The question is simple enough.

Labels: Social media

As some of my colleagues may know, I've been obsessed with Jean-Luc Godard recently. Godard is mostly recognized as one of the founders of the New Wave (Nouvelle Vague), the French film movement that changed Cinema forever. At the age of 79, Godard is not slowing down his iconoclastic approach to film.

Labels: CINEMA, CREATIVE, FILM, GODARD, Social media, VIDEO

Nerd alert: I love communication.

From the Paleolithic cave paintings in the Altamira caves, to an 140 character Tweet, to a letter a great-aunt writes and mails to her great-nephew, all of these events illustrate the humanistic need to share experiences and connect with other human beings.

Wikipedia defines communication as "the process of transferring information from one entity to another."

The key here is that information is transferred and then received; a process involving two willing entities.

So simple. So beautiful.

So jacked-up when you consider all the chaos that exists in the social media realm.

'Early' studies of online communities as they developed in blogs were often held up to Lasswell's or even Shannon and Weaver's models of communication. Regardless of what model or paradigm you were a scenario - or in this case an online community - through, the presence and extent of two-way communication defined an online community.

I believe this same, very basic concept can be applied to social media for any person, business or brand. The rate at which friends, fans, consumers, or complete strangers are engaged and then reciprocally engage, defines the quality of your social networks.

Again - not rocket science. Yet, when I sign into Facebook or Twitter, I'm overwhelmed with GROUND NOISE and STATIC. No one is talking to me and everyone is talking AT me.

In this industry, I even see businesses selling social media 'platforms' or 'strategies', as if the art of genuinely communicating with other human beings can be bottled and sold. It seems the brands, products or companies who are 'tearing it up' on social media are those who have people that genuinely love the brand/product/service doing the communicating. These companies are few and far between though, and I believe the result of the mad rush to "be on social media" or "have a social media marketing plan" is all the mayhem we're consistently bombarded with in the online realm.

Should you be on social media? Well, do you have something you are so impassioned to say? Do you have someone you care about saying it to? Do you think they will care to listen?

Most importantly, will you put forth the effort to listen and respond to their response?

I wish I could bottle and sell this process in the social media realm. Easier said than executed.

Although if I could, we might just inject some calm amidst the social media mayhem.

Labels: Facebook, Social media, social media marketing, Twitter

Mashable published a great read, titled "The Science of Building Trust with Social Media."

Just last night, I was conversing with an individual who believes that all communication that occurs via social media is 'empty.' Said individual also believes that tomorrow's Facebook will be yesterday's MySpace.

While I agree on the latter point, I disagree on the former.

Facebook will either evolve or some new technology will make it irrelevant in a year, or a day. But, genuine and affective communication will forever be invaluable to human beings - regardless of the communication channel.

I love this article; I believe it supports my opinion that if a company communicates via social media to the most genuine extent possible, then the audience will engage and the company will benefit from its efforts.

As the article and Ron Burgundy say, "it's science."

Labels: Social media

In case you didn't know Twitter has an analytics team. Part of their job is to measure and understand growth. This graph tells a story of how Twitter's grown over the past three years in terms of number of tweets created per day. Note that tweets from accounts identified as spam have been removed so the counts in this chart do not include spam.

Tweeps were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day — that's an average of 600 tweets per second.

This brings me to the question Ive been thinking about lately which is...Do people have lives anymore or are we all just drones stuck to computers and mobile devices?

Labels: mobile, Social media, social media research interactive, Twitter

Labels: Social media

Labels: mardi gras, Social media

Labels: Advertising, Marketing, Social media

A recent survey of corporate communicators indicates that 49 percent believe that press releases are still "as useful as ever" and are not likely to go away soon.

Even so, the 49 percent figure reveals that the old tried-and-true press release device is diminishing in value in the eyes of media professionals. Journalists and bloggers who work in the social media sphere frequently are finding other ways to get the big story.

PR professionals who participated in the poll, conducted by Ragan Communications and PollStream, attributed the decline in the value of press releases to the growth in the use of social media (Facebook, YouTube, twitter, Digg, etc.) and the decline of newspapers and magazines.

The downward trend in the value of press releases has been felt here at Drake Cooper as well. We don't use them as much as we used to. As Joanne Taylor, our PR Director, notes in the PR section of Drake Cooper's web site, "to be effective, we have to work harder" than just issuing a press release. She's right.

We still find that when we have solid news to report, a press release can be an effective device. But to reach the media and bloggers in the social media sphere, we often post a social media news release (SMR) on PitchEngine, a very effective tool for spreading news online. The SMR should include photos, web links and video -- more interactive content that readers expect to see online these days. All of that is part of the extra effort.

In lieu of press releases, we often send out an individual story pitch to editors, a pitch that is customized to the audience and focus of their publication. A story pitch is usually just a couple of sentences to give the "elevator" pitch to an editor that fits his or her notoriously short attention span.

We also are producing more videos for clients to tell stories to the news media. The videos often have more lasting value, and they can be posted on a client's web site and shared on YouTube, Facebook, etc., adding to the number of people who view them by many fold.

So in a way, the poll of corporate PR folks was not necessarily new "news," but it is interesting to watch the trends in the rapidly changing world of public relations. If anything, some corporations have undermined the value of press releases by sending out shamelessly promotional material or glossing over trouble spots. This can undercut their credibility and the believability of press releases in general. We do everything we can do counsel against that type of practice.

Perhaps most telling, even corporate communicators put more trust in information gleaned from the social media than from press releases, according to the poll. Information on corporate web sites was thought to be the least reliable.

- SS

Labels: Drake Cooper, media promotion, press release, Social media, social media news release

Twittering To Keep Current

Some 19% of internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others. This represents a significant increase over previous surveys in December 2008 and April 2009, when 11% of internet users said they use a status-update service.

Three groups of internet users are mainly responsible for driving the growth of this activity: social network website users, those who connect to the internet via mobile devices and younger internet users (those under age 44).

Internet users who already use social network sites such as MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn are also likely to use Twitter (35%), compared with just 6% of internet users who do not use such social network sites.

And, the more devices someone owns, the more likely they are to use Twitter or another service to update their status. Fully 39% of internet users with four or more internet-connected devices (such as a laptop, cell phone, game console or Kindle) use Twitter, compared with 28% of internet users with three devices, 19% of internet users with two devices and 10% of internet users with one device.

For full article and demographic stats: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=116583

Labels: Social media

Image via Wikipedia

Found this story from the Financial Times very interesting. How one Facebook fan page for Coke has grown to 3.3 million fans, second only to Obama's page, and how Coke is dealing with social media. Worth a read.

Check it out HERE.

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Labels: Facebook, Media, Social media