When I first started formally digging into social media at Boston Podcamp 2, I didn’t quite understand what the whole fuss about authenticity and transparency was. It seemed to painfully obvious, and every person, blog post, tweet and session about it seemed to be just repeating the same thing over and over. I didn’t get why it was such a big deal, because it seemed really obvious and simple to execute. Connect to your customers honestly, openly and with respect and good things will happen. Other topics echoed often were those of listening to your customer, and having a two-way stream of communication.
Ghostwriting
Yet now, nearly two years later, I see why everyone was talking about it; mainly due to the explosion of social media and the hordes of people failing massively at it. Today in the New York Times, there is an article about twitter ghostwriters acting on the behalf of their clients and speaking in the first person tone for them. Some people expect this behavior because they are used to their favorite celebrities living in a walled garden away from the public, and others who felt that the people they admire were connecting directly with them are appalled.
By no means is it all celebrities that have someone punch out the grueling 140-characters for them. It seems that John Mayer does it himself, as do Shaq, Trent Reznor and even MC Hammer. Using Twitter is easy, and I can’t see why punching out 140-characters is so much for 50-cent that he can’t do it himself. Blogging does take more effort, and even some of the biggest people in social media have admitted to me personally that they occasionally have others do research, writing and editing for their blogs to keep up with the demands of their readerbase.
This is lacking on two sides: transparency and authenticity. The fans want to connect with the celebrities, not someone acting as a PR mouthpiece or someone pretending. They are using Twitter because it is a direct link to the artist, and a glimse into their life. By acting, they are “tricking” their fans into assuming that the person speaking is really them. It is lacking on authenticity because it isn’t them speaking. People want the real-deal.
Why This Happens
At first there is a kneejerk reaction to this, and you want to blame the celebrity for being lazy, the management, the PR firm, etc. Yet, I think I know why this happens and its really not so bad.
I was working with an artist recently and I wanted to help them on their social media and digital strategy, I started making plans and researching for them. Then shortly after they said, “So what day should we do this?”, expecting it to be a one-off thing to do like setting on a static webpage or installing some electrical wire. After talking to them a bit more, I understood that doing all of these things and keeping up seemed really huge, imposing and like a big time-sink to them. I wasn’t actually able to prove (in my head) that this would result in more album sales or more ticket sales for this artist.
They weren’t against doing some of it, but they didn’t want to take the time to learn how to use each of the tools, and really just wanted the benefits but not the daily work put into it. It isn’t a small amount of work either, as I probably spend 2-5 hours daily maintaining my network. Even an hour a day is huge for most people- just look at how hard it is for people to find time to exercise. They didn’t have the budget to have me implement this for them as well, so it didn’t happen in the end.
I’m sure 50-Cent is capable of using Twitter just fine, but this manager doesn’t want to distract him, doesn’t want an potential “liability” from him saying “the wrong thing”, and overall just thinks he can do it better. Honestly, Trent Reznor isn’t the best Twitter user, and if he wasn’t a Rock Star then most people would look over his account quickly as he never has any conversations with anyone over it and just talks about himself.
Two Way Street
While its obvious that you cannot interact with 400,000 people at once and listen to everything they have to say, there is a severe lack of two-way communication and listening on the part of most of the people with massive followings. This medium was supposed to be different and break down the one way communication barriers. Yet, not even glancing at @replies or ever responding to a fan, customer, etc is really missing the point. It makes Twitter no better or different than MTV’s Cribs, because all of a sudden its just you showing off, and not interacting with anyone else. This medium is not a bullhorn for you.
Back to the Beginning
Social Media was born as a new way to break down prior barriers of communication and offer better two way communication than had ever been offered in the past. In the past few months its been used as just another mouthpiece by many. A lot of people want the easy way out. The easy way out isn’t the right way out.
Just as I had thought at Podcamp Boston 2 that “geez this is easy, why are they even talking about this transparency”, you likely are too right now in reading this. Its simple. There isn’t any programming invovled, there is no voodoo magic, or special incantations. Its just doing it, keeping it simple, and as they say, “Keeping it real”.
When you are working with a client, friend, or company and bringing them into social media, don’t gloss over some of the details and just say, “Oh, don’t worry, our team will take care of that for you” for everything. Surely, some things, but work on cleaning up the details, and training their team to effectively use social media as part of their workflow. Don’t just abstract them out of it and impose your words. That’s the “old” PR way, this is the “new” way. Let’s get with the program.
Throughout Obama’s campaign he remained cutting edge with social media. He used Twitter, Digg and even an iPhone application to help drive his campaign. McCain of course stayed with technology from the 1970s and the results spoke for themselves.
He has the biggest Twitter following of all, with over 120,000 followers. Records were broken on the front page of Digg. The question that now occurs to me is, what will he do with all of this power? What does it enable him to do that no President has ever done? Has any President ever had so many willing people that would follow him literally instantly? This is his citizen army to do good deeds that will make America great again. Will he ask us all to write letters to our congressmen on issues? Ask us to donate in times of needs to things like Katrina? Ask our opinion about things like the economy?
Roosevelt had his Fireside Chats, which brought him into the living room of Americans and reached out to help them through hard times. Kennedy used the television. Obama used the internet.
I can’t even fathom all the sorts of things that Obama can use his internet influence for to get Americans not just relying on stale press releases, or State of the Union addresses that other Presidents have. If something happens, he can instantly reach out without the press as the middleman. He doesn’t have to wait for newsreporters, the papers to be printed the next day. He can push out something to Twitter and put it in my pocket.
Never before has the President been able to pull out his cell phone, and literally reach out to you instantly. If disaster strikes, or if something wonderful happens he can call us all to action.
I see this as a uniting force potential that I sincerly hope that he continues to use. They have launched Change.gov which seems to be the beginning of this all, but I look forward to seeing the manefestations of it. Will Obama continue to reach out through Youtube? What type of transparancy will he offer? Will we know who he is meeting with daily and what he feels on things through a blog?
Yes We Can, is a statement of the future and I look forward to seeing this future that Obama enables. For these things alone even, I am glad we have Obama as I feel that McCain would have done none of these.
You followed me on Twitter. Maybe you followed me because you thought what I was saying was interesting. For many they follow people seemingly in order to get a reciprocal follow back. Yet, for some reason I didn’t follow back. A few days later I get an email in my box from Qwitter that you unfollowed me on Twitter, and that’s ok. Why did I not follow you back?
Let’s take a look at the reasons that I didn’t follow you back and think about them a bit:
You fell through the cracks- I hate to say it, but Twitter and my social media network aren’t my highest priorities in life at the moment. They are up there, but if push comes to shove then sometimes you get lost in the shuffle and for this I apologize. If you unfollow me, I’ll likely notice and follow you back then if you fell into this category and we can work to make things right. I’m trying to make this one happen less and less.
You don’t Tweet in English- I think it’s wonderful that the Internet is filled with people that speak various languages, but unfortunately I only speak English and can grok a bit of Latin at best. If you’re Tweeting in another language that’s really cool, but I’m not going to follow what I can’t read at all. Maybe someday I’ll learn, but thank you for the follow. I assume you’re better than me and can read multiple languages or you wouldn’t have done so.
You are clearly a spammer- Twitter has gotten better at catching these, but if you’re a spammer (either automated or just a person that’s an obvious spammer/company) but I don’t follow back people that are just trying to sell their book, diet or new type of kitty litter.
Your follow ratios are fucked- These come in two categories. First; I have literally been followed by people following 30,000+ other people, and with 4000 people following them. There is literally no way that a human can parse that much information, or actually care about what I have to say. I will never follow these people back and they are generally also spammers, or soon to be spammers. No thanks. Then there’s the people who just make some bad choices on Twitter. Try to keep your ratio at no worse than 1:1. 0.9:1 is better, as it shows that you aren’t following every spam-bot back yourself and that you likely actually listen to the conversation as it happens. I see a lot of people that are following 400, but only have 40 in return or worse. That’s a 10:1 ratio and uncool. I could expound on this for a while, but basically if you’re following way too many, then I’m not following you back likely. There are occasional exceptions, but that’s the general rule. Your ratios can be a tad off if you’re still in the sub 100 following/followers area. Everyone gets room to learn.
You don’t Tweet enough- These happen to sometimes be people with screwed up ratios, and it totally confuses me. I generally assume they are about to turn into spammers. I got followed today by someone that was following 1,300 people and followed by 100. She had tweeted 4 times. Why in the world would you follow 1,300 people but only tweet 4 times?!?! I’m almost never one to complain about over-tweeting and I’d much rather see a person with active and healthy conversations than someone with none.
And finally: You aren’t interesting- Ouch. I know that hurts doesn’t it? These are rare, but sometimes if someone is borderline on all of the above things then this really becomes the make or break factor. Actually it can break all of the others pretty easily. If you never @reply, and don’t say at least one thing that makes me think, “That’s something interesting” in your first front page on Twitter then I generally don’t follow you back. Most people luckily are actually interesting.
On the bright side, there’s some people I try to always follow back:
People at an event: Unless you are terribly boring, blatently whoring out a product, or something else then if you were at an event I attended I will likely follow you back no matter what. I tried to follow back every single person from Podcamp Pittsburgh (#PCPBG3) regardless of ratios and stuff because they were all cool people and many were still learning about Twitter.
People from Boston: Again, unless you terribly violate some of the above then if you are from Boston or nearby I will likely follow you back. I figure there’s a good chance of running into you and it’s pretty embarrassing to have not followed back someone. Plus, we already have something in common and likely know many of the same people
You are friend with my friends: If you’re talking a lot with my friends in your first page on Twitter then I’ll likely follow you back. My friends/network can vet people for me.
We’ve had a conversation: If you’ve @replied me for something I’ve said, then I’ll likely follow you back. Ditto if you commented on a photo of mine on Flickr or something. Conversation makes me think that I’ll have more of it in the future, which is what I want.
Growing your network is hard and you have to make a lot of decisions along the way. It sometimes conflicts with the fact that you want to keep your signal to noise ratios solid, but at the same time increase your voice and reach. Everyone’s got their own guidelines and methods of doing things. These aren’t the “right” wants, but just my ways of doing it.
How do you determine who to follow and who to ignore and risk having unfollow you?
Podcamp Pittsburgh 3 was amazing and completely unlike Podcamp Boston 2 or 3. I was slightly concerned about attending as I felt that I likely didn’t know anyone there and would have to constantly break the ice but in reality I already had many connections in Pittsburgh.
The differences were vast, but mostly positive from my experiences in Boston. Somewhat intentionally and somewhat purely due to a different population in the city, the age range was much wider than in Boston. We had several senior individuals attending, who wanted to learn more and find ways to take advantage of this fast moving industry. It’s an older population here in general, but the average age was definitely closer to 40, than the likely 25 that Boston centers around. We also had a much larger openly gay demographic than we had in Boston, which was very cool and unexpected on my part. Pittsburgh also must have some great piercers because everyone had some pretty awesome piercings, kinda random… but I thought it was cool. I’m normally the only guy running around with an industrial in his ear around here, but that wasn’t anything compared to many people there.
Pittsburgh is a significantly smaller scene than Boston and has fewer ‘rockstars’. It is also significantly less commercial and professional at this point which was refreshing. Many people are doing blogs and podcasts for their own personal enjoyment and almost always on topics outside of social media/pr/etc. The attendance was about 1/3rd of Boston’s and overall much less experienced. However that doesn’t mean that they weren’t passionate or wanting to learn. The facility was nice, but the halls were a little cramped at times. The layout actually made a lot more sense than the 4 floors of madness at Boston 3, or the 3 buildings that ROFLCon spanned. I don’t think there were as many hallway discussions as I’d have liked, but the sessions and individual conversations were great.
I don’t believe that a single PR firm was there. No Shift or Topaz here. No digital firms like Crayon or NYC’s Undercurrent. Few consultants. No venture capitalists. Almost no VC backed startups. There was a cool incubator called AlphaLab (reminded me a bit in name of betahouse although quite different) Few programmers and hackers. Yet there were tons of budding bloggers and quite a few veteran Podcasters. Pittsburgh has some great podcasts! Everyone was super nice and I genuinely liked everyone that I spoke with.
I ended up speaking in four sessions, two of which were unplanned until shortly prior. My first session was a presentation that I had done at Podcamp Boston 3 on improving audio for podcasts. The second was Photography for the Blogger. Those were the ones that I had planned and scheduled ahead of time and I think they went ok. I didn’t have the attendance that I had in Boston, but thats OK and I felt some great interaction with the audience. By request I did a literally impromptu session on Virtual Worlds and Social Media since someone didn’t show up, then a session on the truth about advertising, making money and building your brand with a Blog. I don’t think either of them was great (on my part), but we had a lot of information sharing and some great ideas and conversation with me acting almost more as a moderator than a speaker.
I need to work on my speaking skills. I think I’m ok, but I could be a LOT better. Less time, a single presentation. Well practiced, better slides, and more preparation overall. I’m learning.
We went out for some drinks and had a great time. It wasn’t an insane party, but everyone had a great time. Pittsburgh has a thriving nightlife and it is very reasonably priced. I should also point out that in Pittsburgh you can get a decent house/apartment for cheaper than you could get a parking spot in Back Bay or Manhattan which is a real plus.
There is some minor advice that I’d give to Pittsburgh and attendees in general however. First of all. Tweet more!!! For the number of people in attendance the Twitter stream was a little bit quiet. I love that in Boston I can practically relive sessions via liveblogging and blow by blow tweeting from people like @mathurrell @skalik and @repcor. Not so there. Also, more media! I think I only saw two other people with SLR cameras there, and few with cameras overall. No N95/qik streaming of every minute. I actually couldn’t even find anyone with an N95. iJustine I was counting on you, but you were in Chicago! I was also crushed by reality to find that not everyone in the world of social media uses a Mac! Oh well. Also if everyone embraced the hallway a bit more and encouraged flash-sessions more that would be great. Really these are excessively minor complaints and I don’t think detracted from the experience overall. One thing I do feel however is excessively needed and critical is that attendees really do need to carry cards. Not enough people had cards to exchange which was really a shame.
But the real asset of Pittsburgh is its enthusiasm, energy and drive. I feel that the city is a little bit behind Boston in terms of social media and technology, but that really isn’t what’s important. They will catch up soon and the community is growing in amazing ways. The non-commercial nature of most of the people was refreshing and I think leads most people to being a bit more honest and open.
Boston’s Podcamps create a very huge and epic feeling. We constantly have the likes of Steve Garfield, Pistachio, Chris Brogan (he was at PCPGH3 and I got to spend a lot of great time with him), Chris Penn, occasionally Jeff Pulver, huge PR firms, Venture Capital out the wazoo, hordes of BU students and all of the Cambridge startup-geeks (like me) and simply amazing and awesome buildings like the Boston Convention Center and the Harvard Medical Campus. Yet, sometimes that’s a bit much and we don’t focus on the practical and pragmatic. These guys in PA don’t have to talk about authenticity and transparency because they are by their own nature. I think Pittsburgh has a lot going for it and is a pretty awesome place to be in social media.
I got a a handful of good photos (creative commons). I took some video that I’ll edit together and throw up a few places and link here. Slideshare is converting my presentations now, so I don’t have a link yet.
Working at GamerDNA I noticed that not everyone was really on Twitter; which is true of most companies. I really did think that we could get things kicked up a notch and realized that part of it was that most people just didn’t have the time to figure it out. So the CEO gave me a chance to present to the company what I knew about Twitter. Obviously not everything I know about twitter is on here, but overall it gives a nice overview of things. Sorry as my slides have no audio. Perhaps I’ll record some later and update it, but for now, we have slides
If anyone would like for me to present Twitter to their company, of course just email me and we can figure something out. It really is a great tool for communicating and can take your company to a new level of customer service and interaction.
I was also crushed by reality to find that not everyone in the world of social media uses a Mac! Oh well. Also if everyone embraced the hallway a bit more and encouraged flash-sessions more that would be great. Really these are excessively minor complaints and I don’t think detracted from the experience overall. One thing I do feel however is excessively needed and critical is that attendees really do need to carry cards. Not enough people had cards to exchange which was really a shame.