Carrying a Social Media Tune

Because there is so much material out there on writer’s block in social media, it is an obvious challenge for many. Or, maybe bloggers blog about blogger’s block to try to work through their own block! One of the beauties of social media technology is that it brings potential topics, relevant discussions and the associated metrics to our fingertips. Staying on top of trends can be overwhelming but we cannot complain for lack of resources.

To help crack a writer’s block, it is essential to stay on top of trending topics by adapting a few of the following techniques:

• Monitor Twitter & Facebook discussions and industry leaders.
• Read the blogs you have sought out and subscribed to.
• Poll your community.
• Use LinkedIn Answers to troll for what questions are being asked in your industry.
• Visit trending sites or social bookmarking networks to see what gets the most votes.

 

But at the end of the day, it is the tone of our delivery that can hold or dismay our audience. In music, striving for perfect pitch, a note out of tune can be sharp or flat. In social media, I'll meld tone and tune and equate a “sharp” delivery as one that brags or is delivered from a lofty space above the crowd. “Flat” would be the negative approach of conveying a success by pointing out failures of others in a demeaning way. Reaching that perfect pitch takes practice and requires writing with passion (not drama – drama and passion are very different!). And, of course, the “selling of the CD at the end of the show” needs to be handled delicately, respectfully, subtly and never overdone.

I recently read a blog post by Scott Weighart of Bates Communications who nicely summed up the tone of content to which he is attracted. I would draw up an identical list, so I thought I’d share his with you: 

• Here’s a really provocative, interesting article that I wanted to share with you.
• Here’s a funny observation or a counter-intuitive take that I have about something relevant to you in the world today.
• I’ve got a concise thought about my area of expertise that will really make you stop and think differently about a topic that interests you.
• I wanted to share a little story with you that will entertain, challenge, or move you emotionally.

I especially like his last point which includes the “out” to write about a side topic, but one in which your target audience may be interested. As I exercise my own communication strategy for my business, I like the flexibility to include blog topics beyond my industry in order to develop a closer relationship with my readers. Those off-topic posts won’t solidify a reader’s opinion of my social media skills, but it might help shape in their mind whether they would like doing business with me.

The more posts (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) we read from others, the better “ear” we will develop for recognizing tone. Understanding the differences between flat and sharp enables us to develop our own unique business or personal tone.

Let the music begin!

Back-to-School Reality Check

This has been a busy week, dominated by Wednesday’s mark as our town’s opening day of school. There are so many mixed feelings that come with back-to-school: sorrow that the summer is over, parental joy in watching the kids moving forward into a new grade or school, stress and anxiety at the anticipation of the unknown, frustration sitting in gridlock as Boston tries to move-in tens of thousands of college students all at once, claustrophobia in Staples trying to get the right supplies in a frantic setting equal to the shelf-clearing hysteria caused by an impending New England Nor’ Eastern.

This year, my back-to-school experience was broadened by learning that our high school athletic department is now on Twitter. I’ve watched Facebook become the grand communication tool for my son’s athletic teams, officially and unofficially. Now we have stepped it up to Twitter. It will be interesting to watch it catch on. The combination of Parent and Child audience should be an interesting, challenging target for the director. But it just reminds us all that this generation lives and breathes by social media. As email falls off the radar of these young adults (foreshadowing the demise of the e-newsletter), businesses need to keep in mind the evolving communication tastes of their target audience. Even though I’m referencing current high school students, the adults 5 and 10 years older than this crowd are already spending their new or newish paychecks. Businesses need to engage this crowd with social media in order to stay competitive.

While everyone moves forward with mixed back-to-school experiences, it is interesting how personal social media tools such as Facebook carry, primarily, the up-side of the experience. It has been analyzed that the bragging nature of Facebook can carry with it stress for those who read posts of others and feel left out or inadequate. It is human nature to want to report on good things that happen. But there is ample evidence of the dramatization of reality, as well as the flat-out pretending. Especially on the college scene, someone eager to fit in can get depressed at how much fun others are having – or seem to be having - without him or her (on Facebook, that is). The exaggeration is giving Facebook the reputation of dramatizing life. It is a real turn-off to many while to others who can’t see through the fabrications, it is a real source of anxiety. 

In business, it is important to remain true to your followers and true to your mission. Exaggerated claims only lead to trouble and a backlash of un-followers. Followers can be very savvy and quick to rat out braggarts. Businesses do not need to market themselves with false claims or pretend to be something they are not in order to attract a crowd. If you have a good product or service, don’t embellish it to earn followers. That is a short-term strategy. Win with creativity, engaging content, humor, information and truth. Oh, and hard work.

Get to Know Your Audience

One of the most amazing elements of social media tools such Twitter and Facebook is that they serve up free information about our audiences, if we take the time to roll up our sleeves and poke around. So put on your research hat and take a hard look at your followers, those you follow, friends, and the chatter in which they engage. The findings of this valuable research enable us to build the profile of our social customer. With an accurate profile, we can fine-tune our message and the timing of its delivery.
 

Social Media Examiner recently covered the 4 Ways to Discover More About Your Audience With Social Media in its blog. I’m giving it a quick summary. The short post is worth a read for all of its great tips and some of the specialized tools available if you want to take your analysis to the next level.
 
The bios of your followers often describe what is important to them, where their passions lie. While some people don’t take their bios seriously, most take considerable time to come up with the perfect abbreviated description of their social media persona. These bios can reveal useful information which, in turn, can be applied to fine-tuning our marketing messages.
 
Knowing when people are reading our content is a key component to delivering our message in a timely fashion. Check the timing of your followers’ posts. Try to tailor your posting schedule to their activity schedules to avoid your posts getting lost in their news feeds while they are off-line. For example, if you are trying to reach young mothers, they are most likely to be socially active in the early mornings and after 8pm. If social media is a large part of your following’s day, posting during regular business hours will most likely hit them while they are paying attention. Monitor the timing of the chatter for a while to get a sense of the best time(s) to try to engage your audience.
 
Twitter and Facebook give us the opportunity to connect with the top influencers in our respective niche businesses. Take advantage of it by following the gurus in your industry. Learn from their social expertise and mistakes. Engage them and you may find you catch their eye, leading to increases in your own traffic.
 
The social sites our audiences frequent can help us develop our content. Understand our audiences’ interests and we can post content that will draw them to us.
 
Take the time to learn from your audience, whether it is large or still building to a respectable level. There will be surprising discoveries as well as expected trends.  Twitter and Facebook are handing this information to us! We should get as much out of it as we can.

Discovering Yourself in the 1940 Census

Have you had a chance to stop and think about what you might find hidden within the 1940 US Census?  Or maybe you have already taken a look. What a marvelous snapshot of our country in the throes of the Great Depression, teetering on the brink of World War II. In fact, some questions were added which reflect the stressed economic conditions under which Americans where working then; such as a person’s usual occupation, not just what they were doing the week of March 24-30, 1940.

The US Census Bureau teamed up with the National Archives to stage a great social media campaign to build interest in the April 2^nd first-ever online release of US Census records. They so successfully used Twitter (#1940Census), Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr, YouTube, and blogs (NARAtions and Prologue: Pieces of History) that followers' queries overloaded the servers shortly after release, followed by sincere apologies as the administrators realized they did not have the capacity for the interest they had generated. It was definitely a disappointment to those who had anxiously awaited the big release. Over the weeks, months and years to come, we can all satisfy our curiosity of how our ancestors, communities and country were reflected in those records.

The house on W. 74th Street

One of the amazing elements of this Census, for me and for many of my contemporaries, is that this is the first time our parents appear in a Census. When I look at a digital copy of the census document, I can imagine the census-taker, standing on the porch of my great-grandmother’s house on West 74^th Street in Cleveland, talking to my grandfather, who was home during the day from his job as a reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. This census includes an indicator of which household member answered the census questions. The census-taker was undoubtedly male, wearing a bowler hat and, most likely, a tie. My grandfather would be giving him the names and ages of his household: besides himself, my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother (almost 3 years old) and my uncle (almost 2 years old).

Timmy & my mom

Although the handwriting of the census belongs to the census-taker, it was written in the presence of a grandfather I barely remember, recording a conversation so full of information, I wish I had been there to gather those facts, and more, myself. The facts the government collected are pieces to the puzzle I long to complete – the family tree on the side of my family known more for record-burning than record-keeping. I admit the 1940 Census has no new news on this little family: I know that my maternal grandfather’s parents were born in Ireland and that my grandmother’s mother was born in North Carolina, her father in Ohio. But there are other paths for me to explore that, I know, will give me countless hours of pleasure: Find my great grandparents in Columbus and see who was living with them then; find my father (3 ½ years old) and his family and see whether they were living in the house I came to know so well; Find the McCarthys in Findlay and the Learys in Cleveland; find my father’s cousins in Ashtabula and see if Great Aunt Winifred was still alive; find my step-grandfathers’ families; find my North Carolina relatives and see how the 10 years since 1930 treated them in births and deaths; find everyone’s occupations and incomes to put together an image of their lifestyle; the list goes on and on.

Aunt Winifred, my dad & his sisters

I am a map lover, and the census data across the decades are a rear-view map of the life journey we are on. We are products of our ancestors. Even generations ago, their experiences weigh heavily on our station in life, our view of the world, the foundation of our soul. 

Time to do a little time-travel.

Powerful Words

When Twitter was introduced to my company in 2008, I thought it was destined to be a fad, that this sort of microblogging would fade away, that the world would never get used to cramming ideas into 140 characters. I didn’t think much use could come out of such a limiting tool. I was the beneficiary of many days of humor as I sat outside the salesmen’s offices who gave their unsolicited opinions of Twitter and of what those who tweeted could do with their tweets! But our Marketing Communications expert persisted and before we knew it, we were tweeting and accepting that the world had found a new way to send and receive messages of widely varying degrees of relevance to ever-widening audiences.

The challenge is to take Twitter beyond the mundane reports of burning English muffins and develop it into an effective communication tool for organizations. Twitter forces up to cut to the chase and deliver the hook that keeps people engaged. I’ve seen many creative uses of Twitter but none as powerful as what recently extended from Michele Norris’ “The Race Card Project.”

Ms. Norris, a co-host of NPR’s All Things Considered, wrote a memoir which blossomed from her exploration of the hidden conversation on race which unfolded in America after President Obama’s election. On her book tour, as a means of getting the conversation started, she asked people to write their thoughts on race, in six words or less, on a postcard she provided. What often happened was people took the postcards home with them, thought about it, and sent them back to her. The project began over a year ago. In the past two weeks, her project has taken on a life of its own. She has heard from people all around the world and has posted many of the responses on the Project's website. She continues to receive responses via mail, email and Twitter and continues to invite viewers to submit their six words on her website. In the aftermath of the tragedy of Trayvon Martin’s death in Florida last month, Ms. Norris’ collection offers varying perspectives and poignant reminders of where we are with race, where we have been and where we are going. All captured in six words or less.

It is amazing to me how powerful a few carefully selected words can be.

In Washington DC last week, I had a chance to visit the new memorial to Martin Luther King, Jr. If you want to see some powerful words, go there. Phrases from his speeches line the memorial’s arcing walls. MLK had a vision of where we should go, not based on race, but on our inner being.

We often take words for granted. It is easy to forget that we live in a country where freedom of speech is a right rather than a privilege. How important it is to use our words - whether six or more - to spark the conversations that can bring understanding and lead us to treat one another as equals.

See the soul within the skin.

My Top Reasons to Love or Hate Social Media

1. Small businesses with big ideas and small marketing budgets can become thought leaders and big businesses.
2. I can research my book topic and my ancestry, in my slippers and bathrobe, on blogs, websites, chat rooms, and discussion groups.
3. I can round out a photo slideshow gift by collecting photos of events I missed by downloading them from my ‘Friends’ Facebook Pages.
4. I can read ebooks, watch webinars, read blogs to get smart on what happened in digital marketing while I was off changing diapers.
5. I can Skype my young nieces and nephew and see their Halloween costumes, real time, and my niece studying in Cyprus can give me a virtual tour of her apartment.
6. I can utilize LinkedIn and online alumni career services to drive a job search and candidate search without stepping foot in a career center.
7. My friend can launch a Twitter smear campaign against the luxury hotel that gave a lame response to his room break-in.
8. Communities to make businesses and the world a better place can be created by making connections between people who are 1,000 miles away or 100 yards away but who may never otherwise connect.
9. A granny in Fargo can become an overnight social media sensation without having the time to bother with Twitter, Facebook and all that other “crap.”
10. Arab Spring. Enough said.

1. That the woman at the table next to me in the restaurant (on the rare occasion I get out for a peaceful dinner) can only get off her phone long enough to send texts.
2. That bullies can shove my friend’s son in the high school bathroom, take his picture and send it viral through texts and Facebook.
3. That my husband won’t change his Facebook setting to stop getting emails with every Facebook update he receives, and that he reports them to me each day.
4. That a message’s tone is open to wide interpretation.
5. That big talkers with little minds can look important in the blogosphere (but they eventually get ratted out).
6. That Facebook keeps changing how we have to set our privacy settings.
7. That our culture is accepting that social media tools are adequate replacements for face-to-face social interaction.
8. That not only do I have to monitor my children’s time on Xbox, TV, the Internet, iPods and iPads, I should also be policing their chats, Facebook accounts, email, Minecraft allies and something new tomorrow.
9. That I never feel caught up.
10. That Google knows way too much about me.

What did I leave out?

Social Media Explained in Donuts

It can be hard to wrap your mind around social media, especially if you were busy with other more important things in life when it emerged, or if you watched it emerge but just hoped it would go away. With social media clearly here to stay (as 1,600 staffers at P&G – the world’s largest marketer - are being laid off upon the CPG giant’s realization that Facebook and Google advertising is more efficient than traditional advertising), anyone with a product or service to market should become knowledgeable on the subject and start actively marketing through social media.

To a social media newcomer, explaining the differences between the tools can be confusing. Not to mention, new tools keep popping up. Here is a great whiteboard breakdown, from Douglas Wray, via geek.com, to set us all straight.

This is great! It is all clear to me now. What do you think?

I think I need a donut.