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I was having a Twitter conversation late last week with Conner McCall about the definition of Twitter.  Is it social networking?  Is it a social network?  I had asked:

“Twitter - Social Network? Still just microblogging? Somewhere in between?”

Conner wrote a follow-up post on the topic, in which he brought up some good points about why defining Twitter just shouldn’t happen.

Under most circumstances, I too shy away from defining and corralling social media tools into categories.  Honestly, what’s the point sometimes?

However, I’m involved in some research through DigiActive concerning the use of digital tools in activism efforts around the world.  When it came time to coding qualitative data on how people use their mobile phones for their advocacy work, I had separated out Twitter from all of the other social networks such as Facebook.

While going over the survey coding with the research team, someone suggested that several of the responses get combined in some way, and one of those ways was to lump Twitter in with the social networks.  In fact, it was more like “Twitter is a social network so let’s put it in there.”

I really needed to push back on this because I see some key differences between the two, at least in terms of this project.  Firstly though, some important similarities:

  • One-to-many communication
  • Everything is public within your “network”
  • Information/data sharing

Aside from those major similarities, there are some differences that are too important to overlook for the purposes of trying to define how people use these tools to disseminate information and communicate with people.

In Conner’s thought process came one of the very reasons I needed to have a definition of Twitter.  He said:

“It’s a free eco-system that allows you to talk about what you want, but by limiting you to 140 characters it keeps conversations clean and neat.  E-mail, instant message, and social networks will all be around for a long time, but you get messages that take minutes to read where Twitter’s messages take seconds.  This enforced brevity let’s you interact with a lot more people on a daily basis.  Twitter just takes online communication and adds what events like Ignite add to presentations.”

It’s this quick, one-time communication aspect of Twitter that makes it very different than some of the longer-standing ways in which people interact on places like Facebook.  You can have months-long campaigns on Facebook, where you gather fans and advocates for your cause.  Or you can share photos or videos that can still be top-of-mind (read: in the first two pages of your friends’ Stream) the next day or several days. The interaction with information on a platform like Facebook is much more dynamic than it is on a platform like Twitter.

Twitter, on the other hand, is done-and-done.  Information is disseminated real time, and often forgotten after that.  This comes into play in any sort of activism effort because the length of time that Twitter is really useful is often much shorter than on social networks, and the reason that Twitter is used is usually much different than the reasons that Facebook is used.

Additionally, “this forced brevity [that] let’s you interact with a lot more people on a daily [or hourly] basis” is one of the reasons why people will use Twitter over social networks to mobilize efforts.  Such was (sort of) the case in the Moldovan protests last month (note: the Twitter aspect of these protests was, in my opinion, overblown by much of the media).

The one tough thing about this question is that I’m not necessarily in disagreement with calling Twitter a social network.  It is a network of people that you interact with socially, through social media (whatever that means), which is, at a high-level, what happens on Facebook and other “social networks.”  I have a problem bunching them together when you get into the specifics of how those social networks work at a functional level.

In closing, while I like to also leave thing undefined a lot of the times and agree, for the most part, with Conner when he says that Twitter has no rules, there are times when the distinctions between these tools, like any set of tools, need to be highlighted.  And usually these functional distinctions translate into at least small conceptual distinctions as well.

I would love to know your thoughts on how you might define social networks, or how you would make the distinction between Twitter and what everyone else considers social networks, or what you think about the whole definition thing in general!

         

Shoestring Magazine has had a fair amount of success using social media while they bootstrap their business.  They ask the panelists a few questions about maximizing their resources (mainly people) and how to best expand into other geographies.  They also get some feedback on their Facebook page.

Please feel free to give Shoestring further advice in the comments section!

Specific Question from Shoestring:

“We know how to best use social media, and are often asked to consult other companies / give tutorials, but the main thing we haven’t been able to figure out is how to maximize our bandwith as a two-person operation. We know social media works, but it can be a full-time job, and to do it really well takes us away from our mission critical day-to-day operations. How can we best streamline or lifehack our social media tasks without losing the genuine, human side of social media interaction, other than using our freelance base?”

Panelists:

Rachel Happe, Co-Founder of Community Roundtable
Karen Rubin, Product Owner at HubSpot
Cappy Popp, Co-Founder of Thought Labs
Mike Langford, Founder & Head Tweeter of Tweetworks

If you have any further advice for Shoestring, feel free to leave them in the comment sections!

Additional Event resources:

         

Case Study One: Millenium Campus Network

Sam Vaghar, Managing Director of Millenium Campus Network

Our panelists give Sam some valuable feedback on the social media strategy for MCN.  Please add your own advice for them if you’d like!

1)  Facebook bridges many youth, but does it reach older generations as well and create bridges between generations?  Are there more effective networks for doing this?

2) What are the parameters/limits of social media?  When it comes to organizing for social and political change, what can’t social media do or replace?  Will these parameters change in the next 5 to 10 years?

3) How can social media best be used to organize offline social action?

4) What makes Facebook and Twitter so popular?  What traits from these sites can we utilize in making our own websites gain a lot of traffic and interactive participation?

5) How do we cross generational divides? I want to reach potential donors and mentors who are not students.  How do we get out there?

6) How can we make MCNpartners.org addictive like Facebook and Twitter?

Panel Responses:

Ken: I think you want to make sure your blog is as good as it can be, with images, audio, video.

Joe: Don’t worry as much on the quality of the website, work on the blog.

Brian: Getting really good on the RSS, start commenting aggressively on their blogs with thoughtful comments.

Joe: We have the same issue, that people are one step removed from the people are affected.  At Boston Medical Center, we talk about women, kids, and cancer.  That’s the way into their hearts.

Brian: Facebook is going to solve your generational gap.  More and more 30-to-50 somethings are jumping on.

Sam: How do we make a kick-ass blog?

Gradon: Social media itself can’t do anything.  It’s just a tool.

Joe: Look at the blogs you go to, the ones you love. Check out problogger.net.

Brian:  As Seth Godin says, you want your blog to be remarkable.  Remark-able.  Something people are remarking on, talking about.


Do you have any suggestions for Sam and Millenium Campus Network?

         

Panelists:
Gradon Tripp, Founder of Social Media for Social Change
Joe Waters, Director of Cause Marketing for Boston Medical Center
Ken George, New Media Production Manager for WBUR
Brian Halligan, CEO and Co-Founder of HubSpot
Kate Brodock, Founder and Principal of Other Side Group (Moderator)

Case Studies:

Sam Vaghar, Managing Director of Millenium Campus Network
Julie Soforenko, Marketing and Outreach Coordinator of ACCION USA

We’ve included a decent clip of the general discussion, followed by a full transcript.

Note: This transcript was recorded in real-time and is therefore an incomplete record of the panel discussion.  Which is to say that this is the jist of what was said.  Before attributing any quotes, please first seek permission from the speaker.

Q: Please introduce yourself and answer the question, “What is your definition of social media?”

Joe Waters: I’m the director of cause marketing of Boston Medical Center – and we do a lot of “between non- and for-profit” partnerships, like Project (RED). We partner with many for-profits (point of sale or percentage of sale programs, generally) — a lot of that to raise money for the medical center.  One big event, Halloweentown, is put together with iParty, and has been a big fundraiser and very attractive to the what we call “the four-legged four-armed monster” — mothers with kids.  I write a blog on cause marketing, as well.

Social media to me is (1) two-way communication (I like sites that talk back to you, like Twitter, Facebook, and blogs), and (2) user-generated work.  We’re seeing the idea of someone sitting in an office and generating content going away.

Ken George: Public radio, online production manager for WBUR.  Thank you for pledging to your local radio station.  I recognize that pledging is a particular type of fundraising, and I’ve been working on pushing WBUR toward social media in the past year.  What Obama did with social media to engage and mobilize was great, and I’d like to see public radio do that, too.  We have monthly social media gatherings at the station.  It’s important to break down the walls between the customers and us.  I think a key part of the definition of social media is Creating Value.

Gradon Tripp: I’m in business development at Firstgiving.  We use the tools of social media to raise money for non-profits.  I think there’s a lot of nonsense out there about social media.  I think it’s the just new tool of communication, like a telephone.

Brian Halligan: HubSpot is an inbound marketing company.  The tried and true marketing techniques don’t change much across the for- to non-profit spectrum, and you and I are getting better and better at blocking out traditional, interruption-based marketing messages.  The old rules are broken and getting more and more broken.

My co-student at MIT created a blog in the early days and was very smart about engaging others.  And this helped develop my theory that marketing needs to move from outbound – interrupting you – to inbound.  I think of social media as interactive, two-way, many-to-many.  It’s great for marketers because you can really lower your marketing costs.

Q: Why did you start using social media, and what’s the process of bringing people onboard?

Brian: When we first started using social media, we initially researched for the idea of our company by checking on the social mediasphere.  Blogs, emails, etc. are all important channels to be used, and social media is one of them.  And we measure over time the conversation rate for each channel, including social media.  Step 1 is creating remarkable content, such as a blog.  You want to optimize the blog title, short and sweet, for both Google and concise sharing, such as on Twitter.  You almost need to be a professional title writer for social media.  Then step 2 is to market it through all the channels.

Joe: We have to be a proactive, progressive fundraising operation – our customers don’t make enough to be our main source of donations, so we have to widen our net.  Getting into social media was the next step, and we always want to be ahead of what our partner companies are doing, and now that they’re getting into social media, we can help them with our expertise, helping with the audience, the tools, building a presence, and when they see us as an organization that’s helping add value, that makes a difference when of the many nonprofits they work with, one of them is helping them achieve their marketing goals.  It helps us stand out, compared to a nonprofit they work with who they don’t hear from except for once a year when planning the annual fundraiser.

Ken: My eureka moment came when we got comments through some Flickr pictures.  It has taken me a good 6 months to demystify social media, and it was scary at first given our prestigious brand, which we’re rather protective of.  As a journalistic organization, WBUR is concerned with brand and appearance issues, like avoiding biases.

The goal is to demystify social media to the WBUR folks, and getting our listeners into the building has been a large part of that.  Our progress has been in fits and starts, but I think we’re out in front of the comparable public radio stations out there.

Gradon: We have tweetups – take a word, at the letters T-W, and it’s a twitter word.  But many of them are just having a beer.  So I wrote a blog post, “Let’s have a social media fundraiser.”  And this one event that was supposed to just raise a few thousand dollars turned into a $20K fundraiser.  Our most recent event raised $30K — half cash and half in-kind donations.

Q: How do you convert followers into volunteers or funders? Followers into doers?

Gradon: You ply them with alcohol.  Our fundraising events aren’t different – raffles, silent auctions, alcohol.  We had a successful event, advertised as $45 for an open bar in NYC, where that’s a cheap night out.  After 90 minutes of that, we bring out the raffle tickets.  Things like that – raffle tickets, silent auctions – are the tried-and-true tools of fundraising, and it’s not like social media is going to replace that.

Everyone asks, “What’s in it for me?” We teamed up with content producers who thought we were doing good work and asked them to point back to us, in the channels we work in.

Joe: On twitter, you’re getting a lot of branding and marketing people as early and heavy adopters, and so as a non-profit guy you can have conversations with them about what they’re doing, what their clients are up to, and even looking at collaboration.  And a nonprofit talking to a for-profit PR director — that’s an easy and productive connection to make.

Brian: There are several types of content we push out through twitter: blog articles, webinars, video

Joe: Is twitter the death of blogging?  Or does blogging fade as Twitter grows?

Brian: Everyone wants to be a publisher.  If you create interesting blog content, that works for both social media tools and Google.

Kate: And HubSpot has great video spots.

Ken: Some parts of fundraising, pitching for pledges, doesn’t work as well on social media, since public radio-style pledge drives tend to be very direct appeals, which doesn’t translate as well to social media. But the visits to the station are very powerful.

Gradon: Ken does something subtle — a week before a pledge drive, he’ll ask followers to respond, “Just say hi.”  I.e., If you like WBUR, let us know.”  Which helps prime the pump.  Very clever.

Q: Local vs. National scale efforts in new media, what say you?

Brian: It’s about your product – can it be scaled nationally?  If so, social media works, because it too scales nationally.  But if you’re a local business with local services, it doesn’t quite work.

The Facebook search bar is one of the most used search engines, and I think it will grow to be a way to find local services.  But slicing and dicing down to your neighborhood is still tough.  Far more benefit taking something small and expanding nationally.

Gradon: We’re seeing charities raise money online where only a small portion of donors are in the state of the services rendered.  The rest live elsewhere.

Q: What is value of using social media to get information, feedback, to avoid mistakes?  Research value?

Gradon: I don’t think one should be afraid of making social media mistakes.  Jump in.

Brian: It’s a great way to get Beta feedback quickly.  Obama’s campaign was great at that market testing.

Joe: I was listening to Blue State Digital talking about social media – they’re the ones who did Obama’s web campaign – and they’re very nice about it, but said that email is the killer app because everyone still reads their email.  It’s a better way to reach people, and it’s more actionable.

Gradon: Social media is a tool in the toolbox.  Still, the largest response rate is from email.

Brian: At HupSpot, we track a metric called reach.  The social media side of our marketing list is growing.  I think when someone wants to communicate, you’ll need to tap email as WELL as twitter, facebook, etc.

Joe: Zappos is a great example of doing more of having a logo online, giving the logo purpose and personality. But it is labor-intensive.

Q: What are 1 or 2 really important things for the audience to take away about how to use social media?

Ken: At WBUR, it requires a bunch of people to believe in it and carry the torch.  The other crucial thing is consistency.  Someone in my organization wants a blog, I give them that, and they post perhaps once a month.  It is a time investment, which is something that many don’t realize.

Brian: When my parents watched TV in the ‘70s, they watched the ads.  A bit by bit, through TiVo, the remote, Internet content, that interruption-based marketing model has melted.  We’re starting to see more and more Fortune 500 companies grow through expertise in the social media and Internet space.  You can see it in the quick churn rate of Fortune 500 companies, how many new ones there are every year.  My advice is to just get on with it.

Gradon: You get in, you do it, you don’t question yourself, and if you believe in yourself, you’re figure it out and thrive.

Joe: You need to be really into social media, or you need to find someone in your organization who is.  You know the book, “He’s Just Not That Into You”?  It’s like that.

Kate: A lot of companies try to restrict who can blog or communicate about the company’s activities.

Brian: I think it’s dead wrong to keep employees from blogging.  If you were to rank all the marketing efforts of your organization, let’s say there are 15, and if you replace the worst one replace it with a blog, and I guarantee in 6 months, you’ll have a new bottom ROI marketing initiative that is not the blog.

Gradon: Sometimes it’s Steve the mail guy who IS one of the best faces of the company.

Kate: If you can draw parallels between problems like blogging on company time with how companies have dealt with other issues, like personal email, personal phone use, etc., it’s not really that different.  To prevent employees from blogging when blocking personal email isn’t done seems misguided.

CASE STUDY ON MILLENIUM CAMPUS NETWORKS

CASE STUDY ON ACCION USA

Q&A

Q: Isn’t spam an issue?  Having your audience feel like you’re selling to them?

Brian: Well, with Twitter you can choose who you follow.

Joe: The twittersphere really sniffs out sincerity quickly.

Gradon: Zappos doesn’t ask you to buy shoes.  Instead, it’s a balance between demonstrating personality and providing value.

Joe: It’s about presenting yourself as a progressive, thought leader in the industry.

Kate: It’s about value.  It’s not marketing.  It’s linked to who you are, and it’s where people go to get information.

Julie: How do balance your personality on twitter vs. expertising yourself?

Gradon: Chris Brogan is a thought leader in social media.  He writes more blog posts in a week than I write in a month, and a lot of the time it’s, “I had an idea, here it is.”  You get a mix of “if you run a company, here’s what you should be doing” and “It’s Wednesday and that means spaghetti day.”

Ken: I’ve struggled with how to balance my personality Ken George with WBUR.  It works best when it’s blurred, but it’s a challenge.

Brian: They’re real currency and social currency.  And if you have 5 minutes with Chris Brogan, you shouldn’t ask him for money, you should ask him to link to you on his blog.  You’ll get way more out of it.

Q: I work for AIDS Action Committee.  We’ve found it difficult to make the conversation two-way.  How can we do this better?

Gradon: Before you ask a question to your audience, you have to answer them. Talking to people.  If you are the thought leader in the Boston AIDS community, think about what you have to offer.

Joe: One of the things we’ve talked about at BMC is, “What are our issues to talk about?”  Health insurance, because people worry about that.  Emergency services, because people are fascinated with it – think about the success of ER.  For the 2 or 3 things trending in your area, get talking about it if you’re not.

Q: Have you every used a controversial blog posting to spur discussion?

Gradon: My philosophy is to let others be negative, to be bigger and better than that.  When I’m negative, it’ll be about a small thing about a site’s layout and then I’ll compliment the site for its content and mission.  One time we had an item make it on Digg, and that brought a lot of negative trolls.  Digg is full of those.  And we let them have their way on the message boards and soon they left.  It was easier not to engage.

Brian: I would suggest being polarizing.  We did well on Digg at the beginning of HupSpot by posting polarizing articles about Google and Apple.  …  Or think of it this way: If someone makes a negative comment on your site, use it as a way to show what great customer service you have.

Ken: Occasionally people cross a line, and you do need to set standards about what  will be censored.  We moderate after comments are posted, and that works for us.

         

A few of this week’s articles on marketing:

Top 4 New Facebook Page Features Businesses Will Love (HubSpot Blog; Ellie Mirman) - Thoughts on the new Facebook page changes.

Top 10 Media and Marketing Books of All Time (AdAge) - Be sure to check the comment section, there were a few other suggestions.

WebTV: TV or not TV (B2B Marketing Online) - A synopsis on the benefits of using video in your B2B marketing strategy

Six Ways to Make Web2.0 Work (McKinsey Quarterly)

Do you have any great articles you’d like to share?

         

Below is the slideshow to a little talk Anya and I did on Tuesday.

The description for the talk is:

Have you ever wondered how you might be able to use Facebook to increase awareness levels of your company, product or service? Kate Brodock and Anya Woods of Other Side will lead a discussion on the ins and outs of the tool, examples of how other individuals and companies have used the tool for business purposes, and suggest ways you can get yourself started.

Facebook for Business

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: social networking)

Please let us know if you have any suggestions (as we’ll be giving the talk again) or would like to learn more.

         

I wanted to make a quick comment on permission (permission emailing, permission marketing all that good stuff).  I’m going to use a specific example to illustrate why people are still not getting the concept of permission.

We all know the billions of Facebook of groups out there.  I get invites to them all the time, most I ignore, some I get excited about, and some I join because a friend wants me to.  Regardless of the reason, what this means is that I’m on the list.

I have one or two groups that I joined because they’re clients of a friend of mine.  And these one or two groups, at times, take up about 50% of my inbox.  It’s unbelievable.  I don’t read them, because there are too many.

Back to my point. Because you have access to my inbox (whether it’s email or Facebook or what have you), that doesn’t mean you yet have my permission.  There needs to be an extra step (or two…or three) that shows me not only the you know what to do with that access, but also that you respect the fact that you have it.  Once you’ve reached that point, you have my permission.

When my inbox is overflowed, my permission is retracted, and regardless of whether you can email me, I’m not paying attention.

Getting an audiences permission is not a simple, one-step process.  You have to figure out how to use your access.  Just because I walk into your store, doesn’t mean that I asked you for over-the-shoulder pestering to try on clothes, and it also doesn’t meant that tactic is going to work.  Let me be in your space, check things out.  You can lead me in the right direction and help me out, but pay attention to my cues and respond to them accordingly.

         

Everyone’s coming out with their own list of best and worst of the year, so I thought I’d add my two cents. These are mostly adverts, however I did add innovative (or non-innovative) businesses as well, keeping the customers coming back or leaving. Please note, this could be based on Creativity, Appeal, Effectiveness or just the fact that it made me crack up. Also, these lists could have easily been 20 commercials deep (I kept wanting to add to my “Best of” list, but cut it at 10… there are some that may deserve to be on there, such as Coke’s awesome Superbowl commercials)

Best of 2007
10. Careerbuilder.com commercials
9. Bud Light Dude commercial
8. Apple and its iPhone
7. Any commercial by Sports Center
6. Doritos, for successful UG commercial contest
5. Geico’s Cavemen (as much as I don’t like them, man did Geico capitalize on that)
4. Radiohead’s Online Album Release (making due with the situation at hand)
3. Cadbury meets Phil Collins meets a Gorilla
2. Facebook
1. Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty

Worst of 2007
10. Smiling Bob and the Enzyte commercials (not because I think the content is crude, but they’re just so stupid)
9. Salesgenie.com commercial from the Superbowl, however successful it turned out to be for them
8. Geico’s Cavemen (sorry, I also just don’t like them)
7. Any ad by PETA, they’re usually entirely illogical
6. Britney Spears
5. Chris Cox commenting on Britney Spears
4. Time Warner’s AquaTeen Boston Campaign
3. It’s political campaign season, which I hate
2. Any commercial for Christmas that started on or before the 1st of November (didn’t seem to help your retail sales now did it?)
1. Head On…. I think I want to go crazy