Listen "Episode 5: Interview with Kathryn Lagden of PTO Today"
Episode Synopsis
Welcome to episode five!Run time: 15:03Community Divas on iTunesA podcast about communities and social media toolsIn this episode:- Eden interviews Kathryn Lagden about community building at PTO Today, we discuss one of the issues raised in the interview and we have some community news.- We discuss Kathryn's concern about managing multiple tools within one community website.- Community News: Podcamp Toronto - Feb. 21 & 22 at Rogers Communications Centre at Ryerson University, sign up on the wiki at http://podcamptoronto.org~~~The Avon Breast Cancer CrusadeIn support of breast cancer research, Avon Canada begins the ‘Call for the Cure,’ a grassroots awareness campaign raising funds for the Canadian Breast Cancer Research Alliance.A call to 1-900-561-PINK will automatically donate $2 to breast cancer research (land line phones only). For more information on this and other related Avon crusades: Canada - http://avoncrusade.ca/U.S. - http://www.avoncompany.com/women/avoncrusade/U.K. - http://www.avoncrusade.co.uk/~~~Kathryn Lagden is Director of Web Operations for School Family Media. I recently had the pleasure of speaking with her about community building at PTO Today . She also blogs at That Kathryn Girl. ~~~ 00:01 Intro by Jay Moonah00:09 Eden Spodek and Connie Crosby00:15 Summary of today’s episode00:27 Eden introduces Kathryn Lagden00:43 Kathryn explains what PTO Today is - School Family Media is the umbrella organization, and PTO Today is a main media property. Help parent group leaders of parent groups (PTO or PTA).01:22 She discusses her role in community development.02:36 How do subject matter experts know when to jump into the conversations when there is no designated community manager to suggest they do so?03:38 PTO Today has had an active community for a very long time, starting with a message board. Kathryn discusses the different ways the community interact with the community website.04:30 How the different tools are similar and overlap in content. It is difficult for someone new to see where all the content resides. Kathryn talks about how they redirect people to other parts of the site so they can find the rest of the discussion.05:54 Getting members to move to another tool by directing traffic over.06:51 The PTO File Exchange is a feature created to allow parent groups to share documents and hopefully therefore solve similar issues.08:04 They are tracking usage of the File Exchange with two metrics: number of page views and number of downloads on each document. They have incredible usage on some of their documents; these are very popular.09:20 File Exchange includes a rating feature. Kathryn explains how this works.09:58 Has PTO Today been successful in moving free community members into paid level members? They have a lot of free content on the site including their magazine which brings a lot of people into the site. They have some programs and tools that are paid services and link to them from the appropriate places on the free site.11:24 Eden thanks Kathryn for joining us.11:39 Eden asks Connie about Kathryn's challenge of migrating community members from one tool to another when the conversation is suited for another area. 12:57 Eden invites our listeners to give your suggestions.13:10 Community news13:18 Podcamp Toronto 2009 announced13:45 Avon Breast Cancer Crusade announced14:16 Eden wraps up the episode.Our cool theme music “Get Out of My Face” is by Uncle Seth and is from the Podsafe Music Network. We hope to hear from you! Send your comments to [email protected] or post them on the blog at communitydivas.com. Follow us on Twitter, our Facebook page or our FriendFeed room. Some registration may be required.
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