In a couple of weeks I’ll have the interesting opportunity of having the undivided attention of some newly promoted/recruited senior-level consultants.
Among other things, we’ll be talking about what it means to be good at social media.
I’ll have my own views on that, but it occurs to me that the most honest way of answering the question would be to put it up for discussion among my own ‘social media’ networks. For me, that means LinkedIn, Facebook, Clients, Colleagues, Neighbours, Family and Mates Down The Pub (among others, and in no particular
order).
I happen to have this demo of a WordPress blog set up, so I’ll use that too.
So. If you had the opportunity to contribute to the thinking of some leaders and influencers in industry, on the subject of ‘Social Media’, what would you want to say to them?
What?
I’ll summarise the response that I get to help me build my presentation on the subject. To be honest, I have no idea of what to expect. I hope that it will be interesting.
I thank you for any contribution you may care to make!
Hey Charlie,
Funny you should ask, I stumbled just yesterday on this great SlideShare presentation, on how, to be effective, a social media strategy is to be done in a consumer centric way, and I totally agree ! Here’s the source :
http://www.slideshare.net/missrogue/your-social-media-strategy-wont-save-you
Hope to it helps ! Emm.
Here’s an interesting article on memory, attention spans and human interactions vis social media: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/magazine/the-twitter-trap.html?_r=1
By the way, I’m away in Toulouse so it’s not all that weird that I’m posting on my husband’s blog…
People who struggle with offline communication are often more comfortable with social media. (See social anxiety disorder.)
@adrienneauthor adrienne vaughan @ckingwriter the ability to communicate to many, quickly and succinctly without the requirement of response, unless one feels the urge to!
@LoxodontaAfrica Anthony Luciani
@ckingwriter I imagine social media to be like all the people of the world sitting at the same dinner table talking at once.
Thank you all for your contributions so far.
Themes that seem to be emerging elsewhere:
* Adept usage of Social Media is a stone soup – give a little to gain a lot.
* “The conversation will be happening, whether or not you are part of it” is a theme that is countered by the warning “a poor virtual presence is worse than no presence at all”.
* Social Media is social: it requires a society, it requires trust, it needs a reason to be, and its contributors all need the answer to “what’s in it for me”.
* Notoriety, guru-hood and reputation are powerful motivators in the social sphere, and the Social Media Sphere.
* Anthropologically we are programmed, it seems, to have about 7 true friends at any one time. The Facebook average number of ‘friends’ is 130. Research shows that, nonetheless, these users have around 7 or so ‘real life’ friends.
* Social Media is not Real Life. Social Media is not wholly seperate from Real Life. Social Media is part of what goes to make up Real Life.
Please feel free to chip in with a bullet point, an essay, an observation, a challenge… whatever springs to mind!
hi there – found this thread through claire. i said all that i (for now) have to say on the topic here (not my writer but my science persona). cheers.
Thank you Marcus… yours is an interesting article. I was particularly tweaked by the very valid point that the Social Media exist in service of communities, and even more so by the by-thought that they were not concieved to replace mailshots and phonecalls.
That made me think, in quick succession, “what should we believe they were concieved for?” and “can we really believe that they were concieved, in any real sense, for a succinct purpose”?
I have a perception that the Social Media (a usefully blurred and wide-reaching term) are as a result of, and in the service of, organic ‘memetic’ evolution: they allow the rapid exchange of societal tokens; ideas, strokes (in the psychological sense), affirmations, territorial definitions, etc., with a rapidity and breadth that is orders of magnitude greater than that which was possible with the previous generation of Social Media (the phone, golf, rotary clubs…) This rapidity of exchange is creating, in turn, an accelleration in the development of the very media that allow it to happen.
It’s like the Cambrian Explosion, only with smilies
Please forgive the ramble – in the spirit of the subject under discussion, this has gone from thoughts to bytes with very little crafting between.
If you don’t object, I’d like to draw on your article as and when I summarise stuff here: I’m using post as a collection point for thoughts.
Thanks again!
Charlie
I think social media is a fantastic tool. As I writer I find it invaluable in helping me feel connected, and it’s also great for marketing purposes. But, also as a writer, it’s important to remember it’s the ‘writing what counts’ (I guess this goes for any product) and that some people are more adept at engaging with social media than others, especially perhaps, the traditionally sensitive/reclusive writer. Where this is the case, I can’t help thinking it’s a shame so much responsibility is put on the writer these days to self-promote.
I think we’ve in the middle of another dot.com bubble at the moment and this time it’s social media. I’ve seen hundreds of people claiming to be social media experts but I’m not convinced that it is a goldmine. My view as a Chartered Marketer is that it’s just another channel that people will explore, find its limits then move onto the next big thing.
The people I consider ‘good’ at social media don’t over-promote themselves and give a lot – advice, encouragement, ideas. Just saying ‘I have a new XXXX out’ on each tweet / status update without being part of the conversation turns people off. There needs to be some personality behind it otherwise it’s just another advertising channel and in turn social media must respond to questions, queries and criticisms. This gets difficult and costly as companies grow or people get busy. The other problem I think is starting to materialise is guruhood. I despair of the number of ’5 ways to improve your xxxx; articles which merely recycle perceived wisdom without any original thought. The straight recycling of news without comment is also a big turnoff. I can still read a newspaper/website! Soon someone will start looking at the numbers and considering whether this is good value for money.
Social media enables people to keep in touch with others in a ‘soft’ way beyond the 7 close friends. I keep in touch via Facebook with my skiing buddies with who I shared a house in Whistler, old school and Uni friends and some old work friends. It’s a loose kind of conversation, a few words here and there but we’re still in touch and I couldn’t do it otherwise – they live in Australia, US, the Pyrenees etc etc. It adds to my life. However looking at it from a business point of view, I’m not convinced that Facebook is encouraging me to spend a lot of money with companies. I have a different use for Twitter and LinkedIn but again, I’m not spending money. If you charge to use these media, then the service loses a critical mass of users. LinkedIn is the darling at the moment but it’s primary role is recruitment and there’s a limit to the number of times people move jobs. The networking aspect is very fragmented to date and has a contrived feel about it.
In a rambling kind of way, I’ve come round to the view that in society, there is a limit to the amount that we can ‘promote’ ourselves in a social setting and we’re exploring that limit in a virtual world. I think we will find countless ways to enrich our lives but the monetary value will turn out to be less than many believe. Like the dot.coms, they are just another channel to market for business and whilst there might be some growth, there tends to be a substitution of spend in one channel vs another.
Look forward to seeing the discussion develop.
I agree with Peter. It’s not the new be all and end all of marketing, it simply provides another interesting channel. And I think ‘interesting’ is key. I think Claire’s move to create a professional FB page is a good idea. I think customised FB pages for businesses as a sort of mini-site are also a good idea.
I think the danger is bombarding your FRIENDS (after all, it is SOCIAL media we’re talking about) with relentless self-promotion on the business front. Personally I use FB to keep up with friends and family and I don’t mind knowing what thye’re up to business-wise now and then, and will ‘Like’ or add a page accordingly. But on the whole, I have now hidden posts from various people because I’m bored of them banging on – there is no other word for it – about their own particular professional pursuits. So in short, for me, being good at social media is being interesting, even entertaining, and knowing who your audience are.
Hi – I’m visiting as I ‘know’ Claire online through, guess what: Social Media.
I think Social Media is highly useful for people but only if they approach it carefully. “Being good at social media” is basically getting it right. You wouldn’t, for example, write a rambling post on LinkedIn about taking your dog to the vet, because that isn’t what LinkedIn is about.
As a writer, Twitter is my favourite Social Media platform, mostly because of the incredible amount of writers and publishers on there. As others have said though, with social media you have to pay attention to the “social” part of it and come across as a person. I have no interest at all in connecting with people who only tweet links to their products and I regularly unfollow anyone who has unfollowed me, as I am not on there to ‘observe’ but to share ideas.
When I joined Twitter I couldn’t see the point in it, so I think it takes a while to work out whether you slot in. My husband told me about Twitter but he went off it very quickly but I have used it ever since, and can honestly say it’s helped me to start my writing career. I find Facebook helpful as a supplement as you can say a bit more on FB and also with FB I connect with more people that I know from the ‘real world’ so for me the dynamic is different and I like having that variation.
In summary, IMHO, “Being good at social media” is about connecting with people, being appropriate to that particular site, and “giving” as well as “taking” if that makes sense.
Here’s an interesting thing, I think.
I have a number of networks to which I can reach out using various kinds of Social Media: current and former work colleagues, chiefly in the two arenas of IT and Collaboration Design, who are on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN, etc., as well as Ye Olde Emaile Distributionne Lyste.
I also have networks of neighbours, friends, family etc., who are also reachable through all of the above networks.
I was hopeful of rich results from the former group: this kind of thing is generally well within their sphere of interest. Indeed I have had some excellent stuff – but the trickle so far has been quite thin.
A surprisingly powerful torrent of stuff, however, has come from Wifey’s literary network. Surprising because this is a network of second-degree separation, built around my wife’s career as a literary author. These are people who don’t really know me, are not directly engaged in what I do, and are a network that is built around a core topic that would seem wholly seperate from this discussion. Despite all of this, theirs has been a contribution which has included excellent insights, direct subject expertise, and thoughtful consideration of the topic.
So. The lesson to be drawn here is that there is gold in them there hills – even the ones you don’t suspect to be gold-bearing.
Often, and particularly in the corporate world, we build our networks around what we deem to be ‘likely candidates’ for contribution. This is a mistake, clearly, and it would seem that the wider we cast our nets, the more opportunity we afford ourselves for truly valuable dialogue.
I think that’s enough mixed metaphor for now. Thank you to Claire, and to her friends from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, her blog, and the various bars and pubs that she frequents.
this this this – is apposite…
http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html
and this
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3086
(I love b3ta!)
Hi Charlie,
An interesting point of view on the subject : if you want to be good at something, you should start by learning what you don’t know…
http://hbr.org/web/slideshows/social-media-what-most-companies-dont-know/1-slide?cm_sp=most_widget-_-default-_-Social%20Media%3A%20What%20Most%20Companies%20Don%27t%20Know
Cheers
Seb
In the true spirit of Social Media, ‘crowdsourcing’ and the collaborative approach… I am sharing the iterative process of building the presentation that I plan to give next week.
Nosing, feedback and commentary are all encouraged:
http://prezi.com/evhlgvjcphg8/what-does-it-mean-to-be-adept-at-social-media/http://prezi.com/xcitkidw43oa/what-does-it-mean-to-be-adept-at-social-media/http://prezi.com/xgraq_astbwx/what-does-it-mean-to-be-adept-at-social-media/
Bear in mind that it’s still a work in progress: the flow is as I would like it, and so (pretty much) is the grouping of key ideas. I’ll be adding some more salient content here and there, and cutting back some of the fluff. Oh, and there’ll be illustrations. Lots of them
Thank you all for your invaluable contributions
Eep –> buzzwordspeak title of presentation + 332 slides = I’m with the guy on slide 2 (guessing / hoping that was the reaction you were hoping to provoke?!)
Hmm – Prezi is flash based so bit of a bummer for all those techie geeks trying to access something via Ipod / phone / pad… and your own slides do advise that the content should be smartphone friendly, the majority of which are iphones, hmmm
& Prezi doesn’t give slide numbers so I can’t leave specific slide based comments here without counting (which I’m too lazy to do – esp when there’s three hundred plus of the blighters!)
But – loving how the design feeds into the information & the way it transitions (although cumulative effect might leave some feeling a little dizzy = steadicam sickness!)
And – finding the content interesting and thought provoking
But – can it spellcheck (Accessability NO, Accessibility YES)
And finally – I wish for there to be more stroking and truffling, that is all.
I’ve recently attended a conference on social media and I saw that presention from a women who I considered is EXCELLENT at social media.
Why that? Because she has rationalized how to manage her various identities (her personal one, her professional one, her brand ) leveraging the various social medias with a distinct purpose for each of them (You Tube, Facebook, Twitter, Four Square, etc.). The thinking was pragmatic and she demonstrated through examples how each channel tangibly contributes to her business. She owns a coffee shop in Sydney CBD.
I filmed an extract of her speech. Check it on the wall of the Facebook page of ASE Australia (posted on June 1st).