Tag Archives: social media

The De-evolution of Twitter

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How do we move the needle back to conversations? Beth Harte and I were talking about how there seems to be a dearth of conversations on Twitter these days. A year ago we were complaining about the growing cacophony of echo in the Twitter sphere. Now it appears that everyone doesn’t have time to talk, so they just shoot a title and a link out with or without attributes.

My advice would be to take the time to talk with the people that took the time to talk with you. take the time to say something instead of just pushing another link out. Value just doesn’t lie in the quality of the information that you share, but also in the quality of what you have to say.

However the irony is not lost on me on the way that I choose to promote this post. I will go to Twitter and tweet the title and the link. How do you “fix” that?

Social Media Thought for the Day #3 Social Obsolescence

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I’m struck by what Geoff Livingston titled his book from 2007. “Now is Gone”. It almost seems prescient. Content is content just for a day and almost seems irrelevant if it is from last week. Social sites are only as good as the purpose they serve right now. Fame is fleeting, personal brands last only as long as your last Google update and social networks continue to evolve.

What does this mean? When a social site no longer serves the needs of the people that participate, those people move on. Though there might not be a thing wrong with it. The site has become obsolete.

See the consumer-in reponse to Tom Martin

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Tom Martin from Zehnder Communications recently wrote a blog post entitled “Be the Consumer”, in which he laments that to truly understand the consumer you must be the consumer.  Says Tom:

Only a person that actually uses a product or service can figure out new uses for said service/product. And that, to me at least, is where the money is at… innovation.

But as he is dead on with this, I had a conversation with a start-up yesterday in which they wanted to be all things to all demographics with their product offering. I ventured that why not try to be really good with a smaller market segment first? That way you can get to know your market segment a little better-what makes them tick, the how, the why and the what for. Be the consumer but see the consumer as well.

Yes let’s be the consumer to innovate, but let’s see the consumer that you’re going to innovate with. One thing that social nets have taught us if anything, is that everyone hangs in a network for a reason. At the least, they probably identify with that group within that network for at least one reason. Find it.

To expound on Tom’s point,  If you’re going to sell to me, at least take the time to find out where I am, what I do and how I do it. Do your homework. Innovate.

See the consumer. Be the consumer. Become the consumer.

11 Must Save Social Media Links For The Week

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I have thousands of bookmarks and chances are you do too. From a social media purists standpoint, it’s good karma to share links and websites that are worth a second look. Here are 11 of them in no particular order.

One of the smart guys out there is Jay Baer, last week he wrote a post titled the 11 Must Do’s For the Serious Blogger. As I have been wont to say on various occassions, not all of you should or can blog. Jay’s post is for those that can, and are serious about it.

Do you know what a KPI is? If you are an online marketer of any kind and don’t know, then quit reading and go work out, eat some yogurt, or go to Starbucks. For those that do know the importance of KPI’s, here’s a great little checklist of sorts titled, 35 social medis KPI’s to measure engagement.

If you use Tweetdeck or Seesmic for Twitter, you know the importance of grouping the people or topics you follow. Well Twitter responded by creating Lists. So how do you make heads or tails of that? Try out Listorious, which will bring some order to your chaos.

If you use Twitter for content and I do, it’s my filter for content. But I don’t like when I DON’T know about something and I should. There is no good way to avoid this, it will happen. Enter Twitter Tim.es, which generates a personalized ‘newspaper’ for you based on what the people that you follow are talking about.

Speaking of things happening now, check out this cool little app, Surchur, real time search and real time discovery.

I’ve said this before but my friend Ken Burbary has assembled one helluva wiki of social media monitoring solutions. It is the best, most complete list that I have seen out there on the topic.

Want to see what kind of influence you have based on your Twitter presence? Well, Edelman has put together a pretty cool little tool called Tweetlevel. Don’t read too much into it though, It’s just another tool that measures your presence in the ether.

Last month JD Lasica put together a nice deck of the top 10 pharma efforts in social media that dovetailed nicely into the FDA hearings on social media 2 weeks ago. If you care about Pharma’s involvement in social media, then this is a must read, if you don’t, then keep moving…

And 2 for the road…

BatchBook is the social CRM built for small businesses and entrepreneurs, I thought this had a lot of promise because it addressed a niche that doesn’t get the same CRM love that the enterprise gets.

I read this post and already knew the answer, Is Facebook getting uncool for 18-24’s?

I hope this helps make things easier, enlightens you or simplifies your work flow. Either way, feel free to share these with others who might benefit.

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The Duration of a Conversation

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Chris Brogan recently blogged about the addiction of giving one’s opinion. As I read it a few questions and thoughts entered my mind on why we comment.

  1. Do we comment for the sake of commenting?
  2. Are we going through the motions of commenting because we know it has an underlying effect on our social media status?
  3. We really want to engage in a dialogue.
  4. We want to meet this person.
  5. We want this person to notice us.
  6. We want business
  7. We want something from this person
  8. We want others to notice us.
  9. None of the above. I like reading blogs

I think that the nature of why people blog has changed over the last 2 years. When Groundswell came out, the reasons we blogged were because it was clearly a way to express and connect with others. The conversations were pure and lasted longer than the current, I post, you comment-we’re done model.

Twitter has in effect reduced blogging to more of a long form vehicle for self expression only, whereas in the past it was a catchall for all thoughts both verbose and sound-bite’ish. But it has also exposed blogging to the masses as a way to promote one’s self and not necessarily one’s intellect.

Conversations through the comments section of a blog have been rendered to nothing more than a self promotional back pat and a scrawled autograph by the author.

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The Ubiquity of Social Media

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Through the course of  11,000 plus tweets, 2  years of using Twitter, as well as creating, hosting, and participating in some very high level Twitter chats around the business of social media, I have oftentimes been struck with moments of absolute, 140 character clarity when it comes to all things social media.

Luckily I have been able to document those moments with the help of Twitter archives and compile them into a manifesto of sorts that hopefully helps the reader think more about the “why it sucks”, the “how” and the “wtf for”, of this maddening space.

The clarity, the thoughts and opinions are mine. You may not agree with them and that’s OK. They are meant to be talked about and discussed as much as they are to be challenged and disagreed with. They are talking points.

 

 

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Social Media Rock Star Syndrome

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Twankers, Rock Stars & Gurus – Authenticity In A World of Exploding Egos

The term “Authenticity” get played out a lot.  I mean – ALOT!  It gets used to discuss personal branding issues like what kind of avatar should you use and how to disclose if you get paid to communicate a product or experience.  Authenticity is used to discuss ethics in business including can you outsource moderation of your community or what if corp communications manages the CEO’s blog?  Most of the discussion comes down to the distaste for people trying to be posers online.  The fact is whether online or off, people are going to stretch the truth (or outright lie).   It happens.

This week, we wanted to change up the conversation a bit and look at it from a personal perspective.  Authenticity is a way of being and not something that can be attained by following some corporate policies.  While there many people who start out being truly authentic it’s interesting what happens when some get a few wins under their belts.  Somewhere they begin believing everything they hear and their ego gets in the way of what was once rational thinking.  Kind of a “forgetting your roots” scenario.

Then we have the people who stay true to their character despite success or sometimes fame.  Our moderator this week certainly fits the latter description.  Rohit Bhargava is a SVP at Ogilvy 360 Digital  Influence (which he was a founding member) and is the author of the award winning book Personality not Included.  Despite his success, he remains truly authentic at every level.  How does he do it? We”ll find out this Tuesday at noon EST.

Something a bit different this week as we will start out with everyone sharing their thoughts on who, today, exemplifies authenticity whether famous or not.  Then as everyone joins we will start with Q1 that asks an interesting question.  For businesses looking to get established in social media, do you need to task someone who has already built up their own personal brand or can you be successful in building a corporate brand even though your personal brand is not established?  The next question should be a hot one.  Let’s say you have social media success in the consumer packaged goods industry, are you qualified to lead a team from the healthcare industry?  In other words, is social media the same across industries or do you have to specialize.   Then Rohit will tackle a question that centers around the idea that some contend extensive personal branding can detract from a company’s branding efforts.  This week’s topic and questions:

Topic:  Twankers, Rock Stars & Gurus – Authenticity In A World of Exploding Ego

Pre Q1: Who do you feel lives up to being authentic in the digital world?

Q1: Do you have to ROCK your personal brand in SocMed before you try to ROCK your company’s?

Q2: Does Social Media expertise transcend industries?

Q3: Does personal branding compete with or add-to your Company’s market influence?

With Rohit, we are in for a fun chat that is sure the raise the bar for all of us.  Plan on joining us Tuesday at noon EST by following the #sm34.l

via hashtagsocialmedia.com

 

Posted via web from marcmeyer’s posterous

Gov 2.0,The FDA, and Social Media

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FDA_web_logo

Listening to The FDA hearings on promotion of FDA regulated medical products using the internet and social media tools, was both fascinating, frustrating, and groundbreaking.

First and foremost it’s a glimpse into the process in Washington of the FDA trying to learn more and to get up to speed on topics such as:

All of this done through snackable content consisting of no more than 10-15-20 minute presentations to an FDA panel.

More importantly however, what struck me was the ability to listen and watch the FDA hearings online, comment and share what we heard and saw via the Twitter hashtag #FDASM and then read the follow up blog posts from some of the participants. One suggestion: The FDA panel would be smart to go back and read the #FDASM back channel, because the conversation there, was both enlightening and incredibly observant.

As well, Google Docs spreadsheet had been created so that users can see  speaker name, company, presentation, and email and talk to those who are viewing the document at the same time that you are!

Transparency is reaching Washington.  Gov 2.0 is in action for the people. This doesn’t mean that this will speed up the process of the FDA doing anything within the next 3-6-9 months based on what they have learned, but now people have been able to glimpse something tangible, and actually participate in more ways than ever before. Hopefully Washington is starting to get it.

I applaud the FDA  for realizing that they need to understand the power of online medical information, the power and impact of search, and the power of social media, and the effect that it can and does have on consumers and..the way that Pharma can manipulate it. This is a big step and yet at the same time a small step. Either way, they are both steps in the right direction.