Category Archives: Social Media

Everybody Rides!

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Last week I was honored to be able to speak at the 2012 ConvergeSouth conference, and one of the real highlights was meeting Tracy Myers. If you live in the Piedmont Triad and have a functioning TV set you've probably seen one of Tracy's commercials, but you may be surprised to learn that he's probably the most aggressive social marketers in the local small business community. At ConvergeSouth he gave a very good keynote presentation about his marketing approach and it would behoove any small business person interested in using social media to build his brand to check out how Tracy is approaching it. 

Here's a fun fact: Meyers is a fellow resident of Lewisville.

LiFless

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After an extended period of periodic posting Esbee is pulling the plug on Life in Forsyth. (That's an intentionally terrible sentence written specifically in honor of Esbee's impatience with sub-par writing).  I for one am grateful for the free entertainment and information she provided through the years and I'm also thankful she let us go gently over the last year or two.

She's moving on to far more important things and she's going to be fabulous at them all.

Is 140 Enough?

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Twitter, the source of much derision for anyone who doesn't use it, was built at a time when SMS texting was the primary form of non-verbal communication on "mobile devices" so it was designed to work within the 160-character confines of the system. Since then Twitter has grown like kudzu and most people use it with anything but SMS – the Twitter website, web-based tools like Tweetdeck or mobile apps of various persuasions. That development has led to people suggesting that Twitter increase the character limit which has led, in turn, to others defending the 140 character limit. Here's a simple argument in favor of keeping the limit:

And, that's how we have learned to use the service. Or, as GigaOm's Mathew Ingram put it the first time Manjoo made this argument: "The point the Slate writer misses (or hints at, and then discards) is that if it did this, it wouldn’t be Twitter any more."

What truly makes the character limit so crucial to Twitter being Twitter is the brevity it forces on its users. Ask any writer and they'll tell you that brevity is hard – any fool can take two pages to tell you how to install a light bulb, but it takes some work to tell you in one sentence. Is 140 characters really "writing"? Not in the traditional sense, but if you haven't used Twitter you have no way of knowing how creative and witty people can be in so little space and it's truly a wonder to behold when it's done well. (See the Washington Post's Gene Weingarten for a good example, although the fact that he uses a turd as his icon might be a little off-putting to some of you).

The character limit also promotes sharing, because the less space someone has to write the more likely he is to simply provide a link with a quick (hopefully witty) intro. So rather than reading an unnecessarily long missive about a subject you get to read a quick intro and then view the source piece itself. Here's an example from Weingarten:

"Women may not be any smarter than men, but they are definitely less stupid." My new column:http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/maga …

Sure, some folks use Twitter poorly, but some people who own Porsches drive like granny going to church and that's not the car's fault. Hopefully Twitter will stick to its guns and keep the 140 character limit. As the article linked to above points out, Twitter can expand and improve its service (i.e. photo sharing, links to expanded posts, etc.) without altering its fundamental 140-character DNA, and if they're smart that's exactly what they'll do.

FWIW, here's a link to probably the worst Twitter account in existence.

Freewheeling Hippies vs. Button Down Managers

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Some behavioral scientists studied the "top 155 political blogs" during the 2008 election year and compared the liberal and conservative blogs. From their abstract we learn:

Notably, the authors find evidence of an association between ideological affiliation and the technologies, institutions, and practices of participation. Blogs on the left adopt different, and more participatory, technical platforms, comprise significantly fewer sole-authored sites, include user blogs, maintain more fluid boundaries between secondary and primary content, include longer narrative and discussion posts, and (among the top half of the blogs in the sample) more often use blogs as platforms for mobilization…

The practices of the left are more consistent with the prediction that the networked public sphere offers new pathways for discursive participation by a wider array of individuals, whereas the practices of the right suggest that a small group of elites may retain more exclusive agenda-setting authority online. (Emphasis mine)

Gee, I'm just shocked that liberal blogs would be wordier and less centrally controlled than conservative blogs, or that conservatives would maintain a more hierarchical structure. I also like the term "more fluid boundaries between secondary and primary content"; I might use that in the future. As for the liberal blogs using the platform more for mobilization I think it's important that we remember this is a study of 2008's election in which it was pretty clear that Obama's team, and by extension the liberal online universe, cleaned everybody's clock. Since then the opposite side has played a great game of catchup as evidenced by the mid-term election in 2010 and I think this year's going to be much more of a horse race.

Why Business Blogs are Still Relevant

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I've had the opportunity to sit through my fair share of presentations on social media and how it could/should be integrated into companies' communications mix. Over the last year I've heard a disturbing number of people say they've nixed their blogs, and sometimes whole websites, and concentrated solely on their Facebook presence. What's the disturbing number? At least one and that's one too many.

If I were to delve into all the reasons why this is a bad idea I'd be writing a 10,000 word treatise, so let me just point to one reason I think blogs still have a place in every company's communication toolbox. It's a case study from right here in the Piedmont Triad as related by Matt Evans at the Triad Business Journal:

Kestler recently took a trip to visit some of those suppliers, and posted a photo of his trip on the company's Facebook page.

Then came the invective – the company’s page was inundated with ugly and obscene comments that questioned Kestler's patriotism. The photo had to be removed from the Facebook page.

But Kestler didn’t want to leave it at that, and composed a blog post responding to the comments. In it, he traces his family roots back to the Revolutionary War and talks about his company’s history of paying above-average wages and providing good benefits to workers.

To me this case highlights the best that blogs have to offer – they're a great way to have a "conversation" with customers that's more than one or two sentences (or 140 characters) in the comments field of an almost ethereal digital environment (Facebook). With a blog you can provide the kind of context that doesn't work well on Facebook, and more importantly you own it so you can make sure that what you write appears as you want it to. Even better you can invite comments from your customers and retain the ability to review them before they go live on your site – this helps you keep the invective down and prevent the conversation from spiraling out of control. Does this mean you prevent all negative comments from appearing? Absolutely not! Rather, you simply prevent name calling or pointless diatribes from hijacking the conversation. Good luck pulling that off on Facebook.  

Sure Facebook's an important place to be these days, but it's far from the only game in town, or from being the most important for your business.

Local TV News on Social Media

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I have a question for local TV news folks.  Do you think your social media outlets, Facebook in particular, should reflect your station/corporate values?  I would imagine the answer is yes, and if it is you really should be careful what you post or link to on your Facebook page.  Although I think it's perfectly appropriate to link to stories you don't air on your regular broadcast since, like your website, your Facebook page is a great way to expand your coverage, I don't think it's appropriate to link to stories that you wouldn't air on your broadcast because it's simply too racy. 

If you'd like me to give you examples I'll give you two just from this week: a story about a guy having unnatural relations with a dog, and another story about a guy who got a tattoo on a certain body part that resulted in him developing an unexpected condition normally associated with a Viagra overdose.  Sure, some people will find them funny, and I've been around long enough to know that stories like that grab attention, but if they aren't an accurate reflection of your organization's values then you really shouldn't post them.

By the way, the same can be said for any organization in any industry.  Just because they're a different venue that might have a slightly edgier audience than your norm doesn't mean that your social media outlets should not reflect your values.  Remember, you are what you post.

Online Confessional

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If you follow any of the media outlets on Facebook or Twitter you've probably noticed how they use social media to find interview subjects for their stories.  One of my kids was interviewed for a story a while back because I saw a local business writer's post on Facebook asking if anyone had teenagers who were having a hard time finding work, and if they'd found a job how they'd done it.  Nothing earth shattering about reporters using social media to find story subjects, but I have to say I was somewhat surprised by this post on AP's Twitter feed:

Have you stolen from a grocery store or other retailer to get something for the holidays? If so, contact@sarahskidmoreap for an interview.

Why would anyone actually reply to this?  Even if you weren't worried that it was a setup wouldn't you be horribly embarassed to admit something like this?  Well, maybe not.  Given some of the things I've seen over these last few years on social media I'm certain there are plenty of people out there who are totally devoid of shame and crave any kind of attention they can get, so this would be right up their alley. 

Sign of the times I guess.

Aha!

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I'm still kind of bummed that I had to beg out of taping my "Aha Moment" when they were in town (work and life in general got in the way), but I'm glad to see that Winston-Salem's uber-Tweeter, Kristen Daukus, had a great time recording hers:

and showing the Aha Moment folks what Ribfest was all about:

There are some great stories from other Winston-Salem folks if you browse through all the clips recorded by the Aha Moment team. Just search on "Winston-Salem + aha" on YouTube and you should find most of them.

Here are the people I've met in real life (my apologies if I missed anyone):

Paul

SueMo

Cheryl

Kim

Danielle

Here's someone many people in Winston-Salem have probably seen in real life even if they haven't met him – Robert Moody of the Winston-Salem Symphony.  BTW, I consider it one of my great failings that I haven't gotten over to see the Symphony in the seven years I've lived here.  I'm gonna have to do something about that.

After viewing most of the videos I had a BIG Aha Moment – there are a ton of really interesting people in Winston-Salem I haven't met yet and hopefully I can rectify the situation in the near future.