All Atwitter in the Desert

The King of Social Media?

There are few cultural shifts whose timbre and tone rumble down through the ages. But this whole social media movement has me wondering if we aren’t in the midst of a shift no one saw coming or has yet to define. I am in Las Vegas where the big brains of social media are gathering to explain its power to us lesser lights in the web’s firmament. Just as I was launching into Web 2.0 I am going to a conference where Web 3.0 is being outlined and clarified. What the hell? Can I catch my breath before we start the next interval?

The uninitiated are probably not going to be reading an article of this nature but let me simply say that social media generally encompass online functionalities like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, personal web sites, and the various services that promote and link them together into a semi-cohesive communications network of individuals. The notional value of this is to drive an increase of awareness in either a person who has something to say or a company that has a product or service to sell.

But it’s not that simple. It never is.

Very few people have been able to use social media to make money or move themselves into the role of cultural leaders in terms of thought and communication. The challenges are far too great when even your parents (well, not mine) have Facebook pages and your high school teacher is “tweeting,” (nope, probably not mine.) In my estimation, social media is very much akin to a stadium full of people jumping up and down trying to get the “kiss cam” to find them and put their mugs on the jumbotron. How does a person or a business actually stand out and succeed in such an environment? If everyone has a Facebook page or a fan page, or is on Twitter, or has a web site or a Word Press blog, how do we distinguish value from noise and what is meaningful communication?

I don’t usually ask a lot of questions when I write because the people who read anything I write generally want at least an allusion to an answer but on this matter I have none; I’m looking for a few. As an example, one of the people I am “following” on Twitter (I agreed to follow him because he was flattering regarding my writing; pretty pathetic,) seems to never do anything beyond crank out 140 word “tweets.” I have logged onto my Twitter URL and have had to wade through pages of this guy mentioning that he is going to take his daughter here or is writing this or even that he is going to bed. I don’t need this information to attain full functionality in my life. A woman he communicates with (another “love your work” person who I agreed to follow) writes the limited 140 character messages on every topic from high desert weather to her dog’s diet and what she is thinking about doing with her hair. Do we need this kind of facility? Just because we can communicate constantly and instantly doesn’t mean that it is necessary.

The only person I know of who is doing very well with social media is a former PR guy turned public speaker and social media guru named Peter Shankman. Shankman developed an email list serve known as HARO, which is the acronym for Help a Reporter Out. Reporters looking for source interviews send Shankman info about the type of people they want to interview and how to contact them and then Shankman zaps out the email to about 65,000 people. This is more than enough to make a lot of us wistfully wish we had thought of the idea but Shankman does better by selling each email, three times a day. Sponsors get a glowing paragraph of endorsement at the top of the email with their URLs included and that’s about the sum of what they purchase. Shankman, wisely, gets a premium for his ads and endorsements and makes more in a day’s worth of emails than many middle class wage-earners knock down in a month. Reporters wanting a more immediate response on deadline ask Shankman to tweet their requests on his Twitter account.

I have suspected Shankman of inventing social media to make himself rich. He has a maximum number of friends on Facebook with 3000 and has about 4000 more in cue while he rants about the incompetence of the FB platform. Meanwhile, last time I looked Shankman has 33,000 plus people following him on Twitter. As charming and competent and engaging as he must be, there’s little doubt that his reputation would not have spread this far without social media.

Shankman’s an anomaly, however. The bigger challenge confronting social media is how to make it work for businesses. If you are my client, I need to find a way to connect you to my web site or my Facebook page or get you to check my Twitter account to see what my company is doing today or even get you to read my blog. This is not a simple task.

Shankman is keynoting this convention I am attending in Las Vegas and I’m sitting through numerous sessions on how to use this technology. I assume I will learn much. I was pleased to read in the advance literature about Sabre’s new in house social network that has 6500 of the company’s 9000 employees engaged. Further, they add, “Even people in their 50s are getting involved.” We do that. And sometimes we take charge – without even being asked.

Watch your back, Shankman.

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