Jul 1, 2008 | blog
Do you ever get tired of the phrase "social media"?
I don’t get tired of the concepts, methodology, and excitement that encompasses what so many of us are doing or trying to do. However, I do get tired of hearing "social media" about everything. It’s like labeling everything "green" or "eco-friendly". I’m not against those concepts either, but I sure am tired of hearing the phrases.
How do we engage people and business without repeating the hype? What good are buzzwords anyway, other than to evangelize something? Where is the substance for business to bite into, for them to more easily recognize the opportunities within the hot new trends of social media?
There are several people who manage to convey the concepts and ideas of social media without needing to promote the hype. Their deeds in writing and working on the topic is an inspiration to follow. Similar to all the people who quietly recycle, cut back fuel consumption, or practice renewable techniques in more and more areas. They too don’t feel the need to worship at the alter of "green", yet their actions make the bulk of the difference.
I guess what I’m working towards is the real, usable, tools and techniques that make up "social media". I’m looking to work with those companies that are confused, and help them figure out what their business needs. Past all the buzzwords, past the fads, past the hype and into the needs of an organization and finding the right tool for them to use for the right purpose.
My question is: What have I missed that you believe is important to that end?
Photo credit: Boskizzi
Jun 26, 2008 | blog
If you’ve been blogging or interacting on social media sites for some time, you’ll know the real reason many people are interesting in social networking. It’s the people of course! The power of social media is in it’s ability to shrink borders, provide publishing & broadcasting platforms, and do so in ways that make it very easy for people to use them.
That’s what I find most interesting about social media, being able to see people meet, plan new things, and build new things. Sure I like to be part of it too, but my goal is to bring people together so they can find the resources, ideas, inspiration or whatever it is that they need. I like seeing people make that next leap, that next step.
Watching it happen with people all over the world is a great thing, but it’s just as fascinating to see it happening on the local level as well. It’s one of the most important aspects of the social web, and one that I believe that is taking parts of it mainstream. I always hesitate to mention “mainstream”, but I see more and more people experimenting, or starting to use some social features on product sites.
It’s great to see that happen, because as our modern neighborhoods have kind of closed in on themselves, becoming safer, more secure, the physical interaction has waned. So it’s great to see people coming back around and getting more interactive online. In doing so, it seems that they really start getting interested in socializing in person as well. So I think it really generates a lot of community building offline as well as online.
Photo credit: roel1943
Jun 17, 2008 | happiness
Seeing Twitter approach 99.9% uptime.
Jun 16, 2008 | blog
In past posts on the topic, I’ve often wondered when the average worker would “get” blogging. I have to admit that I finally “got it” recently, but from a different perspective. While working with larger firms, I’ve again had the chance to observe the average office worker. In doing so, “it” occurred to me while explaining how social media adds value to an organization that many folks just don’t have the bandwidth to participate.
It’s not that they wouldn’t want to, rather, it’s that the modern organization is so optimized on searching for productivity gains that there is little room to add back the socialization tools to the mix. To do so without finding the reasons for using more employees’ time doesn’t add value to the organization. Many existing efforts to engage the employee meet with mediocre results because people don’t have interest in helping their employer know more about them.
Another aspect of social media in the enterprise is buy-in. There simply is a certain demographic that will be averse to participating. The reasons for this can be nearly anything, but usually comes back to the fact that many people can’t grasp the value of participating. They may exhibit this perspective in many other aspects of their life as well by not joining community groups or friends in other activities.
So, for those organizations that are trying to leverage the knowledge of their employees, the challenge is to find the channel that they will respond to. It’s more than that however, because just like working to connect with consumers, the business needs to connect with their staff. They need to eliminate the gap between business and employee by being themselves. Executives & veeps need to show their personalities, not their “game face” that they use for business. The employees know about that all too well, they need to see that the business is made up of real people.
Social Media in general has this issue – that people aren’t willing to invest the time, or don’t see any value in participating. It’s not unique to this new way of engaging people. Similar challenges faced radio and television at one time as well, newfangled things that they were. These new community building tools & techniques are still in their infancy and will be a large part of the infrastructure of the new economy that is developing as we speak – the trends in the market prove that out every day.
Photo credit: ShadowStorm
Jun 8, 2008 | blog
Awhile back, I’d started a list of "101 Uses for Twitter", but never seemed to get past 27 for some reason. Of course, it had been last autumn since I brainstormed on it. While I don’t think that I personally could come up with 101 uses, I’m sure there are many more than that.
So I thought about this again for awhile this morning and did think of 50 uses that I’ve seen or participated in. So here is a list of 50 uses for Twitter, I’m thinking of more as I write this, so maybe there is a chance at that "101" post sometime.
- Keep in touch with my
Twitter peeps friends - General news item links
- News & links on my industry or area of interest
- Fast answers to quick questions
- Professional networking
- Links to nearly everything
- Marketing
- Personal branding
- Corporate & product branding
- Haiku’s
- Making friends
- Feel "plugged into the web and it’s various personalities"
- Replacement for instant messaging applications
- Chat tool
- Promotional tool for my blog
- Providing new reading opportunities
- Fun stuff!
- Meeting new, interesting people to communicate with
- Collecting links
- Finding sites related to social networking
- "To listen in on my contacts rants"
- A web worker "water cooler"
- Micro-blogging
- A personal "techmeme"
- Lightweight text broadcasting tool
- Easy way to annoy your spouse
- Promotional tool for my brand
- Ranting
- Idea generator
- No-cost non-profit announcement system
- Bring a sense of community to your home office
- Tracking status of friends
- Status message generator for other social networks
- Frustration generator (at least when it is down)
- Thought publisher
- Promotional tool for my organization
- Following public discussions
- Travel guide
- Controlled discussion between friends
- Uncontrolled discussion between friends with viewers
- List generator
- Meeting agenda generator
- Coffee shop locator
- People search
- Promotional tool for my company
- Product reviews
- Trip planner
- Backchannel for events
- Feedback generator
- Authentication mechanism
So what are you uses for Twitter? I’m sure I didn’t capture them all, so add your ideas and things you use Twitter for below.
