AlterSpark Consulting

This workshop will introduce a recent paper by Dr. Brian Cugelman and Matthew Potter, which has distilled Dale Carnegie’s wisdom into just 10 key principles of social media community management. The first half of this workshop will explain some of the science and theory that explains why most principles personal and social psychology operate in cyberspace. Then it will discuss the 10 key principles of persuasive community management. Afterwards, the presenters will describe a number of common, but painfully difficult community management challenges, and invite the audience to discuss how Dale Carnegie would handle them.

At eat:Strategy 2011 we gave our latest presentation on the psychology of persuasive website and social media design. This presentation provides a simple recipe for designing more engaging websites, social media profiles, or technologies by leveraging the principles of cyber persuasion, through the digital persuasion equation and the eight spheres of digital influence.

Toronto’s Social Media Cafe is an informal networking event for people who share an interest in social media. It’s a casual forum for you to meet new people, share experiences, and drink lots of coffee. If you enjoy meeting likeminded people who use social media–professionally, personally, artistically, or for any purpose–then this event is for you.

In this session, we’ll introduce you to the psychology of online design. We will show you a number of simple principles that you can use to understand website psychology. By the end of this session, you’ll be better equipped to understand why some online ventures are successful, and others miss the mark.

We were thrilled to learn that our presentation, on the psychological design of health behavior change websites was showcased by slideshare, in their health and medicine section. View the presentation below:

On 29 November 2010, Dr. Brian Cugelman, Managing Director of AlterSpark and Lee Taylor, Senior Manager, Health Information Services, Heart & Stroke Foundation of Ontario will share their knowledge and experience with designing behaviour change websites that support major health promotion campaigns and strategies.

AlterSpark is presenting a workshop on using social media for non-profit objectives such as public relations, constituency building, citizen engagement, health behavioral change campaign, or fundraising. The workshop is taking place at the Global Citizen Forum (14-15 October 2010), organized by the Ontario Council for International Cooperation.

This workshop will focus on online indicators, measurement techniques, data sources, and how to integrate online evidence into social media monitoring work. These topics will be addressed within the context of several cases studies and examples of institutional publication evaluations, coalition website networks, time-series news/web trends, and influence within online debates. Global Citizens Forum, Reaching the Canadian Public Ontario Council on International Development, with funding from the Canadian International Development Agency

Dr. Brian Cugelman will give a four hour workshop for evaluators wishing to understand how Internet research methods, commonly used in the social sciences, can enhance traditional evaluation approaches. The workshop is taking place at the Canadian Evaluation Society’s annual conference, 4-5 October 2010, titled “Optimizing the Practice of Evaluation”.

Measurement really matters in emerging and fast changing fields. And social media is a field that is evolving rapidly. Evolving in participation, as it transforms from something for early adopters to a part of mainstream life. Evolving as new tools and platforms proliferate. Evolving as people adopt it and find new uses for it. Anyone who uses social media for their work or is serious about it must understand what we can and should measure and how we can do it.

Oxfam GB’s M&E advisors, Simon Starling and Claire Hutchings, and the two external evaluators, Dr. Brian Cugelman and Eva Otero, will discuss the institutional and methodological challenges of assessing a complex global campaign, and describe both the efforts to improve real time strategic learning during the campaign, and the methodology developed to address the evaluative questions posed by the external evaluation.

A recent report by JupiterResearch indicates that e-mail marketing spending will grow from $1.2 billion in 2007 to $2.1 billion in 2012. Spending on retention e-mail will more than double during that period and account for over half of total e-mail marketing spending in 2012. Acquisition e-mail marketing will grow more somewhat more slowly, with most spending in that category going toward sponsorship (for example, ad-supported newsletters).