Category: Social Media

My twitter is not your twitter

There’ve been several discussions -which I’m too lazy to link to- about twitter: What it is, what it should be, the right/wrong way of using it, who you should follow, who you should unfollow, and most recently, how to measure authority (whatever that is: influence? credibility? trustworthiness?)

I resist any attempts at defining the right way to use twitter and I urge you to do the same.

The right way is that there shouldn’t be one right way.

It all comes down to the way you view the world:

Possible worldview #1: The world is complex, pluralistic, and fragmented; there are multiple voices and multiple truths. People construct their worlds through communication.

Possible worldview #2: The world can be reduced down to a few simple laws, rules, and patterns. There is one truth out there waiting to be discovered.

If #2 is your worldview, then you will keep looking for the “right” way to use twitter, and for the right way to define and measure authority.

However, if you see the world as in #1, you will agree that different groups and subgroups will create different cultures around twitter, and will use it in different way. You may also agree that a person who has authority in one group doesn’t have it in another group, because each group has different criteria for authority, and in some group the concept doesn’t even exist or matter.

To me, the beauty of social media is that it is fluid, pluralistic, multivocal, fragmented, and chaotic. Yes, it’s very postmodern, and that’s the way I like it. I see no need to impose strict authoritative definitions. Once these definitions are imposed and accepted, twitter becomes them – because that’s how we construct our world through communication.

And the problem is, that once something is constructed and accepted, it becomes reified – it becomes a hard, immutable, taken for granted truth. We forget there was a time when it was open to negotiation and discussion and we continue to live with it, to obey its definitional authority, even when it doesn’t serve our purposes any longer.

To avoid this, I’d rather we keep the world of twitter fluid, complex, and pluralistic, and that we don’t agree on any one definition or right way. Rather, let us enjoy the multiple worlds and villages we’ve built around twitter, and celebrate the fact that my twitter might not be your twitter, and that’s the beauty of it.

Blogs matter

Thanks to all of you who participated in my survey about the importance of blogs in public relations!

Here is my presentation of the results (runs about 19 minutes).

If you quote this presentation, you can use the following citation:

Vorvoreanu, M. (2008). Blogs matter. Panel presentation at the National Communication Association Annual Convention, Public Relations Division, San Diego, CA.

Here are some highlights from the results, based on a convenience/viral (non-probability*) sample of 203 respondents:

Blogs matter in hiring decisions

  • Among respondents with 5+ years of experience in PR, if they had a choice between equally qualified job candidates, but one candidate had a blog and the other one did not,
    • 74% would hire the one with the blog
    • 19% would hire the one without the blog

  • Both people who blog and do not blog are more likely to hire the candidate who has a well-written, good professional blog. Among the respondents who do not write a blog themselves:
    • 57% would hire the candidate with a blog
    • 33% would hire the candidate without a blog
  • Respondents who write a blog:
    • 86% would hire the candidate with a blog
    • 8% would hire the candidate without a blog

Blogs matter for individuals

I asked PR bloggers what benefits they have derived from blogging. These were the most frequently mentioned benefits:

1. Contacts, networking, engaging with PR community (26; 34%)
2. Business benefits: jobs, clients, income, internships, speaking opportunities (21; 27%)
2. Learning, keeping current (21; 27%)
2. Gaining recognition, credibility; thought leadership; personal branding (21; 27%)
Other: Sharing knowledge (10; 13%), SEO (6; 8%)
None: 3; 3.9%

Blogs matter for the PR profession

I asked both bloggers and non bloggers how they thought PR practitioners’ blogs impact the PR field.

  • 91% of respondents said PR practitioner blogs have a positive impact
  • 6% said PR practitioner blogs have no or very little impact
  • 2% said PR practitioner blogs negative impact

PR practitioner blogs increase practitioner knowledge and move PR towards higher standards of professionalism

  • Knowledge benefits (75%):
    • Educate each other (23%)
    • Create & share knowledge & best practices (32%)
    • Dialogue & discussion (17%)
    • Unify PR field (10%)
    • Keep current (6%)
  • Professionalism benefits (18%)
    • Increase transparency; flack (9%)
    • Higher professional standards (6%)
    • Prove the value of PR (3%)

I encourage you to view the presentation so you can get more details and put these findings in context.

*Please remember that this sample is not representative of PR practitioners in the U.S. – or we don’t know if it is – so we can’t assume that these results apply to other people who did not participate in this survey.

Thanks again to all who participated and let me know if you have any questions!

How to find people to follow on Twitter

So you figured out Twitter, signed up for an account, added a nice photo and did all the basics David Meerman Scott recommends.

Now, what?

It feels awkward and lonely. Like you have a phone but no one to call. The next step is to build up your social network on Twitter. To do so, you need to find people to follow.

Caution! Before you start following people,
make sure you’ve done the things DMS recommends!!!

At the very least:

  1. have a bio & a link to your site, blog, etc.
  2. upload a personalized avatar (preferably a photo of your beautiful self)
  3. post at least 10-15 tweets. See also this guide to getting started on Twitter

Now, you’re really ready. Let’s find those people.

What kind of people? Who should you follow?

You should follow people you have something in common with. I’ll take the example of a PR student. You want to follow PR pros, other PR students, PR profs, and if your hobby is… sand castles, sand castle enthusiasts.

The principle is simple: Find 2-3 people to follow. Then:

  1. Look at the list of people they follow. If the people you’re interested in are interested in these people, chances are you’re interested in them, too. Repeat the process. For every new person you follow, or who follows you, look at the list of people they follow.
  2. [update 10/31/2009: unfortunately, this tip is outdated. You can only see @replies if you follow both people in a conversation. As Twitter adds capacity, I hope they will revert to the old model, it was the best way of finding new people to follow, IMO] Make sure you choose, in your twitter settings, to see all @ replies. Notice who the people you identified in step 1 are conversing with. Check them out by clicking their username in the twitter conversation. See what they tweet about, read their bio, check out their blog, and if appropriate follow them. Then repeat Step 1: see who they follow.

    3. twitter

  3. You probably read PR blogs. Most PR bloggers are on twitter, also. Look at their About or Contact pages, or look at the sidebars for twitter information. Look at their blogrolls to identify other PR blogs & bloggers. Then repeat step 1.

It will take you a few weeks to build your social network, but if you follow these steps, you can accumulate quite a lot of followers in a few days. Take it easy, don’t follow 70 new people every day, or they’ll think you’re a spammer. Attempt to find 5 new people to follow every day until you reach 50 or 100. Then your social network will grow naturally, you don’t have to try.

Now, if you’re in PR, the easiest thing to do it to go to PROpenMic (a social network for PR folk) and to find people there. Many people list their twitter username in their profiles.

So, let me get you started and ready for Step 1. Here is a list of some of the people I follow and I think you should, too, if you’re in PR. It’s not a comprehensive list and it’s not a TOP.. anything list. Just a list:

See also:

And since you won’t find me on any of these lists, I’m @prprof_mv.

Happy & safe tweeting!

If you’re a seasoned twitter user and want to help out, write your advice and/or twitter username in the comments.

Students live-twitter class

It’s long overdue, but here is my post about the PRinciples class session that was live-twittered.

I started class with these instructions for students:

  • Unprotect updates (settings)
  • Use Web interface & reload page often
  • Use #principles hashtag – twemes
  • Tweet: Important ideas, Links, Comments

Then I set them free and started lecturing about social media: What it is, and how it has changed power dynamics in society. I remember telling students that social media lets people inside the Golden Wall – telling them that as I was speaking, they could twitter what I said, and that was scary: What if I said something stupid? I also told them that social media makes it possible for individuals to have voices as loud as those of rich organizations.

Then Laura Fitton (@pistachio) joined us on Skype, and the live-twittering continued.

During that one hour, the conversation coming from our class was at the top of twitter conversation tracking boards twitscoop and current.fm.

The most powerful take-aways for me were:

  1. We LIVED the concepts I had just talked about at the beginning of class. We saw our voice climb up among twitter conversations. Tweets from a small group of mostly young women were at the top of the charts. We experienced the shifted power dynamics brought about by social media.
  2. For me as the teacher, the experience was terrifying and liberating. It was like living the nightmare that you’re naked in public. My students might not tweet negative things about me, but if I do say something stupid, as I often do, it doesn’t stay within the classroom -it’s out there for the whole world to see. So, CAUTION: This exercise is not for everybody. It certainly wasn’t for this NYU professor.
  3. Learning happened – quickly and powerfully as an avalanche. It was important to give students time to reflect on what they learned. Here are some of their reflections: Alyssa, Cara, Michael, Sallie.
  4. The downside: This experiment made apparent several opportunities for twitter spam, which I won’t explain because I don’t want to teach people how to spam.

You can read everything that was twittered during class, or just my favorites. Students still twitter during class, and I see and comment on their tweets afterwards – it’s allowed and encouraged, but not required – they should be free to take notes in whatever medium serves them best. I would like to experiment in the future with collective note taking (I’m looking into NoteMesh) and with CoverItLive.

“Utter bullocks”

I’m amused by this expression used in a comment on a RWW post titled: Study: 93% of Americans Want Companies to Have Presence on Social Media Sites.

I also believe it’s the perfect response to the report of this study, as presented in the RWW post. I don’t know, the study might be brilliant. But that’s the problem, they don’t provide enough information so I can decide if it’s brilliant or not.

Two issues here:

1) understand the data before you make decisions based on it

2) even if the data is good & valid, don’t jump in and make decisions based only on statistics & demographics

1) understand the data before you make decisions based on it

Some questions to ask about these particular results:

  • who are the 93% of Americans? There aren’t that many Americans online in the first place!!! (P.S.: cultural sensitivity issue: “America” includes Canda, and South American countries. Do you mean U.S. residents?)
  • they probably mean 93% of survey respondents, I guess (guessing = bad sign in research)
  • who are the survey respondents? Provide information about the sample:

These are just a few things I’d like to know before I’d spend a dime on a “social media presence”. And, as RWW writer Frederic L. points out, which social media sites? Twitter and Facebook are so different they might as well be two foreign countries!

2) even if the data is good & valid, don’t jump in and make decisions based only on statistics & demographics

My social media mantra is: It’s not about technology, it’s about culture.

Culture (social norms, etiquette, communication practices) emerges quickly around a social medium, and is specific not only to that medium, but also to sub-groups of users. So you can assume there are hundreds if not thousands sub-cultures on Facebook alone (about 100 million users worldwide).

An example: Befriending someone you haven’t met before is perfectly acceptable on Twitter, but creepy on Facebook.

So think about social media as a continent with many different countries and cultures. If you were to go to Romania (my native country), would you start doing PR & marketing armed with just some demographics produced by a poorly designed research study? I certainly hope not! I hope you’d take some time (a couple of years, say) to begin to get a grasp of Romanian culture before you dive in.

Same goes with social media. Start with your surveys, and make sure you understand what a good survey is. But do some ethnographic research, too (focus groups will do) before you spend that dime on your “social media presence.”

P.S.

Since I’m ranting, let me point out that the phrase “social media presence” is also … (see post’s title). It’s not about presence, it’s about engagement & conversation.

The way we are

Wired man

This is an old NY Times article (ancient, in Internet time) but I think it does a scary job of describing many of us super-connected,

multitasking “speed demons:”

These speed demons say they will fall behind if they disconnect, but they also acknowledge feeling something much more powerful: they are compulsively drawn to the constant stimulation provided by incoming data. Call it O.C.D. — online compulsive disorder.

[…]

Pseudo-ADD: They become frustrated with long-term projects, thrive on the stress of constant fixes of information, and physically crave the bursts of stimulation from checking e-mail or voice mail or answering the phone.

[…]

”It’s like a dopamine squirt to be connected,” said Dr. Ratey, who compares the sensations created by constantly being wired to those of narcotics — a hit of pleasure, stimulation and escape. ”It takes the same pathway as our drugs of abuse and pleasure.”

[…]

”It’s an addiction,” he said, adding that some people cannot deal with down time or quiet moments. ”Without it, we are in withdrawal.”

”Ten years ago, you had to be in the office 12 hours,” said Mr. Mehlman, who said he now spent 10 hours a day at work, giving him more time with his wife and three children, while also making use of his wireless-enabled laptop, BlackBerry and mobile phone.

Do you see the irony? He doesn’t work 12 hours, he works “only” 10, that’s so much more time with his family!

On playing with his son (dogfight with Lego airplanes):

Both love the game, and it has an added benefit for Dad: he can play with one hand while using the other to talk on the phone or check e-mail. […] ”While he rebuilds his plane, I check my e-mail on the BlackBerry,” Mr. Mehlman explained.

Children want and need their parents’ full & undivided attention. I feel so sad for this kid.

But honestly, does this article describe you? I know it does me. I have the urge to check email and twitter at every stop light. I get bored and need some input during that “down time.”

How do you manage your attention? Do you ever give the most precious gift – your full and undivided attention to something or someone? Care to share?

When I teach my students social media, am I contributing to creating an addiction?  Do I also have the responsibility to teach them how to manage their attention? How do I do that? How do you do that?

[image credit: Wired Man, by flickr user Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com]

[Update, 12:33 pm: Should have mentioned that This NYT article was referred to in a Zencast podcast, podcast #170 on Learning to Listen deeply. Also on iTunes.]