Socialmedialand

Archive for the ‘News & Curiousities’ Category

Despite your (or my) personal political affiliation it’s commonly accepted that our current President’s approval rating has been pretty low over the last two terms. He’s made a lot of unpopular decisions, for better or for worse, both domestically and internationally. I think one of the most interesting results of that is watching/listening to Americans try to explain as patriotically as possible (especially to non-Americans) how our President doesn’t necessarily represent us (lowercase) as individuals or the US (uppercase) as a nation.

And I think that’s all about to change – and it’s going to change because the Social Media groundswell is integrating into politics.

[And here I hesitate - because talking about politics is such a hot topic and I don't want to open myself up to attack or the chance I might offend someone, so bear with me while I try to stay as close to center as humanly possible. I also want to be clear that I'm not attempting to make any value judgements - just simply talk about what is going on right now.]

But here goes – since the election on Nov. 4th I’ve seen a few people passing around a URL I hadn’t seen during the campaign – http://www.change.gov. I wanted to check it out and see what it was all about and I have to say that any politics aside it’s a very exciting site.

We were all very excited when social media came into play during the election campaigns – and I think it was generally accepted that Barack Obama had the most success using social. There was my.barackobama.com,  a Facebook page, a Twitter page, and viral videos galore. To give credit where credit is due, many of the other candidates also utilized these tools. But they were often late to the game and, most importantly, forgot to interact directly with the communities who formed there (or at least not to the extent that Obama’s staff did.) I think comparing Hilary’s Twitter to Obama’s sort of illustrates this (note how many people they are following back):

But at the same time I think we all questioned whether the responsiveness in these communities would decrease or end altogether after the election… Just like a lot of other campaigns where a candidate promises to listen to you and your needs and promptly forgets about you the day they step into office.

I won’t say that that question has been completely answered – it’s still to be seen what will happen over the next 4 years when Obama takes office in January. But Change.gov is a start, and it’s a promising start. There are places on the site for users to post their “visions” or ideas for the country and share their personal stories. There’s a blog that keeps people up to date with current news about Obama, including video in most cases. Part of the site is dedicated to an outlining of Obama’s agenda and there’s several links throughout the site that explain the transition and what the significance is of the major decisions being made right now.

This is a level of transparency that I would argue has never been seen in government before. IF the site follows through on its promise, meaning there is a sizable staff to pick through these ideas and bubble up the ones the reoccur the most often it could completely change the way Americans interact with government. Additionally, IF Obama actually carries through with the social mindset he claimed to have in his speech of listening to and sincerely considering any opposing opinions to his stated agenda he might be able to make the progress he’s been promising.

Quick side note: in the past any politician who made a decision or said anything different from their previous opinion is accused of “flip-flopping” on an issue. I’ve always been confused by this because don’t we want them to listen to us and follow our wants/needs rather than their own? But I think this will be a greater issue if Obama follows through with his site’s promise and changes his policies according to the feedback he gets – it’s what we’d want him to do but I wonder if it would actually end up hurting his reputation? Just a random thought…and now back to the technology…

It’s definitely not perfect – I would like to see more functionality to view and vote on what others have posted (this was also suggested on Groundswell’s blog post about Change.gov), and maybe add comments (although I see how that could lead to a logistical nightmare if the site gains popularity). Either way it’s certainly a giant step ahead of being ignored entirely like we had been in the past, that is unless it was an election year.

One more side note: This trend has applications beyond just Obama and the President’s office – social media has been making inroads into politics in other areas as well. My coworker, Dustin, wrote a post about city governments joining Twitter to start discussions about the economy and how that could easily expand to include other topics like traffic, saftey, and more. Maybe Change.gov is just a piece of a larger movement?

But just imagine what it would be like if you truly believed something you said had a chance of reaching the President’s ear and he was willing to listen to it. We’d all, in a sense, be part of the cabinet.

What would you say?

It might finally, truly, be a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

So what do you think about social media in politics? Let me know in the comments section! (Please, no discussion of specific policy, if electing Obama was right or wrong, etc. Let’s keep this to a discussion of how social media can/will affect politics. I reserve the right to remove inflammatory comments.)

There’s been a lot of talk about Twitter circulating throughout the industry over the last few months so I’m going to try not to repeat too much of what’s already been said but I would like offer up my view of Twitter’s impact on all of us.

A majority of my time during the day is spent “monitoring” social media for various clients. Monitoring is just a fancy word for listening, watching and reading as much content as I can about my brands. I use Radian6 (my favorite) and a few other tools and integrate everything I learn into a concise report that summarizes what’s being said in the blogosphere. I realize this isn’t revolutionary and even at times I’m frustrated by how far behind we are because none of this includes responding to any of it. But more on that later.

The main reason why this is important is that across all my brands over the last few months I’ve seen a marked increase in the amount of Twitters showing up in my reports over time.

I thought this was interesting, mainly because it was across the board in at least 4 different industries. The timing was also a little funny to me because it coincided with about the same time that I, and a few of my coworkers, became active on Twitter. So in my personal view it felt like all of a sudden Twitter went from the “next big thing” to “the big thing.” This prompted a little research to see if it was all in my head or if there really had been a huge spike – check it out from two different sources:

Courtesy of Quantcast

Courtesy of Compete.com

Ok so now comes the disconnect in my life – I think Twitter is really fun and I have Twhirl up on my desktop at work all day, but as for my personal life, I never use it. A quick background, I’m 22 years old and graduated from ASU in May, so most of my friends are still in college or are recent grads like me, all in their early to mid 20s. This is completely unscientific but if I had to guess how many of them knew what Twitter was – I’d go with 10%. I can’t even begin to illustrate the trouble I have explaining what I do, and what Twitter is, to a guy my age at a bar. Or to my best friends. It just doesn’t click with them. The best I’ve come up with is “You know Facebook status? It’s an entire site of just you and your friends’ statuses.” But if there was a huge spike in activity, why do so few “young” people know what it is? I did a little more research on the average age group of Twitter users:

Courtesy of Google Ad Planner

Courtesy of Quantcast

And here you go, the main age group for Twitter isn’t the 18-25 college kids, it’s the 25-45 educated, working adults. As soon as I saw that, it all clicked into place.

Disclaimer: the rest of this post is based on pure theory…

My reasoning goes that when you’re in college sites like Facebook are the best way to keep in touch. You have the extra time in boring classes, or procrastinating on homework, to do all the extra legwork. You upload videos, painstakingly upload and tag pictures; you stalk people’s walls to see what they’re up to and write them messages. But what about when you grow up a little and get a job? All of a sudden all of that takes way too much time. In a completely unscientific poll of the people I work with who sit near me – all of them told me they gave up on maintaining their Facebook profile the way they used to and now they check it weekly or even bi-weekly.

Enter Twitter. Twitter is quick and fun – no extra work here. Simply write a message and voila all your friends know what’s going on. Want to Twitter at work? No problem, install a small desktop app that’s easily minimized and looks almost like email updates. You can’t have your Facebook page up at work – way to conspicuous, and takes way too much time, your boss would totally figure out what you’re up to. Twitter is the perfect way to continue to socialize all day long while you’re working. And since it’s caught on so well, it’s even started to integrate into how we work, collaborate and network. Some sites are even basing innovating new work place message systems on the Twitter format.

And all of that is what I think becomes the basic support for why brands can’t ignore Twitter anymore. Social media has become a part of our daily life. It’s not like Trix and “just for kids.” It’s become an integral part of daily communication for a lot of people, including working professionals. Do I think every company should just jump onto Twitter? No, of course not. No one technology will solve a brand’s need to participate in the social sphere. But do I think it’s become a crucial part of the social media marketing mix? Yes.

But this is just my opinion and experience with Twitter, what do you think? Leave me a comment below!

I’m a huge fan of Groundswell and Charlene Li. I often refer to both the book and the Social Technographics Profile Tool provided by Forester at work. It’s a great way to kick start the conversation with clients about why social media has become such an important piece of the online marketing mix.  I just went back over to the site today to get a screenshot of the profile tool when I noticed it had been updated with 2008 data. I think the difference between the old version and the new version speaks for itself:

Technographics Profile – 2007

Technographics Profile 2007

Technographics Profile – 2008

Technographics Profile 2008