Lessons learned from the 2010 Edublog Awards

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First of all thank you to everyone of you who took the time to write a blog post and nominate me and then all of you who took the time to vote. In case you missed it we, and that’s a we for shared effort, came in third place for Best Resource Sharing Blog and Second for Best Individual Blog.

But I would not be me if I did not analyze the results and share my thoughts with you, right? So, let me tell you what I have learned from this event.

Social Media is overrated, only real connections count.

I won in the two categories with 132 and 147 votes which is pretty much the Dunbar number. Astonishing to me, the educators I thought to be my hardest rivals for the crown were not even close to the top three meaning that in both the categories they had less than 50 votes. And what really blew my mind was the poor performance of the educator networks and PLNs. They all have thousands of members but most of them got only 50 or 60 votes out of it.

Sure, one could say that they don’t care about winning but on the other hand why don’t their members care? Is it really that big of an effort to click on a link, search the name in the poll, mark it and then push the vote button? Apparently.

This brings me back to the simple truth that numbers mean nothing in Social Media. You know that I keep the group of people I follow on Twitter or friend on Facebook pretty tight as I want to have real relationships with them which means that we either met in real life or we had an interview or other kind of personal talk. I don’t follow or friend people automatically just because they follow me, neither do I expect to be followed or friended for that same reason.

What I got out of this strategy was that I pretty much knew how many votes I would be able to achieve before even the winners were announced. People wrote me back when they voted for me, they shared the links with their network etc. Subscribers on my YouTube channel did the same in the comments. Then I added a 10% of “mute” voters on top and I was pretty close to the final result.

Conclusion: In 2011 I will focus even more on personal relationships as I believe they truly are what Social Media is all about. Social Media is a tool that helps me build meaningful connections with people I would not have a chance to meet with or talk to otherwise. 

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  • George

    How true, how true. The social media thing is touching on a real human need but once again our attempts at connecting and technolgy's magnification of relationship is broken. The search and quest for real community continues….

    • http://kirstenwinkler.com KirstenWinkler

      We will work on this in 2011. I have some plans ;)

      • chinamike

        Kirsten,

        What a great reflection piece! I also think it is great that beforehand you could estimate your numbers so accurately.

        • http://kirstenwinkler.com KirstenWinkler

          Thank you Mike. Over the past year I became an analytics fanatic, first thing in the morning is checking the stats of my websites ;) .

  • Jamie

    well said kirsten

    • http://kirstenwinkler.com KirstenWinkler

      Thank you Jamie. Talk to you on Monday :)

  • http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com coolcatteacher

    It is also a matter of taking the time to self promote! I know for me, in the past, I've sent out tons of emails and messages on facebook – asking people to vote. We sent messages through our Nings and through every vehicle we could. This year with a looming book deadline, I had to ask myself if it was something I had time to do. I didn't. In retrospect, maybe I should have but really – if that is what it takes to win an award. I don't know – I guess the crunchies are important and that works the same way although I'm so tired of hootsuite reminding me to vote in that doggone award!

    So, I would say it is a function of PERSONAL connections and also a PERSONAL desire and willingness to put oneself out there and say “Hey I want to win, please vote for me.” It is tough – when you do that you get a backlash but when you win an award – you win and no one really asks how you got it. So, I guess it is just what we have to live with for now.

    Thank you for some great reflections and for putting yourself out there. Good luck and congratulations.

    • http://kirstenwinkler.com KirstenWinkler

      Hi Vicki, thanks for your comment. Yes, campaigning is a huge part if your really, really want to win. And I know, what you mean. A couple of years ago I was no fan of tooting my own horn but I guess that's what you need to do when putting yourself out there. It's maybe also what people expect from you.

      Thank you for your thoughts on this!

      • http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com coolcatteacher

        I guess I go through phases! Sometimes I am willing to campaign and other times I feel like the rss reader subscribers and votes are what I need to look at. No doubt edublogs are a good thing. I guess the thought for me is that anything recognizing educational blogging is a good thing as long as we keep perspective on the nature of the process! Thank you for commenting!

        Vicki Davis

        Cool Cat Teacher Blog

        Building the bridges of today that the society of tomorrow will walk across.

        Sent from my iPod touch

        • http://kirstenwinkler.com KirstenWinkler

          Absolutely. What I find pretty astonishing though is the fact that votes for flagship blogs in our niche (and I think this is true for most niches) don't come on their own. If you compare number of readers to number of votes there is a huge gap. Normally I'd say “If I like it, I vote for it” even if the blogger does not say “please vote for me”.

          I guess it's the same with comments, RTs and Facebook shares. Although only a small effort not many people do it.

          • http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com coolcatteacher

            Great points!

            Vicki Davis

            Cool Cat Teacher Blog

            Building the bridges of today that the society of tomorrow will walk across.

            Sent from my iPod touch

  • markbarnes19

    Thanks for the thoughtful post, Kirsten. I agree with you on building a network through getting to know people. It's difficult, though, without a lot of communication and social networks is how we do that in most cases.

    Although I follow nearly 1,000 people on Twitter, I communicate regularly with roughly 10, meaning I'd likely never win an Edublog award. I think you have to meet people at major conferences like ISTE in order to build the sorts of relationships you speak of.

    I'm presenting there in June, so I'm hoping to meet lots of people in my network and hopefully nurture our relationships.

    Thanks again; you got me thinking.

    • http://kirstenwinkler.com KirstenWinkler

      Hi Mark, thanks for your comment.

      From all the people I follow or who follow me I probably met 50 at max. All others I only know from talks on Skype, my interview, email and Twitter exchange. Meeting people in real life is sugar on the cake. With video chat, blogging and Twitter you can build meaningful connections and I never experienced any disappointment when I finally met them in real life.

      The question is how many relationships you can maintain. I think what Social Media is really good for is to fill in the blanks. Before we had the real time web and you forgot about someone you were in contact with via email you might have lost that connection. Today people can follow you on Twitter or Facebook and vice versa. This way you are still connected even if you don't talk directly with each other.

      And great to hear that my post got you thinking :)

  • http://www.edtechvision.org Colette Cassinelli

    I know quite a few people who “won” different categories and am involved in almost all of the 'networks” that were nominated but I did not cast a single vote this year. Honestly, I wish the Edublog recognition just ended with the nominations and not a single winner.

    I like seeing the list of people who are new to my PLN (like you!) and I often look through the list and add them to my Twitter followers or RSS feeds — but the idea of voting for “the best” brings out the competitive side of people and turns it into a popularity contest, encouragement of self-promotion or mass voting (like American Idol).

    How about if we change the award to “Edublog 2010 Honors” and recognize people who for the past year made an impact in the different categories and have a more detailed list of the qualifications for those honors. I think I could get behind a program like that — and I love your idea of focusing on personal relationships! I know for me personally, my teaching and learning has been impacted the most by the people in my PLN that I have met f2f or have really taken the time to connect with them online, share, and participate in their group projects. Good luck!

    • http://kirstenwinkler.com KirstenWinkler

      Hi Colette, thanks for your thoughts. I agree, contests who are based on the voting of followers don't necessarily bring the “best” to the front. I really hope that I am a mixture of both.

      The problem is that no voting system really works. If you take the academy system of the Oscars or Fifa you have a controlled group of people who nominate and vote but in the end there is also more space for corruption as we saw recently.

      For sure a topic to work on. Thanks a lot for your input.

  • TaraBenwell

    Great point Kirsten! And congrats on your awards.

    MyEC was one of those networks that was nominated for best educational social network. Most of our members are English learners or teachers who have no idea what Edublogs are, though they are blogging up a storm! At the last minute I put out a notice that we were nominated for an award. Then I felt a little guilty. After all, we don't need our own members to nominate our community for an award that they know nothing about. The votes that would matter more would be from teachers who noticed the club and were willing to share it with their own students. The teachers who I have connected with personally via twitter, interviews, edchats, skype etc are the ones I count on. When a hard working teacher recommends the club to a class of eager learners then I know we are getting somewhere.

    Great post!

    • http://kirstenwinkler.com KirstenWinkler

      Hi Tara, thanks for stopping bye and leaving a comment. Like Vicki said in her comment it starts with self promotion which can be a brief mention on your blog or an email campaign to everyone you know. As I am competitive (what, you did not notice?) :) I chose a combination of both.

      The question is: how can you scale caring, as this is the basis for meaningful relationships. If I am in closer contact with someone the chances are higher that he/she will do something like nominating and / or voting. I know only a few people / personal brands who are able to scale above the 150 connections and this is something I want to try out in 2011.

      Thanks again for your thoughts!

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  • http://blog.brain-scape.com Amanda Moritz

    Congratulations! You are probably really busy with all of your projects. I am wondering if there will ever be another ETCON in the near future. I would love to participate.

    • http://kirstenwinkler.com KirstenWinkler

      Hi Amanda. Yes, very busy – so busy that I did not even have the time to answer you, sorry for that.

      There is one in the planning, but due to some projects I worked on at the end of 2010 everything broke down. But it is definitely still on the agenda, have not forgotten about it ;) . Thanks for your message!

      • http://blog.brain-scape.com Amanda Moritz

        Thanks for letting me know. I look forward to hearing more about it next year. Happy New Year!