LugIron Software - Latest Comments

Re: What is your true community?

essay papers — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 08:07:45 -0000

interesting post and great picture!

Re: Community Management Tools At the Top of Strategic E2.0 Tools List

Tamara Littleton — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:30:10 -0000

That's very interesting that you got a 'command and control' vibe from our site as we're very much about cultivating communities by using careful moderation and community management. I might need to take a look at that tagline! I too enjoyed Dion Hinchcliffe's round up an it was great to be included. Having said that we're not actually a social media tool - we're the human element of social media. Although we use a *lot* of tools.
Great post - thank you.

Re: Really? Views, Comments, Links, and Shares, That’s It?

Anne Gentle — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:14:36 -0000

I was shopping for Easter candy while composing this blog entry in my head, does it show? :) We're working on what to measure, and I'm studying web analytics myself to prepare. You'd probably like reading John Lovett's posts on http://john.webanalyticsdemyst.... He has a pair of posts about Facebook insights and measures that I found helpful to wrap my head around what counts.

Re: Really? Views, Comments, Links, and Shares, That’s It?

Larry Kunz — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:25:09 -0000

I've always found this to be an interesting topic. But now that you've compared it to candy, you've got my full attention.

I'm hoping that you'll help me make a meaningful connection between the intangible benefits of social media and the businessman's compulsion to count everything. What should I count, and what do the numbers really mean?

Re: Document Merge Powered by the Human Brain

gdusing — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:12:58 -0000

You're right, merging more than a couple documents manually should be forbidden by the human rights court. I had to do this with the company's supplier agreements last week and I thought I would go crazy.

Re: Simple Ways to Build User Engagement

Anne Gentle — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:10:22 -0000

You're welcome! I couldn't resist the cat in a moving van with cats on its logo. Besides, I have no imagination when it comes to Flickr searches. :)

Re: Simple Ways to Build User Engagement

PetRelocation.com — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:23:52 -0000

Thanks for the nice write up! And I love the cat picture. Maybe being a cat online isn't so bad after all.

Re: What is your true community?

Esteban Kolsky — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 01:26:43 -0000

I think it is a terrific model, a single repository for managing customers' participation. Products like Disqus already "implement" this, but the way it works leaves a lot to be desired (lets the user decide whether they want to be identified or not).

I would love to see this community model implemented across all sites (eventually), but just a handful would be a good beginning...

Re: Content Consumption and Communities

Anne Gentle — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:49:43 -0000

Yes, from what I'm reading lately there are levels of engagement that start with "sharing, tagging" (interacting with content), but connecting with people, that's the real interaction sweet spot.

Re: Content Consumption and Communities

Gordon — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:30:07 -0000

Interesting article. Having spent a fair amount of time creating a fairly simple community website, we deliberately chose only one area where 'community' was a possibility. The rest of the site is about consumption of product information, and the 'share' area we have (where community aspects start to kick in) is a bit hit/miss as far as I can gather from the stats.

So whilst too many topics might be a bad idea, getting the level of 'I can join in' -ness appears to also be key. I think we need more/better ways for people to interact and then take things from there.

Re: User or Community Member – Who’s More Valuable?

Esteban Kolsky — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:45:21 -0000

Astroturf is a big issue, but thankfully the lack of perceived value in those communities is clearly and easily apparent to users and they tend to have very short life.

I am doing some more research this year on "company-sponsored" communities, I see them as the new normal community model.

Re: User or Community Member – Who’s More Valuable?

Anne Gentle — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:07:23 -0000

I like that "company-sponsored" nuance, Esteban. Good line to walk. Obviously Intuit walks it well!

One of the reviewers for my book mentioned "astroturf" communities which are fake grassroots efforts. I hadn't ever heard that, and the term cracked me up! But it also is a good reminder of how important perception is when building communities, and how important it is to be genuine in your hands-off approach.

Re: User or Community Member – Who’s More Valuable?

Esteban Kolsky — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:05:14 -0000

I would say that instead of company-owned it was company-sponsored. a key distinction that is going to become more relevant in the coming years as we shift away from traditional communities (forums) as we know them today.

thanks for the forum, interesting discussion...

Re: User or Community Member – Who’s More Valuable?

Louis Marascio — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:51:30 -0000

So, even though it was a company owned community the community was in control. Thanks for your insights!

Re: User or Community Member – Who’s More Valuable?

Esteban Kolsky — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 01:39:12 -0000

Louis,

To the best of my knowledge, Intuit did well in allowing the communities to grow independently, without interfering. They did provide answers as needed when there were none, but for the most part they allowed the communities to function with their "experts" (certified consultants) providing the answers. These same people in exchange got to show their prowess in certain topics, which essentially became free marketing without being such.

In other words, they allow the communities to self-police, function autonomously, and be what they needed to be.

Re: User or Community Member – Who’s More Valuable?

Louis Marascio — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 09:34:41 -0000

Great points, Esteban. What is it that Intuit did differently that allowed their community to flourish and, in turn, allowed them to benefit from that? Did they go beyond just viewing the community as a tool and embrace it as a change agent for their culture?

Re: User or Community Member – Who’s More Valuable?

Esteban Kolsky — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:18:40 -0000

The infamous chicken-and-egg questions for communities -- how to make your chickens lay more eggs, so you can have more chickens.

You cite all the right stats and numbers here: the 10-percent rule, loyalty, commitment to a brand, advocacy, etc. There are all goals that a company should embrace when moving to build / support / create a community -- but I am more on the side that the company should view communities differently. Intuit is probably the closest (in large enterprises) that does this. They don't build communities for more than members sharing knowledge -- and they leverage that in a milion ways. the intent, when they started, was not to be in the top-10 of communities in google search -- but it happened. their intent was not to offload their support lines with questions they could not answer -- but it happened.

and this is the killer point about communities - they just make business function better by delegating the work they don't do quite as well to the people who can do it better. That is why ideation, support, and R&D via communities is so interesting -- all you have to do is observe what happens... your customers (even the 90 percent that just "lurk") will show you the way to a better business.

Great post, thanks a lot...

Re: SEO Matters When You’re Publishing Documentation

Marc Achtelig — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:40:09 -0000

SEO and online documentation really is an interesting issue and will certainly gain some more attention in the near future. As your well chosen example of skype illustrates, this will be especially relevant for products that were designed for the mass market.

Re: Customer service: phone-based versus Twitter #fail tag

sholarpk — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:32:06 -0000

Poor customer service is the luxury of the monopoly or oligopoly. Venting about the slack customer service behavior of such companies on Twitter is not likely to achieve results unless the complaint can be related to an issue about which the regulating authorities are for some reason sensitive.

Re: Documentation as a Point of Experience

andreaallsopp — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 11:06:59 -0000

Absolutely, poor documentation (and for that matter poor or non-existent training) creates negativity towards products or companies.

However, until companies value writers it will always be like this. Writers don't generate money (they can in fact be the best salesperson in the company), anyone can write (well yes they can, but few can write well), we need to cut costs so non-vital services can go (the project manager will of course be staying long after the project is complete).

I am on the same pay as ten years ago, writing has been devalued with the rise of the blog, twittering and vanity publishing - trust me, the only book you should ever read which begins "I am born" was written by Dickens.

It's simple, you want a good POE hire a decent writer: at interview read something they've written to see if it makes sense and don't just set them a test to see if they can punctuate a paragraph or create a list which is marked by blue bullet points (per-leese.) and expect to pay them a wage which reflects both their experience and qualifications.

Purists reading this - I know it's a blog and therefore not publication standard.

Re: Old Media, Technical Writers, and the Evolution of Documentation

LisaMonroe — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:05:03 -0000

I guess documentation informations depend of the person who write's it and the level of education he received till that particulary moment.I guess if you reaaly want to find an information you may find it several times in different ways and understands.

__________________
Content Writers

Re: Document Merge Powered by the Human Brain

jspira — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:20:39 -0000

Excellent description of what is a very costly and painful problem.

We recently wrote about one solution to this problem, TextFlow

The research brief is available at http://www.basexblog.com/2009/...

Re: Document Merge Powered by the Human Brain

s93jso — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:38:19 -0000

Hi,

Thanks for great article describing a known pain. We decided to do something about this, in order to make the world a better place, based on your recommendations.

www.compareMyDocs.com

Re: Documentation as a Point of Experience

Missouri — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:59:20 -0000

First of all I want to say that it is very interesting to read all your articles. I always find there many useful information. Well I have not known a lot about the Point of Experience. But I think that POEs are very good things for all companies. Your article makes me really to be very interested about it. I will definitely read more information about POE. Thanks for the great post and I will be waiting for other great ones from you!

Sincerely,

Jack Timson from

Re: Document Merge Powered by the Human Brain

Dave — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 03:15:55 -0000

I am a software engineer scanning the web for solutions to 'revision control' or 'content management' of clinical trial documents (Word and PDF docs). I was impressed with the clear description of the document merge issue on this page. Thanks!

I would say the software community has been inept and late at addressing this important user workflow (i.e., document diff'ing and merging). I have tried no solutions as yet, but software engineers are generally pretty knowledgeable about revision control (branching, merging, revisioning, diff'ing, etc)... of our plain text source files. As others have noted, Google Docs aims to solve the problem described here for office documents. I imagine it works great for some (though the UI might be less responsive than a desktop application like Word, I haven't used Google Docs yet). How good is Google Docs at merging (or does it prevent parallel editing)? Also, I'm not sure if everyone can place their docs on the web due to security concerns (real or imagined). I did find the following which might be another option (again, haven't tried it). This seems to be a desktop application solution. Looks decent in a quick review of their website.

Revision Control Software for Microsoft Word Documents
http://www.workshare.com/go/re...

I don't work for any of the aforementioned companies and haven't used any of their products…yet. Cheers.