on a daily and weekly schedules, breaking down key tasks of the project into chunks.

 

**Consider the level of concentration and focus that each type of task or chunk requires and schedule accordingly

 

**Establish rituals: Rituals in your work life are valuable. A mindmap offers a lot of good suggestions for rituals

 

**Managing email and other distractions: Turn off notifications that pop up on your computer, iPad or moble.

 

**Just say no - it's important to engage with your community on social networks but you have to find the right balance. When you're curating, it requires focus, it's best to schedule this first, then do your community management, check your email unless something requires your immediate attention. When you have a plan, it makes everything easier.

 

Selected by Jan Gordon covering "Curation, Social Business and Beyond"

 

See full article here: [http://bit.ly/MyQ1Nw]

Via janlgordon

Beth Kanter wrote a very complete and interesting piece in NTEN's latest edition of their quarterly journal for non-profit leaders. You have to download the journal but it's worth it and it's free (you just need to register). 

 

Jan Gordon: I agree with Guillaume, Beth Kanter knows what she's talking about and her article is definitely worth reading.

 

Guillaume Decugis wrote this commentary:

 

"It's been fascinating for me to see how non-profits seem to embrace Social Media in general and Content Curation in particular - Beth of course being a key advocate in that move.

 

The broader take-away that I see for those of us in all sorts of organizations, as independant professionals or SMB-owners is the validation it brings to the model. When tightly-budgeted NPO's embrace a practice as a group, you can bet they're not wasting their scarce resources on a hype. They have to be efficient and as Beth puts it in the article: "Putting content curation into practice is part art form, part science, but mostly about daily practice. You don’t need to do it for hours, but 20 minutes every day will help you develop and hone the skills."

 

This is precisely where we see the opportunity with curation for professionals: building up a good practice that fits with one's daily routine and that -as Beth puts it - brings great "unexpected benefits".

 

Selected by gdecugis and Jan Gordon covering "Content Curation, Social Business and Beyond"

 

Read full article here: [http://tinyurl.com/75ucphe]

Via gdecugis, janlgordon

I've spent weeks testing various tools and trying to figure out an easy way for non-Designers to create Infographics. Finally, yesterday I've stumbled upon a cool little app called Pixelmator that was the answer to my prayers.

Via nitsadevore, Informatics, Jose H. Flores