Defining Twitter when you need to

Filed under Digital Activism, new media by on 13 May 2009 at 10:56 {one comment}
My social Network on Flickr, Facebook, Twitter...

[Republished from the Other Side Group blog]

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!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

B2B Voices Post: Case Study on ShipServ

Filed under B2B Marketing, B2B Voices, Marketing, new media by on 1 May 2009 at 17:26 {no comments}

The social media program that this case study is based upon was a joint effort between ShipServ and Velocity Partners, a London-based B2B Marketing agency specializing in technology markets.

So what works for a B2B company? Let’s start by taking a look at a campaign that’s been pretty successful so far. This campaign was driven by John Watton, the VP of Marketing for ShipServ, an internet trading platform for the shipping industry. ShipServ has a global audience and a dispersed community of purchasers who are, believe it or not, quite eager to network.

Goals of the campaign:

  • Raise the awareness of the ShipServ brand amongst our target audience
  • Increase traffic to shipserv.com by 50% in three months
  • Engage with the audience and start to build community

For the full case study, visit B2B Voices.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

B2B Voices Post: 4 Great Reasons to Start a Social Media Program as a B2B

Filed under B2B Voices, new media by on 3 April 2009 at 21:36 {2 comments}

A lot of B2B marketing professionals or departments have wondered what, if any, benefit they would get out of adding social media components to their marketing plans. Isn’t that for consumer-facing companies?

Visit the B2B Voices Blog for the full post on why you should use social media for your B2B.

Has New Media Left Strategy in the Dust?

Filed under new media, Thoughts by on 30 July 2008 at 14:01 {no comments}

[This was originally posted on the Other Side Group blog]

I’m exaggerating, but I do think the plunge that companies have taken into the new media space has largely ignored the importance of strategy in a way we haven’t quite seen before.

Why?

The field of new media “gained” on us very quickly, it changes every day, new tools pop up while others disappear, and one thing will work for one company while it’ll wreak havoc on another. The focus on tools lends itself to a focus on tactics. A company that “gets it” and becomes successful either gets those tools, or they’re lucky, but the success alone makes more people want to jump in and get a piece of the action.

One of the big factors in this field is exactly the speed at which it’s developing: It’s so hot right now that people feel like they should be in it or they’ll die, but at the same time, it’s a different field almost every day.

Coupled with that is the fact that the field is open and can be used by anyone. It’s not industry specific. It’s not like a few car companies with a new technology (which can certainly cause failures for some and huge successes for others). EVERYONE wants to be in the new media space and it can theoretically be used by ANY company or individual with access to the internet. Successes and failures start adding up a lot more at that level, and it becomes harder to identify best- or worse-practices.

The Problem

What I’m seeing more and more, however, is companies that both jump-in-blind and shoot-from-the-hip. Not only do they not really get some of the technologies or platforms, but they more often than not don’t think about an overall strategy for their entry, let alone incorporating their moves into overall company strategy.

I’ve seen the following trends (some of these are very general and not meant to be all-encompassing):

  1. Companies are going to PR agencies first, because PR agencies are the ones that tend to implement the tools. Companies aren’t consulting marketers or strategists, and often times they aren’t even consulting the marketing department inside their own companies as much as they should. Somehow they’ve decided that the two are separate functions.
  2. PR agencies tend to use tactics over strategy. They gather up the new media tools and develop a process behind one or a few, and focus on the implementation. Strategy is downplayed, if brought into the equation at all, and the campaign ends up being sporadic or misaligned with company strategy because it’s separated and made to be simply a process.
  3. Companies sometimes try and take new media involvement on themselves, and again, lose sight of strategy, and develop a very ad hoc system to play around with in the new media space, tool-by-tool.

What this leads to is a colossal waste of resources on a program that isn’t cohesive and doesn’t get the results one hopes for.

Fixing the Problem

Using a military example, any successful military commander that has ever lived will tell you that tactics are useless without a good strategy (or without a strategy period). You can’t patch things together into a successful fort seizure unless you have the entire plan laid out and the objective made clear.

Any great marketer or any basic Marketing 101 book will tell you the exact same thing. This was pulled from one such book, which stresses both the importance of top-level strategy to any strong marketing plan as well as the need to develop tactics and programs to support that strategy.

A few things companies can do when thinking about diving into this space:

  1. Internally align yourself with your own marketing department and make sure that everyone is clear on how this works into overall company strategy. There have to be reasons why you think it would benefit the company and clear ways in which it can remain cohesive. As Zach said last night in his talk on Corporate Blogging: “if you want to set up a corporate blog just to set up a corporate blog, you’re not doing it for the right reasons.” [disclaimer: his talk was far more interesting than that simple statement, for more check out his blog].
  2. If you choose to do the process internally, do not go tool by tool and use them separately. Develop a plan, do research on what others have found beneficial or detrimental, know how to use the tools and how they can work together. Then make sure that transfers into a clear strategy. Make the strategy detailed and focused, too general will lead to the shooting-from-the-belt syndrome.
  3. If you go to an external firm for help, I would suggest going with one that highlights strategy in their process. If they’re not asking you for overall goals, what you hope to gain, they may not know themselves.

Obviously I’m a little biased, since I work for a marketing strategy firm that deals in the new media space, but I would suggest going with a marketing firm first. Most of them have relationships with PR agencies that will then help you with the tactics and programs (although, for the record, we can help on the tactical level as well). For instance, we have a relationship with Spotlight Communications for some of our PR needs: we can develop the strategy and then pass it to the communications folks. Usually, since the project is split, the cost doesn’t end up being that much more, but you get a heck of a lot more in terms of taking the process from strategy straight through to program (which is what you should be doing anyway!).

You can also easily go with just a PR agency, but choose ones that are asking the right questions and identifying the right things concerning your strategy before they start talking about all the great tools out there that you can use.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Global New Media

Filed under new media by on 5 May 2008 at 13:47 {no comments}

An area of interest of mine is international similarities/differences, especially in emerging markets. Another “area of interest” is finding opportunities (which can be a pain in the butt sometimes when your mind keeps turning and it’s 2am and you haven’t gone to sleep yet, but is usually rewarding). The following is a good example of what I mean.

In our last Central Asia and the Caucasus class two weeks ago, we were discussing our possible roles as future “international people” (our school has yet to come up with one title for all of our graduates who are getting Masters in International Relations. International people does the trick for now). Our professor is great because he always pushes us on the applicability of our degree, which makes me breath a sigh of relief after three years (sweet, we’re going to actually use this stuff!).

Anyway, so here I am, about to go into the new media field, and we’re talking about the political, economical and social structure of Central Asia. Essentially, the small business world in most countries in this region is very limited under the governments (I’ll stop at that, as this topic alone could probably take up five blog posts alone). Business skills are likewise limited.

In a round about way, I came to the question of: What does new media mean in countries like this? If I were to have a project in, say, Kazakhstan, in what form would it be?

Countries/regions/companies/you-name-it have varying skill sets and varying levels of skill. A highly interactive social media site which might work here just won’t fly in many countries. But does that mean that new media is useless to them? Does it mean they haven’t reached new media levels, as we’ve* described them yet? Or does the definition of new media change for every scenario? Is their new media a simpler version of ours (or vice versa, as I’m sure there are international players beating “us”), but still considered new media? Is new media relative or comparative?

It can best be depicted by the below:

As you can see, a “simple” solution might be enough in a less developed new media environment, and, in terms of what’s needed, will be a more complete solution.

What does this say about new media cross-border? I welcome your comments.

* Don’t read too much into “we” or “us,” I only mean more developed vs less developed new media, where I consider the people probably reading this post to be at least familiar with more developed new media capabilities.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Page 3 of 3«123

Feed me!

What I thought

Catch me speaking

SXSWi - 12 March, 12:30-1:30, Austin TX

Innovation Uncensored by Fast Company - 18 April, NYC

Check out our book!




Obviously you were wondering what time it was....

Widget By S107 Helicopter

Get Adobe Flash player

Follow me

My Company