signing up on twitter
— John Siebenthaler (swampgrafx on threads) ?? (@cafe_racer) May 16, 2008
I wasn’t there at the very beginning but it didn’t take me long to jump on board!
The Telegraph wants you to know what other first time Twitterers tweeted here.
Edelman Digital’s recent post (via David Armano’s typepad driven feed blitz distributed Logic+Emotion blog) announcing their new SlideShare presence adds another layer of social versatility to their expanding toolkit of content sites.
Armano is Edelman PR’s widely followed social guru, operating out of their Chicago office where he spreads knowledge and opinion across the twitter/facebook/linkedin universe. A July post, for instance, presented the case for Google Plus in an extended essay piece that positions the new service as a layer, rather than a channel, then goes on to count the degrees of difference.
But regardless of worthiness, for me it’s yet one more dedicated channel to tend in a garden of tasty greenery run amok. For the small shop and independent practitioner, your fulltime job can easily become a sideline to the babysitting necessary for even basic online maintenance. The connect options presented on their Edelman Digital space (above) include RSS, email, Scribd, SlideShare, LinkedIn, YouTube and Flickr channels: and that’s just the tip of their social channel spear.
As Delicious prepares to roll out a much needed overhaul courtesy of new owners and YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, I’m split between excitement about what’s to come and concern over management issues. There are no best answers for any one situation. It’s clear, though, that too many channels quickly add up to a weedy, overgrown online presence where your last visited update is months old, stale and reeking of abandonment issues.
Whether you define social media as the 20th century spanned by two phones hooked together by copper wire or a bluetooth keyboard tapping out a tweet that ends up as smart phone text in the 21st, success with the medium begins with understanding the process.
Social Fresh Attendance by Category
Which is exactly where Social Fresh has landed on the map of the Continental United States. I was able to gain critical insight from some of the best in the business when Tampa played host to their multi-stop tour in February, promoted across the social media spectrum by founder Jason Keath (@jasonkeath) as the answer to marketers in various “underserved cities” wailing at the “How does all this stuff work?” wall of confusion.
The 1-2 day conference objectives are teaching marketeers – ad shops, pr firms, corporate communication staffers, philanthropic agencies – first the basics, then expanded specifics of invoking social media in its various forms. Facebook and twitter first, augmented by late breaking news in the app and cloudware departments later.
The chart above shows the typical conference breakdown of attendees by channel, and is indicitive of the broad interest among corporations, marketeers, government, non-profits and others in learning how social media communication strategies can be applied across markets. Social Fresh brings in a full slate of new media stars to shine in a venue that’s part camp meeting, part Mary Kay convention, where they’re free to serve up advice and instruction on the best ways for an audience of mostly pilgrams to navigate a landscape where there’s still no road map. It’s a job for experts, and Social Fresh delivers.
You can view more on the evolution of social media here.
This post on USA Today last August got me to thinking. Could this have been me on any number of Cycle World Treks? Well, yes it could, as a matter of fact, given my woeful state of experience and not really that nimble riding style.
The story concerns Leigh Fazzina, a mountain biker in Connecticut who broke her neck on a downhill leg, but could easily apply to any number of scenarios. Being able to tweet when a voice connection is tenuous or impossible becomes a significant asset. Toss in location awareness and you’ve got a very sophisticated rescue tool in your pocket.
Brilliant, Watson!The sticker on the hood of this back from the grave Chevy isn’t a wasabi Rorschach test. It’s a QR code, which, when you snap a shot of same with your ever-present smart phone, will transport you to a mini-site where you can see the exact same vehicle you’re looking at in 3D, only a lot smaller and in 2D.
Not a good trade you say? Ha! Start swapping out options and accessories to get a brain bolt as to just how you’d set up profiling down the boulevard in a ride of your own. That’s what Chevy cooked up for their social media experiment March 12-15th at SXSWi in Austin, TX. Continue reading