• Social Media Metrics: Count Thank You's, Not Click-Throughs – Mark's Cheeky Posterous
  In addition to our book tour, Jessica and I are conducting a series of "Media Impact Summits" with different media orgs, foundations, researchers from around the country to determine how people are analyzing and telling their story of impact. This might be an interesting post that we should start each summit out with…

  "Seth Godin uses a bit of biology to talk about viral growth today. There's some math behind it, so it can be measured (metrics!), but the bottom line is that a very small number of people with a high propensity to share easily trumps a very large number of people with a modest propensity to share.

  In my view, the goal is to become remarkable. Literally remarkable, in the sense that people remark about your stuff. When you're remarkable, not only do you know it, your boss knows it. And there's hardly a need for metrics."

  In the book, we define four areas for progressive media impact: buzz, credibility, influence + engagement.

  (tags: mediaconsortium beyondtheecho impact)

So today is the official launch day for Beyond The Echo Chamber! We’ve been waiting and planning for this day for so long, we can scarcely believe it’s actually here! To celebrate and to get the conversation going about the book, check out a couple of exciting things happening today…

The American Prospect published our op-ed, “Where Will We Get the Next Rachel Maddow? As the subhead notes, “The folding of Air America seems a grim omen for progressive media. It’s not all dire — three strategies for keeping progressive media makers flourishing.”

We were supposed to have a kick-ass in-person event at New America Foundation today called, “Making Media Work: Collaboration, Community Building and the Future of Journalism” today, but due to the snowpocalypse, we’re doing a kick-ass webcast of the event instead. So tune in here at 12:15 EST. Check back here for a slide

Last, but not least, C.W. Anderson has written a great piece for Nieman Journalism Lab, “Institutions, networks, and policy directions for a healthy journalism” about our research and analysis from BTE. Thanks C.W.!

Stay tuned for more in the coming days!

All last week we released a series of visuals depicting how media organizations should strategically integrate their networks to build out maximum impact for their content. Each visual illustrates the four “networked layers” that we theorize in our book Beyond The Echo Chamber, including: networked users, self organized networks, institutional networks and networks of institutions. We firmly believe that for media organizations to not only provide high quality journalism, but to stay relevant, they must learn to reorient themselves for a 21st century media ecosystem. These visuals lay the pathway for that evolution.

For each visual, we provide a definition of each network, common characteristics that define the network and strategic questions for media organizations to ponder as they think about how to integrate these networks into their daily and long-term production, distribution, deepening of current audiences, expansion into new audiences and overall impact of their content. We also provided a bonus “cycle of engagement” visual that shows a step-by-step process (media organizations can opt in anywhere on the cycle) that depicts the “how and why” of network interaction (including fundraising and revenue generation opportunities).

Below is a slideshow that brings all these visuals together, showing how each network builds upon the other. We’re excited for media organizations to use these visuals in their short and long-term strategic planning and happy to answer any questions or respond to feedback.

Hello again! We’re on the third layer of our Four Layers of Networks taken from our book Beyond The Echo Chamber where we are not only defining, but visualizing how media makers can interact with each of these networked layers for maximum impact. So far we’ve described and visualized the first two layers:

• Networked users: See Monday’s post.
• Self-organized networks: See Tuesday’s post.

The next two layers move from ad hoc networks to more durable and deliberately organized networks.

• Institutional Networks
• Networks of Institutions

Today, we zero in on “Institutional Networks.

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Welcome back to the second in our blog series on the Four Layers of Networks. Taken from our book Beyond The Echo Chamber (buy your copy today!), we are not only defining, but visualizing these four layers. They include:

• Networked users: See Monday’s post on this first and foundational layer.
• Self-organized networks
• Institutional Networks
• Networks of Institutions

Today we take a look at how media organizations must strategically think about integrating and interacting with the second layer: Self-Organized Networks.

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