Posts Tagged “social media”

I’ve done it over 2,000 times., and I don’t think that’s immoderate for a man of my age.  I’ve done it on a boat but I’ve never done it with a goat. Sure, when you’ve done it as many times as I have, it may seem almost routine, but I’ve noticed that some people are having some anxiety about their First Time, so here’s my advice for  your first twitter experience:

Relax. Just do it.

Seriously.  If you’re sitting on the twitter sidelines trying to figure out what it’s about or how your company can use it, you’re missing the point.  Just get on there and say something.  It’s social media, after all. Follow some people, @ them a bit, get your feet wet.  No ideas but in things! I promise you’ll be able to figure it out after a while.  (Here’s a hint: ask for help on Twitter, tweeple love to help)

Some people say that Twitter is the most important thing since sliced bread. I doubt it. But if they’re right, why are you wasting time worrying about it when you could be living it?  And if it’s not so important, what have you got to lose?

So if you’re still fretting (yes, I’m still talking to you, G*****, and you too, L*****), here’s a handy tip: you can erase your embarrassing tweets. Permanently and forever. Just click the trashcan next to the goof – see it on the right?

The last thing people need these days is something else to worry about.  I suppose that might be an argument for ignoring twitter entirely, but if you can’t do that, I urge you to just jump in.  There will be plenty of time down the road to laugh at ourselves for being so foolish or faddish.

It’s not every day you go to a social media event in a cargo container sponsored by a shoe company and hear somebody invoke Thoreau when talking about Twitter. Today was just such a day.

But first, I’ll back up to last night, when J (have I mentioned lately that she has an excellent food blog?) joined me at an Earthwatch.org’s shidig at Puma City. (Puma City is a batch of cargo containers assembled into a retail and party space in a temporary “village” set up in South Boston to celebrate the arrival of the Volvo Ocean Race and it lacks indoor plumbing) We sipped melon puree and watched the sunset while listening to Earthwatch CEO Ed Wilson talk about the state of the world’s oceans. The event was well-attended and raised money and awareness for Earthwatch’s programs. Also, they served tasty but lukewarm mini open-faced cuban sandwiches and raffled off some cool prizes. Having already won a gift card at Four Burgers that day, I couldn’t be too upset at missing out.

Barely 12 hours later, I returned to Puma City for Social Media Breakfast 13, Rocking the Boat. Founded by Bryan Person and recently organized by the estimable Bob Collins, SMB has reliably been one of the better live events for those who live online.

The first presenter was Dan Schwabel, a young man who has the admirably meta occupation of promoting his personal brand as “the guy with a personal brand.” He observed at one point that he chose marketing because he was “creative and not that great at math,” which I think sort of sums up much of what’s wrong with marketing these days. I bet Dan isn’t really that bad at math, but I also think that people like FM Days are trying to rescue marketing from the folks who are afriad of or (perhaps willfully) ignorant of the numbers.

Next up, George Grattan, Marketing Strategist at Earthwatch took the stage. I use the term, “stage” loosely, as the sight lines inside a space made of cargo containers are a little rough. Anyway, George talked about Earthwatch’s social media strategy, which includes a lot of Facebook and Eons (because their target is a little older) and no Twitter yet. Grattan quoted Thoreau on the subject of the transatlatic telegraph wire to explain this choice:

We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

The idea being, until Earthwatch has something to say on Twitter, they will remain quiet. I just hope George has grabbed the username. As I’ve discussed and as I’m sure Dan would agree, you have to register your brand on every network you can, even if you’re not going to use them, just as a protective measure.

I’m skeptical that Earthwatch really has nothing to say to the people of Twitter. After all, they are actually somewhat older that the Facebook generation and probably closer to Earthwatch’s demographic. But more to the point, how different is what Earthwatch has to say on Twitter from what they have to say on Facebook or on their blogs? (They do have blogs, don’t they? George, call me!) With tools like Ping.fm, Friendfeed, and Twitterfeed, you can syndicate content you already have into all kinds of channels at minimal extra cost or effort. Sure, that’s not the level of engagement that your customers really want and deserve, but isn’t it better than nothing? You can start building your Twitter following by pushing your Facebook status and blog updates there, so when you are ready for full-on Twitter engagement, you’re partway there. To use an ironic metaphor, Earthwatch should fish where the fish are.

The last two presenters, Roger Wu and C C Chapman deserve blog posts of their own, and I’m sure many others will provide. In short, Roger’s company Klickable.TV is doing some cool stuff with videos that you can click on and the data that those generate. (Roger, does Rachel Ray know you’re clicking on her like that?) CC is a social media fixture for good reason. Check out his site, blogs, podcasts and so forth whenever you can.

First Sunday each month
Boston Media Makers
at Doyle’s in JP.

This April only
It was the second Sunday
to keep us alert.

I brought my netbook,
hipster PDA and cards.
What’s with the mermaid?

Lots of great people,
some serious geeking out.
Here are some highlights:

Rachel Levy was
laid off but is too busy
working to find work.

Quiver and Quill hosts
Rubber Chicken Social Club
I approve, of course.

Boston Tweetup is
a list of Boston Tweetups
in handy G-cal!

David Tames’ site
kino-eye.com has lots
of cinema links.

Ben Atlas has deep
thoughts on networking and wants
more wider hallways.

Reiko’s Geek Girl Camp
sounds like fun, also good for
non-techy women.

Robin Maxfield has
a video show that is
sort of, um, edgy.

Thanks to Steve Garfield
for organizing again.
Matzo balls should sink.

I was engaging in some micronarcissism (that means looking at my Twitter page) the other day when I chanced to notice that most of the icons – or avatars if you prefer – were faces, most of those photographic.

The old New Yorker cartoon said, “on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” (the cartoon showed an actual canine using a computer) yet here are some people using (I assume) their real faces for their online presence.

Before pondering the implications of that, a brief geektour of the numbers:

I classified twitter pictures into four types:

1. Faces (photographic) – to the best of my ability to tell, photographs of one person’s face
2. Faces (illustration) – faces but not photographic, includes illustration and overtly manipulated photos such as “obamifications” (which should be called “Faireifications” or perhaps “Obamanations”)
3. Corporate or personal logos
4. Other (body parts other than faces, bucolic scenes, pictures of animals, etc.)

Of the 36 icons pictured in my little “Following” bloc,

Faces/photo: 28 (78%)
Faces/illustration: 1 (3%)
Logo: 4 (11%)
Other: 3 (8%)

Of the top 50 Twitter Elite in the USA (via Grader)

Faces/photo: 39 (78%)
Faces/illustration: 4 (8%)
Logo: 4 (8%)
Other: 3 (6%)

The results are pretty consistent these samples.  Faces are in. Photorealistic ones, especially. I’m not sure if that has changed over time or if it’s always been the case.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but why?  I’m thinking that there’s a general movement in social media for authenticity and transparency, that you should say who you are and be real.  There’s a lot of software in our brains devoted to recognizing and understanding faces, and we seem to like to use it.  Faces humanize online experiences.

But let me take the contrary position for a moment.  Shouldn’t your online avatar or chat icon stand for you in a communication and marketing sense?  Isn’t it a small ad banner that you can use creatively?  And shouldn’t you at least attempt to stand out in the crowd or cloud?

On the one hand, if I don’t already know who you are, seeing that you’re a middle-aged white guy with unfortunate facial hair doesn’t add much to my online consumption of your updates.  On the other hand, once I start reading those things, seeing that photo might add depth or credibility to your online presence, and then I even stand a chance of recognizing you in person.

Here’s a post (that I found via a tweet from a logo avatar) about adding your photo to LinkedIn, which seems a lot more straightforward.  On LinkedIn, like Facebook, you’re definitely supposed to be you.  On Twitter or blogs, you could be a character, a brand, a team, all sorts of things.

As a guy who uses a duck (you can sometimes still find my old icon, a rasterbated photo) for online imagery, I guess I could be accused of hiding.  But that icon serves pretty well:  it’s easy to recognize,  related to my online brand, consistent across social media sites, seldom changed so consistent across time, and pretty good at standing out in the crowd.

Last Wednesday I had a double dose of interesting thinking about giving.  First, I talked at a Harvard Extension social media class about Firstgiving and Twestival, then I popped in at the Philosophy Cafe to hear some deeper discussion of the limits of altrusim.  And then it snowed.

Act I: giving for free

At the kind invitation of Professor, author, educator and consultant Mary Lou Roberts, I led discussion in her Harvard Extension class, Social Media Marketing.  First, I talked about my employer, Firstgiving, and how they do business serving nonprofit organizations and people who support them.  I’m sure you’ve heard plenty about Firstgiving, so it should be enough for now to say it’s a social enterprise and uses social connections to do business and to do good, more than using what’s commonly called “social media” these days.

The second part of the class was a case-style discussion of Twestival.  There are far better recaps of Twestival (notably Beth Kanter’s) so I’ll simplify again.  Twestival was a global, all-volunteer fundraising event that raised a huge amount of money in many creative ways, but fell short of its perhaps over-ambitious $1M goal.   There were pledge donations via twitter, charity auctions, direct donations to Charity:Water, benefit music sales, corporate sponsors, and parties with door fees.

Some of my questions to the class, robustly discussed but not definitively answered, were these:

• What was the true cost of this all-volunteer effort?  Was it really zero?  Could more have been raised by spending?
• What’s the level of commitment that volunteer efforts and small donations generate?  Is that enough?
• Of the $250k raised (at the time of discussion), how much came from “social media” like twitter pledges via Tipjoy, and how much from “old school media” like party cover charges and corporate sponsorship?
• Was the event damaged or strengthened by the lack of full-time professional organization?
• Did Twestival over-reach or under-achieve with the $1M goal?

One of my favorite comments towards the end of the class was one student who astutely pointed out that a charitably cause should optimize fundraising by taking advantage of all channels possible, even those with low ROI, as long as it’s all positive.  Indeed, why not do one more little thing, even if it’s little, if it brings a bit more funding for the cause?

Act II: freely giving

On the way home from class, I stopped by Harvard Bookstore where coach, workshop leader and author Hillary Rettig (and my former colleague and friend) was speaking as part of something called Philosophy Cafe.  I hadn’t paid too much attention to the event because I wasn’t sure I could make it after class, but I was quickly drawn in and stayed longer than I had planned.

The topic of discussion was “The Limits of Altruism: Why Do You Give What You Give–and Should You Be Giving More?” and Hillary was the featured guest presenter, discussing the story of her donation of a kidney to someone who was at the time a stranger.  To quote from the highbrow website description:

There are lots of explanations for altruism, or selfless giving, ranging from the mystical (karma), to the sociological (community standards), to the sociobiological (we “give” in ways that maximize our genes’ propagation). Whatever the mechanism, it’s clear that some people give a lot, while others not so much. Is there a proper level of giving, and how do we, as members of a wealthy society, justify not giving more to those in dire need, for instance in Nepal or Malawi–or even here in the U.S.? And what happens when a monetary reward or other incentive enters the picture?

I can’t do the intense and sophisticated discussion much justice, but I’ll summarize some interesting ideas that I heard during the part of the discussion centered on organ donation.

• The mortality rate for a healthy kidney donor is about 2.5 per 10,000, or .025%, one fortieth of one percent.  The mortality rate for someone in need of a kidney is pretty much 100%.  Does this mean non-donors are implicitly valuing their lives at 4,000 times those of others?
• In European countries where organ donation after death by road accident is presumed unless the person has opted OUT (unlike the US version where you must opt IN for post-mortem donation), there is generally a sufficient supply of organs for those in need of them, and little need for voluntary living donors.
• While there was broad support in the room for regulatory solutions like changing the decision for post-mortem donation to opt-OUT, there was considerably more controversy around market-based solutions such as allowing people to buy and sell organs.  Some said that a market for organs would disadvantage the poor while others saw monetizing an organ as a potentially valuable ladder up from poverty.

After that, the discussion moved away from organs to a more general examination of how much one should give.  I had to head home so I missed that discussion, but both parts of the evening made for real food for thought on giving.

The philosophers at the cafe generally agreed that there was no obligation to impoverish or unduly endanger oneself in the name of altruism, but that there’s plenty of room in the average American life to give more.  I wonder if Twestival and other volunteer efforts are impoverishing themselves needlessly by foreswearing any paid services.  As the wise student said, why not do a little more?