Leveraging Facebook, and efficiently managing the tools available for community communication and growth

We encourage users to post events happening in the community to the community events group on https://www.drupal.org.
foxtrotcharlie's picture
Posted by foxtrotcharlie on May 8, 2011 at 7:08pm

I'm wanting to get a discussion going, primarily about creating a Facebook page for the South African Drupal community, secondarily about the other communication tools at our disposal and how best to use them.

To grow the local community, we need to get the word out to as many people as possible, and I believe that the networked reach which Facebook provides should be strongly leveraged. I know there are already a couple of old style groups but my feeling is that we should consolidate by creating one "Drupal in South Africa" page - we can then pool resources to maintain the page, and by not being separate, we'll be able to easily see what the other local groups are up to, how each is organising and promoting events.

I know that we have http://groups.drupal.org/south-africa as well as http://drupal.co.za and Cape Town is wanting to put together a Cape Town specific website, add to that a Facebook page, the question is: how do we use them all in such a way that we leverage the strengths of each tool intelligently without too much duplication if possible. Some duplication is going to be unavoidable, like the posting of events on both the g.d.o group and Facebook page, and you do actually want people to sign up for events on Facebook so that it's posted to their newsfeed. We could decide to use g.d.o for discussions and information that would be useful to the global Drupal community (for example this post which could be used by other user groups around the world). I think the drupal.co.za site is important for people to get a sense of the local community as a whole, but it's also useful for each local community to have control over their own 'domain', and where content overlaps (i.e. case studies, portfolios, jobs maybe) that the main site is set up to pull these in without having to manually duplicate content.

I think if we can try and figure out some guidelines for what's best for each communication tool, then we'll be more efficient and have a better chance of reaching more people without it being too confusing for potential newcomers to the community to get interested and involved. From the guidelines we can put together a clear strategy for directing people to the appropriate place to achieve their particular goals.

So, here are the tools that we currently have at our disposal, and it would be great to get as many people as possible to comment on what they think each one should be used for, and why:

Any others I've missed?

While I'm specifically focused on the South Africa user groups, input from other countries would be appreciated too.

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Comments

One newsletter to guide us all

Posted by Willem van Straaten on May 9, 2011 at 1:25pm
Willem van Straaten's picture

Great idea, the Jhb group have been in serious discussion around this point. We are all geeks and early adopters and to tell someone in the community that my solution is better than yours will just not solve our problem. I have tried and failed and i believe i was wrong ;). Myself, Robin Prieschl and George Ziady have set up a task team to tackle this issue and i have also been in discussions with Micheal Wagener and Roger Saner from the cape group.

Our feelings at this point is that we are in a ever changing industry and that communication channel options (googlegroups, FB, twitter, IRC, drupalgroups and national, local or specific interest group) pop-up constantly. We want to stay agile and be able to embrace them all including any new ones as they appear. Also we would all love to see more local communities and they might prefer a separate comm channel that should also be fine and even encouraged.

Our current plan is to use drupal.co.za newsletter as lowest common denominator and we would ask all other comm channel admins to clearly note this on the other respective channels. e.g. Message on FB page directing members to the d.co.za newsletter. The newsletter will be sent out around the 15th of each month and will include links to ALL other channels and ALL events at least once a month.

This way we can make sure that everybody has the same info and a updated reference of the best places to find local info or like minded individuals. We can also post events anywhere as long as it is mentioned (and linked to) in the newsletter. Next month newsletter will include links to the following so please let us know of any others.

http://drupal.co.za
- National newsletter -> Go signup now
- Capetown mail list / Forum http://drupal.co.za/forums/general/cape-town
- JHB mail list / Forum http://drupal.co.za/forums/general/jhb
- Twitter @DrupalZA (currently anything promoted to front page on drupal.co.za is auto tweeted)
http://groups.drupal.org/south-africa
local specific website, e.g. drupalcape.co.za
local newsletters
facebook page (national)
IRC channel #drupal-za

Also big thanx to George Ziady from springfisher.com for volunteering to make sure we have a consistent monthly newsletter. Any additional info you want to include in the newsletter can be sent to George newsletter@drupal.co.za

Note: If you are subscribed to the CT or JHB forum/mail list you are NOT necessarily subscribed to the main Drupal South Africa newsletter. To subscribe to the newsletter go to drupal.co.za and subscribe to the newsletter in the right sidebar on the homepage (and all other pages) .

[[http://www.econsultant.co.za|Drupal South Africa]
[[http://www.drupal.co.za|Drupal South Africa community]

I think we can agree on the

Posted by Gomez_in_the_South on May 10, 2011 at 7:29am
Gomez_in_the_South's picture

I think we can agree on the following:
groups.drupal.org/south-africa : These are where local forum discussions take place (like this thread). It is the place to post for local support, or any discussions about hosting, payment gateways etc.
drupal.co.za : Listings of SA Drupal companies, jobs, site showcases (with perhaps the other sources pulling from here).
facebook : Consolidate the existing facebook groups into one national presence.

I'd like to see one central newsletter (instead of the separate mailing lists as listed by Willem). Charles, perhaps you and I could work together to send out one national newsletter each month that highlights all events taking place as well as any other information the JHB and CT groups want to include.

Then I understand that both CT and JHB want control over their separate identities. I know Willem has continually assured that anyone interested can post to, administer and make modifications to drupal.co.za. I think it would be great if we could set these sites up within this domain, but would understand if CT want to do something separately.

drupal in facebook with drupal 4 facebook

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on May 10, 2011 at 10:20pm
Anonymous's picture

I have been messing around with pulling drupal into facebook . Still going add the drupal for facebook module into the facebook page ;)

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Your-business-on-fb/182839348430986

Might be something to look into for thefacebook page. Or you could implement it through FBML. I think it might also be a good idea to get this group to finish off the afrikaans translation fro drupal 7. We can start a wiki or something, just to contribute as a group back the the very resource that gives us work. I know there are already a few but maybe if we structure the delegation properly it would be a lot easier and faster.

I really like the idea of

Posted by guybedford on May 11, 2011 at 10:10pm
guybedford's picture

I really like the idea of using a Facebook page as a platform to consolidate our publicity for South Africa. If we can get this going, and all sign on to using it actively that would be a really big first step there.

The ultimate use of the Facebook page would have to be determined, but initially, the immediate value would be for publicity for the group. If we can make a drive to get as many people on there, it gives us a platform to a much larger network than is possible on these other sites.

Then I think we agree on the uses for gdo and drupal.co.za, these major roles seem to be largely established.

I like the idea of a regional newsletter, so far as we can make this a manageable task. Naturally, when we're meeting up once a month, it's much easier to have newsletter discussions amongst our individual groups, which really doesn't seem like such a communication issue to me.

Any further suggestions appreciated, and thanks Charlie for getting this discussion going.