Social media - it's great when it works

Swimming around in the vast ocean of information that is social media, it's easy to feel lonely and wonder whether all the time and effort you put in is really worth it.

That's what makes all the little, real life triumphs, all the sweeter. The other night I was at a Glasgow Chamber of Commerce search engine optimisation seminar where the speaker was Brian Mathers of ICT Advisor.com - one of the world's genuine SEO gurus. Before the talk, I was chatting with a woman called Jacqueline Morrison who was looking at the list of attendees and asked if I know anyone on it. One or two, I replied.

"I only know one - Stephen Breen," she said. "That's me! How do you know me?" It turns out she has been reading my blogs on various of the Glasgow and Scottish entrepreneur groups on LinkedIn I've joined, and she said how much she enjoyed the last one Social Media - how much faster can it get?

It turns out Jacqueline runs a very interesting reusable nappy business called Nappy Makers. What on earth was someone in the nappy business doing reading my blog, which mainly concerns itself with public relations, social media and business? Well, first of all she found it interesting, which a relief, since there's no point posting any content on social media if it is poor quality and doesn't give any value to readers.

Secondly, she, like many other business people, is trying to get their heads around social media, which is why she is on LinkedIn.

This little episode has demonstrated nicely the value of putting in the time to blog, but also, the importance of being active on the social media sites where your potential clients and customers are also likely to be. By posting useful information on these influential digital platforms, not only have I raised the awareness of what Breen Media does, but I've gotten into a dialogue with people who may, at some point, want to use our services.

Later in the evening, I met another woman, Adriana Dunlay of Glasgow-based Trumpet Design, who picked my brains on how I use platforms such as Twitter.

The next morning, I received a Tweet from Adriana, her very first, saying 'Joining Twitter as a result of last night's Chamber meeting at the Corinthian. Now what do I do?'

I was able to give her a few simple steps to get started. I like it when that happens.

www.breenmedia.co.uk

Social media - how much faster can it get?

I read recently that there are something like 11,000 apps for Twitter alone. I defy even the most the Twitter-addicted geek on the planet to be up to speed on all of these.

The Twitter app explosion in many ways symbolises the breakneck speed at which social media is growing. Those of us in public relations have had to pretty much start from scratch in the past year or so and completely relearn our trade to use these new digital tools. For most PR pro’s, I suspect the social media revolution has been bewildering, scary and exhilarating – all at the same time.

How much faster can this rollercoaster ride get? Moore’s law states that computer capacity doubles roughly every two years, so there is nothing to stop the internet growing at an exponential rate to carry much more digital data at even faster speeds.

New York University Professor Clay Shirky has stated: “The moment we are living right now, this generation, represents the largest increase in expressive capability in human history.”

The question for media professionals is how can we possibly keep up if the flow of information becomes even more rapid?

I don’t have the precise answer – otherwise I’d be a billionaire – but I suspect we are going to see the emergence of some digital super-tools that will help us make sense of all this white noise that will gain market dominance. There are already lots of platforms out there like Google and Addictomatic that monitor multiple online platforms that allow us to track what’s being said about oursleves, our businesses and our clients in cyberspace.

Social media has matured from something used by kids to keep in touch with their mates to a more mainstream business tool. Right now, there are just way too many options for consumers to make a sensible choice about what digital platforms really work. (I known this runs counter to the whole self-publish, everyone can be a content creator, ethos of social media).

My sense is that in the next year or two, things are going to settle down a little and some really clever people are going to come up with solutions that will make life online a little bit easier for us all.

I could, of course, be completely wrong, but I’d welcome the thoughts of others on this.

Twitter – freedom of speech or a digital lynch mob?

The hounding of Jan Moir recently over her extremely tasteless attack on Stephen Gately’s lifestyle before he had even been buried has thrown cast a new a somewhat sinister light on Twitter.
Twitter has rightly been lauded as a censorship-busting tool which allowed the world to find out what was going on in the Iraq elections and exposed oil firm Trafigura’s outrageous attempts to gag the Guardian from reporting on parliamentary proceedings on the dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast.
Moir’s attack on Gately was a typical and nasty Daily Mail hatchet job, pandering to the worst type of Middle England bigotry. The Mail is used to orchestrating moral outrage towards whichever victim it chooses to pick on that day, and it didn’t like it one little bit when it was on the receiving end of a storm of public outcry. Thanks to a Twitter storm, the Press Complaints Commission received an unprecedented 21,000 complaints against Moir’s article and advertisers began pulling out.
Some saw this as a textbook case of digital people power and rejoiced at seeing the Mail get a hefty dose of its own moral medicine, but there’s a strong case to be made that this was nothing more than the crudest form of mob rule and censorship.
I’m sure many – perhaps most – of those who complained to the PCC – hadn’t even read the article, but were simply egged on by others on Twitter. And here’s part of the problem with Twitter: it encourages the re-tweeting of instant communication without time for careful thought.
British journalist Brendan O’Neill has coined the perfect phrase for this behaviour – a twitch-hunt. Rather than seeing the Moir Twitter storm as a triumph for people power, it is, in fact a crude example of a liberal lynch mob on the rampage in cyberspace.
It’s disturbing that a tool that is supposed to be about freedom of speech has been used by some to bludgeon those with whom they disagree. Homophobia is unpleasant, but so too is the hypocrisy of liberals who tell us they are all for freedom of speech, just as long you agree with me, otherwise I’ll shut you down.
Social media is a powerful and potentially liberating tool. Let’s hope the Moir affair isn’t a taster of things to come.
Breen Media