Social Sites for Communicators – MyRagan.com and Melcrum’s Communicators Network
May 14, 2007 by Eric Eggertson
Filed under Marketing
Like railroad companies from the 19th and early 20th centuries, the communications training organizations face the choice of building their own social networking sites, or latching onto an existing network and building their own branch line.
They seem to be choosing the stand-alone solution, which will serve their existing customers well. Whether this will help them expand their customer base is another question.
Ragan Communications has launched a credible site with MyRagan.com. It requires free registration, and allows discussion on any topic, joining groups of like-minded people, posting blog items that are shared with other users, and so on.
Nothing you couldn’t get on Facebook, except the exclusivity of being within a closed circle of communications folks. Plus, anyone over 35 who joins Facebook may feel awfully old and unhip if they aren’t secure about their inner hipness. Something like MyRagan.com is a safer environment for someone to try out some of the social media tools without feeling exposed to the world.
No one at Ragan is a technology wizard, and they don’t pretend to be. For some social media purists, this might seem bush league. But to the thousands of existing Ragan customers, it no doubt seems unthreatening.
Melcrum, a more European-oriented company conducting research and providing services like publications, seminars and conferences for internal communicators, has announced their pending Communicators’ Network, due in June. According to Melcrum, the primary audience for their free online networking and information sharing site will be their existing customers.
And to prove that social media encourages conversations, Ragan CEO Mark Ragan offers his congratulations to Melcrum’s Robin Crumby on the new social media site.
Best result of these two announcements? The discussion among communications people who feel comfortable sharing their thoughts among their peers in a closed environment.’
Worst result? Two more #!*?@! social networking sites that require a user name and password, and aren’t connected to all the other sites you may already be involved in. I hope they make it easy for people to retrieve usernames and passwords, because I for one am beginning to run out of space in my cranium for all the login information for the dozens of separate services I access each week.
I’ll report further on my experiences on MyRagan.com.
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Primers on Social Media Use Help Focus Your Thinking
Tags: ragan, melcrum, internal communications, public relations, social networks, business, community, passwords, facebook
Hi, Eric–
Thanks for this astute analysis. As for your headache about *another* network to join, I definitely hear you. But I think you’re right that we’re appealing to our customers, mainstream corporate communicators who may not be as broadly connected as you and other veteran bloggers.
And I’d add my fond hope that MyRagan in SOME ways consolidates the conversation (rather than owning it) and becomes a kind of local tavern where most communicators come most of the time.
Do you think that’s likely, possible, or even desirable?
Sorry, all, my comment lacks full-disclosure. I’m the managing editor of MyRagan.com and a longtime Raganite lackey!
Eric,
Thanks for the balanced analysis of http://www.myragan.com
I know what you mean by too many social networking sites. But allow me to add a few comments about why ours is different.
http://www.myragan.com is not just a social networking site. Unlike all of these other sites, we’re fusing news, analysis, webinars and real time parties into the model.
For example, we’re sponsoring a very real-world cocktail party in London for MyRagan members so they can acutally meet and greet one another with a real glass in their real hands.
In addition, my crack Managing Editor David Murray is charged with overseeing all content on the site’s homepage so that we’re always offering fresh news and features for people to read and use.
So that experience of registering for a free networking site and then saying, “OK, now what?” is not what you’ll have a http://www.myragan.com
Thanks again for your blog post.
Mark Ragan
CEO
http://www.myragan.com
Hi Eric,
Interesting comments. I wanted to add my two cents worth on the subject.
Our main reason for launching The Communicators’ Network (which is in final beta testing now) was actually not social networking. Like you say, there are already plenty of online networks and who wants to set up another username and password.
Our goal was actually to create a site that facilitated mass collaboration and open sharing between communicators the world over. Professional networking goes hand in hand with this goal, linking communicators around the world via special-interest groups, discussion forums, industry sectors and any other professional interest they might have.
But what will make The Communicators’ Network unique (probably not for long) is that it will allow anyone to review and rate resources for communicators. So you can vote for your favorite blog or podcast, tell your peers about a freely available template or dashboard tool that is available to download and link to it.
Mark Ragan and crew have done a great job of creating a social network for communicators, so being second to market, means we need to come up with something different. I will let you be the judge of how well we have achieve that.
I fully expect there to be plenty of room for both sites to thrive and survive, rather than trying to force communicators to choose between their ‘favorite taverns’. Since when did communicators ever agree on anything!
Robin.