Posts from — February 2010

The Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) just published their Key Finding from the 2009 Middleberg/SNCR Survey of Media in the Wired World.  The study involved 341 journalists from around the world with more than half from the United States.  Here are the findings I found most notable:

• 70 percent of journalists use social networking sites, up 28% from the previous year
• 2/3 of journalists use blogs
• 48 percent use online video

Clearly, professional journalists are embracing new media, social media, and new communications tools at an increasing rate.  The reports indicates journalists aren’t just using these tools to disseminate news, but to

“…find story ideas and sources, monitor sentiments and discussions, research individuals and organizations, keep up on issues and topics of interest and participate in conversations.”

I’ve mentioned in the past that you can use social media tools to:

• Listen
• Share
• Discuss
• Drive Action

While traditional journalists aren’t always interested in “Driving Action,” they always keep an ear to the ground to know what is going on.  They have always had to “listen” to get the scoop.  Now journalists are embracing social media as a new way to “listen” to what is going on in the world.  They can monitor social media for trends, and use keyword searches to research and monitor specific people, organizations, and topics. They can also use social media to discuss a topic and use the “wisdom of the crowd” to guide the research.  Finally, journalists are increasingly sharing their content through new communications tools.

Action Step:  Use the tools the pros are using.  Do a Twitter Search on your name, right now.  Let me know what you learn.

Brand Image… If you lead, teach, learn, work, manage, or not, you are a brand. How you build and manage that brand is up to you. In a recent article in the WSJ’s India Chief Mentor blog, Mahesh Murthy highlights the fact that

…online media are the most important place for your brand image to be established, defended and grown. This is where your offering comes face-to-face with your audience and where its responses can be measured, shaped and—if need be—countered in real time. This is where perceptions can be built, person by person. This brand building is more effective than the mode we’ve employed until now: TV commercials with 30 seconds of well-produced fiction that try to sell a brand image. It is more credible and much less expensive.

In the newest decade of the new millennium, online is the place where more and more people are spending their time. It is the place where brand and reputations will be built and grown. Mahesh recommends the same tactics I do. Google yourself. Did you find what you expected? Mahesh continues:

Among the results will be your Web site, news items about you, other Web users who mention you, blogs about you, tweets about you, videos starring you and such. Now work to own the presence in each of these elements.

Refine your website, respond to tweets, strengthen your Facebook fan page, add videos to YouTube. Make the top ten Google search results reflect exactly what you want. Own your online brand.

People ask me over and over “What can Twitter do for me?”   They vary from people with no online presence, people running for elected office, to business managers, and more…

Watch this video then I’ll expand on what Twitter can do for you.

Since this video was created, Twitter has evolved into a more mainstream communications tool.  But, what can it do for you?  I believe Twitter can help you do four things:

• Listen
• Share
• Discuss
• Drive Action

Listen

You can use Twitter and its offshoots to monitor what is going on in the Twittershere.   If you have a hot topic, you can search it and see what people are saying about the topic on Twitter.  You may think this is no better than searching on Google, but searching the Twitter stream gives you a near real time picture of people’s thoughts and opinions on a particular topic.   If you work for a brand or are the brand, these near, real-time searches allow you to respond in a timely manner to those tweets.  How surprised will a customer or constituent be when they get a quick response from you?  Here are my favorite Twitter Search tools:

• Search.Twitter.com
• TweetScan.com
• BackTweets.com – shows all the tweets pointing back to a particular URL regardless of the shortening tool.

Share

This is what most people do.  Most people answer these two questions with their tweets:

• What am I doing?
• What do I find interesting?

Answers to the first question may turn some readers off.  “I don’t care that you are having a hot dog for lunch.”  But, there can be a benefit to sharing some of the smaller bits of your life.  Over time, followers will learn more about you.  They will learn things that you wouldn’t put into a blog post, email, or a letter to the editor.  The mosaic of your 140 character tweets will produce a clearer picture of who you are.  Your followers will get to know and hopefully, like you.

The second question is where you can add value for your followers.  When you regularly tweet items of interest, you increasingly become a “trusted agent” for your followers.  They trust your judgment and will use you as a filter providing them with value.  That is usually in the form of links to information valuable to your follower.  It could also be nuggets from a conference or book.

Discuss

As the number of your followers grows, you can ask them a question through Twitter.   This can result in an ongoing discussion in the Twitter stream.  I’ve seen these questions grow into twitter “discussions” that evolve into blog posts which get fleshed out into ebooks and eventually into actual books.

Drive Action

Sadly, many people use twitter only for this.  They continually pitch sales to their followers.  This is not adding value for the follower.  This is asking something of the follower.  I recommend giving value first.  Only after your followers know, like, and trust you, should you ever ask them to take action on your behalf.

So, if you are new to twitter, start by listening.  Then, add value by sharing what is important to you.  Ask your followers for their opinions.  Finally, when your followers know, like, and trust you, you can ask them to act.