Daily Archives: June 12, 2008

How does social media influence your life?

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What forms of social media influence the way you work, and how?

Now that I’ve asked the question, let me try to answer it as well as I can, and then I hope to hear from some of you as well.

These are the main forms of social media I use: blogs (I write my own and read tons of others), microblogging (Twitter), wikis (but mainly to log in attendance at events so far, nothing much more than that – I think as a resource wikis are heavily underutilised and I am party to that state of affairs so far), and social networks (primarily Facebook). Other forms of social media that exist but that I don’t use much are virtual worlds (like Second Life), podcasts, and RSS feeds (if one can call that ‘social’). I include comments as part of blogs.

Over the last couple of years, social media has increasingly taken over the way I live my life.

There, it’s out in the open. I communicate way more with friends I’ve made through social media and those that have an existence in the online world (like on Facebook) than I do with friends that don’t. I’m pretty sure it’s the same state of affairs for many people, but I may be wrong.

The reasons are pretty simple: I find social media engaging, and by communicating with likeminded people online, my need for socialising is adequately satisfied to a large extent. When that connection is continued offline, as with SMM sit-down lunches, for example, my quality of life is even better. (I guess that makes me a bonafide geek).

My thoughts are:

1. Isn’t everyone’s quality of life improved by connecting with people they share common interests with, with whom they can discuss topics and ideas of interest? If those connections originated in the online world, why should that make it any less social than otherwise?

2. I am constantly encouraged to think more about events which I largely hear of online, because of my presence and activity in social media. Therefore, it is a positive influence.

3. Social media has helped me connect with people I never would have met in the ordinary course of things. I’ve been greatly enriched by what they do – web entrepreneurs, for example.

Are these all valid arguments against critics of social media?

How does social media influence your life?

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Marketing SM in the Unis

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Undoubtedly, the social is as important as the media in social media.  Like all marketing, knowing the punter is as important as knowing the product.  Just because of where I will be next week, I am thinking about social media services and universities.

Social Media School

I am still interested in social media school.   It promises a good bread-and-butter line for many people.   It is self-contained – you can see where it starts and finishes.   It is scalable across clients.   It allows self-development.  There is nothing like teaching to get your ideas organized.  We complement each other which is great value for clients.  We can also have redundant teams.   If someone has to go off to do something more lucrative, more fun, or more urgent,  someone else can probably step in at short notice without much damage.

At the moment, I am thinking about social media schools and the university outreach programs.  Not academia – that is a different ball game.  I am talking about straight training.  People who want to know and want you to show them how to do it.

What I need to know from you:

  • What you could show people how to do.
  • Any constraints you have timing, geography and price.  Conflicts of interest too.  Maybe you have already got a market and your comment is “not here please!”

Another marketing idea for unis

I am comfortable in the university world.  British unis have constraints that are slightly different from other countries.  All academics though are under pressure to publish research.  All Vice Chancellors are under pressure to make money from research.

This is what we could do: Tout ourselves in universities to organize the social media for a research project.

  • Work with the academics to establish
    • who should be reading their work
    • milestones they will reach reliably
    • feedback that will make their work easier
    • competition from other centers and reactions to their efforts (every action has a reaction)
  • Extract funding out of Deputy Vice Chancellors for Research.  The first year we may have to approach quite a few until they routinely make budgets for social media (then we will see an upsurge in competition – so we must be ready for that)
  • Do the work
    • The community work – who, what, when and day-to-day maintenance (these are academics – they don’t do reliable)
    • The marketing – marketers think in terms of rewards, glitz, glamor – bring it on
    • The creative (I need help – I have the style of MK railway station)
    • The technical (I will have my hands full herding cats)
      • Facebook
      • Website (have you seen some of the local unis and looked at their Alexa rankings – quick, easy, participative, editable)
      • Blogging campaign
      • Twittering
      • What else?
    • What else?  Here’s a link to the process.

I am comfortable around academics.  I understand the pressures on them.  And I understand why they swing from arrogance to shyness.  I am happy to handle finding research units we can work with and then finding people among us more familiar with the discipline to help communicate.

I also think that this could be a good market.  The academic world is dominated by US journals who are dominated by Americans for reasons that are obvious to anyone who understands communities.  Content is not key.  Conversation is key.  It could be fun to work with unis to lift the rank of a research unit just by helping them manage their conversations.  Because the academic world is international, this is exportable too!

Anyone?