4 Ways to Be Influential in Web 2.0 or: What Makes Oprah Oprah?

Oprah Winfrey, like Midas, has the golden touch. Whatever she touches—that is, whatever she recommends, supports, endorses—turns to gold. However, unlike Midas, whose golden gift was from the gods and soon ruined his life, Oprah’s golden touch has been carefully crafted over many years and remains an influential force, both offline and online.

Oprah’s influence is fuelled by her media empire’s focus on Communication, Conversation, Transparency, and Branding. Taken together, these forces form public trust and therefore influence.

Thankfully, we don’t need a multi-million dollar media empire to become influential; we simply need to activate and harness the same forces that Oprah harnesses.

By influential, I am not suggesting we become master manipulators. No way, jose! Rather, I believe we should engage people and help them make informed choices. We influence the best when we share and connect our passions and expertise with others.

When Oprah Winfrey endorsed Amazon’s e-book reader, Kindle, the technology press went ga-ga, cautiously hoping that the “Oprah effect,” which has sent obscure novels soaring to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list, would send sales of the e-book reader skyrocketing. Since 1996, Oprah’s Book Club has helped many a tome (and many an author) reach the top of bestseller lists.

While the verdict is still out on the Kindle / Oprah bump, the fact that her endorsement sent shockwaves through the industry and precipitated media attention and speculation illustrates her influential power.

But what makes Oprah Oprah? What makes her so influential?

1. Communication (connect x 1)

Oprah is a born communicator, a talent she has fully utilized. Whether you like her or not, it is clear Oprah can communicate and connect with her audience.

How are you communicating and connecting with your audience? Do you engage your audience, your clientele, or do you pass the opportunity by at any chance?

We do not have to be professional speakers to be communicators. All we really need is the desire to share our passions and expertise in order to connect with others and fulfill their particular needs.

2. Conversation (connect x 2)

The Social Web enables conversation. It is now a 2-way street between content creator and content consumer, between product maker and product user, and on and on it goes.

How are you conversing with your audience? Are you reaching out to your audience where they assemble, especially online? Are you cultivating the 2-way street of conversation?

We have Web 2.0 tools at our disposal. Blogs, for example, are perfect for engaging an audience and starting a conversation, thus building connections and community.

3. Transparency

Oprah is transparent about her life almost to a fault. We know about her childhood rape, her struggles with weight gain, her relationships, and her personal ups and down.

By being so transparent, which is in fact another way of being honest, Oprah reveals her vulnerabilities and thus opens a door for which her audience can enter. She reveals herself in order that her audience can step inside her world and experience her travails, hopes and dreams.

How are you being transparent?

Now, I am not suggesting we air our dirty laundry or toss out the skeletons in our closets for our clients to view.

But in our professional lives, while serving patrons or researchers, working with our clients, are we being transparent, are we being honest with out audience? Are we inviting them into our working world in an effort to share our experiences with them?

Here’s an example illustrating what I mean: I once had a peculiar experience when I visited a rare books library. I was a complete amateur in rare books, not knowing a single thing. I asked the librarian behind the desk that I wanted to know how old books had been bound in the past. It was part of a research project. “What do you mean by ‘old books’?” he asked sarcastically. “There is nothing here but ‘old books.’”

I felt irritated, dismayed, and worse, unwelcome. I don’t know if this librarian was attempting some kind humorous joke or simply acting like an intellectual snob. Regardless, I never returned to that library after that incident.

Are we being honest and transparent, and are we inviting people to share in our experiences?

4. Branding

Oprah maintains a strong and consistent branding across all her media, from her television show to her magazine (guess who’s on the cover each month) to her website.

Why brand?

Because proper branding allows Oprah to stand out from the rest of the crowd.

It is unnecessary to say Oprah Winfrey anymore. One need only say Oprah, and that’s enough. She is easily recognizable, and her audience knows her and easily distinguishes her from other popular TV talk show hosts. The letter “O” and “HARPO” (that’s Oprah spelled backwards), for example, are powerful branding images.

What kind of brand are you building? Does it reflect your professional values, your institutional values, your department values? It is easily recognizable? How are you imparting it to your audience? Does your branding help distinguish you from others?

However you decide to brand yourself, your product or service, or whether you are building a brand for your department, insure that it clearly identifies you and distinguishes you from others.

Influence 2.0

The end result of practicing the previous four items is influence. Influence is based on trust, which is built on open communication (respect), conversation (2-way exchange), and transparency (honesty), with the final touch, branding (personal identification), acting as the seal of approval.

The road to becoming influential, that is, engaging, sharing and connecting with your clients, is a process of communication, conversation, transparency, and branding.

In a Web 2.0 online world, this is Influence 2.0.

What Library 2.0 Can Teach Archives 2.0

Michael Stephens, blogging over at Tame the Web, has posted an interview he had with Special Libraries Associations' IT Bulletin Digital Focus in which he discusses, among other things, his views and predictions on Library 2.0. Although long, it is still a very good read, filled with ideas that those in the archives profession contemplating Archives 2.0 should consider.

I mention Stephens' blog post because in the past few weeks there has been a healthy discussion in the Archives blogosphere about Archives 2.0 - what it could be, what it could do for archives and archivists, what it would mean to researchers and future users - and the Archives profession in the Web 2.0 era.

Kate over at ArchivesNext started the discussion with her interesting blog post "Archives 2.0?" and several other bloggers (including yours truly....wink wink) made thoughtful comments. Be sure to read the blog post and comments - and submit a comment as well.

As someone who has been calling for change in Archives in regards to Web 2.0 adoption (its values and ethics and technology usage) both from this blog and currently from this dismal unemployment chair, I believe these discussions on Archives 2.0 is the correct course of action. But these discussions must be followed up with concrete strategies.

Archives 2.0 will not be Library 2.0. Archives 2.0 will not merely mirror the actions taken by our colleagues in libraries. No, Archives 2.0 must grasp the values and ethics of Web 2.0, understand the Web 2.0 technologies, and then muster up the courage and envision how these elements can solve the problems facing archives and archivists.

Survey Analysis

"As a librarian or archivist, what is your employment status?”

In total, 66 readers of The DIGITAL Archive responded to the survey. I want to thank them for participating and for writing comments (thanks to Heidi and the Lone Arranger for their unique comments), and to thank those who promoted this survey on their blogs.

By the numbers, the votes revealed the following:

• 44 people (66% of the vote) indicated they had a permanent position with a full benefits package;




• 9 people (13% of the vote) indicated they were unemployed;




• 7 people (10% of the vote) indicated they had a contractual position with a full benefits package;




• 6 people (9% of the vote) indicated they had a contractual position but with no benefits package

For the sake of transparency, I would be part of those unemployed.

While Blogger surveys are not formal, nor the most scientific vehicle to gather such complex information, and while my survey question had a few holes in it—I should have asked how long the respondents took to find or land a permanent position, for instance; or what career path they had chosen, librarianship or archives; or whether they were recent grads or those who had been in the profession for many, many years—I was still able to conclude that:

1. There are a large number of people with permanent positions;

2. There are still a sizeable amount of people with no jobs or with contractual jobs

I was surprised such a large number of people had permanent positions. I was really surprised. I was also surprised there were more unemployed librarians and archivists than those with contractual positions.

In reading the poll results, I also concluded, on a personal note, that I need to revise my career strategy, or more specifically, my job search strategy and then my career planning.

After 8 years in this field, after working at various locations in mainly contractual positions, each with its own share of opportunities and challenges, I still find myself no closer to a permanent position. The survey numbers reveal that there are permanent positions, but thus far these positions have remained elusive to me and the 22 other respondents.

Surveys, opinion polls, and statistics can draw different conclusions, depending on the perspective, biases of the individual analyzing the data.

What conclusions can you draw from these numbers? Were you surprised or shocked or indifferent by the numbers?

Library of Congress and Apple iTouch??

Question: What does the Library of Congress in Washington, DC and Apple's iPod Touch have in common?

Answer: Check out these 3 videos I shot when I recently visited the Library of Congress' "Exploring the Early Americas" exhibit.

Happiness on the Job

A special thanks goes out to the Annoyed Librarian for pointing this one out.

Time Magazine has produced an interesting interactive career satisfaction scale that displays the level of happiness (or lack of happiness) people feel about their jobs. Sadly, I could not find any mention of archivist. But I did see the entry for librarians (close enough, I guess).

Don't just sit there reading this post - get on over there to Time's "One Day in America: Happiness on the Job" web page!!

Annoyed vs. the Webtamer and other tales from the Archives

The mysterious but always outspoken (and often controversial) Annoyed Librarian strikes again, this time dishing out her annoyance at video games as becoming part of the library school curriculum and their usage in libraries. She quotes The Shifted Librarian describing a gaming course offered by Dr. Michael Stephens. Both Stephens and Shifted are proponents of gaming in library school and libraries. The latter, Stephens, whom the Annoyed Librarian affectionately calls the Webtamer (or Dr. Webtamer, since earning his Ph.D), is the prolific blogger/librarian behind the Tame the Web blog, which regularly promotes the use of gaming and social networking technologies in libraries to encourage community involvement.

Taken with a grain of satirical salt, the Annoyed Librarian argues that library school, already in many respects an “intellectual joke,” as she call it, will become more so if it embraces video gaming as the new education model. And the people promoting these activities, those “twopointopians,” should continue doing so on their blogs, even though they are probably too busy playing video games or social networking.

For the record, I like Michael Stephens, aka Dr. Webtamer, at least the parts of his professional life that he blogs and photographs. And in some ways, I envy his stature in the library field. He travels extensively and gives presentations across the United States, talking about stuff he loves. His excitement is tangible; he truly loves his profession. He’s excited about his work and how all those little gadgets and social networking technologies impact his work and life – and how they can do the same for library schools and libraries.

There are other bloggers/librarians whose day jobs, it seems, are filled with nothing but Second Life, iPods, and Guitar Hero. Although their jobs do not reflect reality, my reality at least, I nonetheless cannot fault them for being so joyful.

I hope they realize how very fortunate they are—how very fortunate--for many us in this field toil in obscurity.

Also for the record, I like the Annoyed Librarian as well. I believe she is a collective of annoyed librarians, and someone in the group is the editor. How can one person be so prolific and still have time to do their day job? In any case, the Annoyed Librarian remains one of the few blogs in the blogosphere that, with wit and satire, nails the foibles of library school so succinctly. It has acted as a personal balm on many occasions.

In regards to video games and gaming, I blogged about video games in the corporate world a few blog posts ago. Citing a BBC news article--and with tongue firmly pressed in check--I figured, what the heck: If video games are the collaboration model for many young adults entering the workforce, then the workforce should adopt video games as the means to get its young employees to collaborate and get the work done. I even figured I best dust off my old 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) to prepare myself. Remember that one, folks, the NES?

Then I read a blog post from our Chief Information Officer, which stunned me, quite frankly. (Sorry, folks, his blog is behind a firewall.) Essentially, he argues that we, our institution, should have a presence in the virtual world Second Life. I had to re-read his post twice just in case I misread his comments. But it’s true: He firmly believes in virtual spaces such as Second Life as a viable and business valuable strategy. Cool, but...

On the one hand, I can appreciate the case Stephens, Shifted and our CIO present. The collaborative space, influenced by videogames, is an emerging platform where people come together and, bound by common goals, work together in the virtual space to achieve said common goals. But on the other hand, I wonder if all this virtual/collaborative space is nothing but another layer of unnecessary work and extra steps to attain information, knowledge, or getting the job done. It’s fun, sure, but is it necessary?

Don't get me wrong: I love a good game of Half-Life 2 as much as the next guy. But what does a first-person shooter--or twanging a guitar controller--have in common with information delivery?