Twitter | a thousand cuts :: adam cohen's blog

How has Social Media Helped You?

This morning while doing a demo of Twitter I asked the question, “How has social media helped you in an unexpected way?” Industry knowledge? Building relationships? Free hat? Catching an unreal bacon recipe? Thanks much to a responsive group of followers, I received many responses – some deep, some funny, some insightful, all valuable to once again show the immediate response and community value of Twitter. Thanks to everyone who replied – as promised, here are their insights and Twitter IDs. (I’m at @adamcohen).

@mattceni @adamcohen – user validated data has helped me cut through the noise to find whats relevant and good.

@aapjerockdt @adamcohen boost downloads of an open source app we made to 1000 downloads in 48 hours: [url removed - love the twitter feedback but not trying to promote biz]

@Patrick_Grady @adamcohen Wow. Lots of ways. 1 – exposure to info I wouldn’t have seen. 2 – met peeps with great synergy and things to share / learn.
@Patrick_Grady @adamcohen tech support… idea bouncing… more.

@StarrGazr @adamcohen How has SocNets Helped? It’s all about the people you meet which is even better to meet F2F. I can’t even begin to list the ways.
@StarrGazr @adamcohen How about the loan of a camera when mine died days before covering Obama’s camp NH Primary night from someone who …
@StarrGazr @adamcohen …I had never met before in person.
@StarrGazr @adamcohen Of the offer of a power generator from another person during the ice storm and an offer to help pick it up from CT?
@StarrGazr @adamcohen Or perhaps being published all over the world through exposure in SocNets?
@StarrGazr @adamcohen Or perhaps just being able to have an amazing year covering the primaries and being able to attend the inauguration.
@StarrGazr @adamcohen Or being a guest in a church and the home of a minister in the United Kingdom while traveling out there.

@4Spoken@adamcohen It has allowed me to take a fairly small niche, and connect with people I would have never been able to connect with otherwise

@jordansalvit @adamcohen SM has taught me a lot about businesses and fields I am not involved in. It also keeps me better connected with those that I am.

@tippyz @adamcohen Social media/net has increased my knowledge of people I already knew, well beyond what I expected –> stronger relationships. [Great one Dan]

@rsomers @adamcohen for me benefit is creation of new & expansion of existing offline relationships. Twitter esp b/c time cost of interaction is low

@BarbaraKB @adamcohen Social sites forcing OpenID transparency thus easier to make & trust online friends. W/this trust, grow business.

@boggles @adamcohen the biggest surprise for me was how Facebook has grown into a free version of long-lost friend-finder. High school memories!

@Marc_Meyer @adamcohen I now have an instant knowledge base that I can tap via SM which opens up sometimes a better way to do what I do- [I agree - much to learn from these folks]

@Stuartcfoster @adamcohen I got a sweet hook up on a hat at the TD Banknorth garden courtesy of the tag team of @mbrinkerhoff and @michele_moore

@HereItComes @adamcohen How about the loan of a camera when mine died days before covering Obama’s camp NH Primary night from… [URL removed]

@barndance @adamcohen My own involvement helped me help Lindblad Expeditions jump-start on Twitter. And that’s great for eco-minded tweeps & them!

@nhscooch @adamcohen All I can say is that is where I found the Bacon Explosion – TY twitter and @adamcohen [just don't come after me for cholesterol medication]

@ChadNorthrup @adamcohen I love having an extended network to banter with during sporting events. It made last year’s Sox playoff games even more fun. [Couldn't agree more, especially with Red Sox games.]

@Shonali @adamcohen Making unanticipated connections that have helped me personally and professionally. And give me courage.

@beverlycornell @adamcohen got to meet you. Actually, I have a few interesting stories.

For me, much of my surprise in social media is the general willingness of people to help – this demo is no exception. How has social media helped you in an unexpected way?

Twitter: The Value of Good Conversation

When the topic of Twitter comes up with colleagues, I often hear the “I don’t get it” excuse. Sometimes I fight the good fight and show someone a demo (and the small community I have connected with always responds – thanks for the support, gang). Other times I cave and just quip, “Well, Twitter is not for everyone,” and I let people try to figure it out for themselves. A client I met with today actually thanked me for introducing him to Twitter months ago, citing the timely news (usually on Twitter before many other sources) and content from some really smart people out there. He admittedly wasn’t that intrigued at first. On Twitter, many folks share personal details like what’s for dinner, how much they love caffeine or the occasional banter about the Red Sox. These conversations help us get to know contacts more personally, but can at times be perceived as noise. On the flip side, I often find new tidbits of knowledge, a valuable link, a good story – and they make the time spent that much more worth it.

Tonight I took a peek at what was going on and happened to catch a very insightful gem of a conversation between two folks who have helped me work my way up the social media learning curve over the past several months. Scott Monty (@ScottMonty) heads up the social media team at Ford, and Christopher Penn (@cspenn) is Chief Media Officer at the Student Loan Network (among his many other social media credentials). Here’s what you get when you take a passionate finance guy and put him in a virtual room with a passionate brand guy. (Note: I reversed the order of the conversation from how it appeared on Twitter so it would read sequentially like a transcript.)

cspenn: @scottmonty How much of GM/Ford troubles are UAW related vs. core business expenses?
ScottMonty: @cspenn Let’s be clear: Ford’s situation isn’t nearly as precarious as GM’s. We’re prepared to execute our plan with or without Federal $
cspenn: @ScottMonty OK. That said, do the Detroit shops have a bigger handicap due to UAW than the Japanese shops?
ScottMonty: @cspenn 2) Recent big quarterly hits have been related in part to one-time healthcare costs.
cspenn: @ScottMonty serious question, why isn’t bankruptcy on the table for GM? Is it that essential to America that tax dollars must be risked?
ScottMonty: @cspenn 3) Lack of unions in some of our competitors make it difficult for us to be profitable on some vehicle lines
ScottMonty: 4) But overall, we’ve been working on restructuring our product mix and flexible manufacturing over the last 2 years that is now under way.
ScottMonty: 5) The goal is to have best in class fuel economy in every segment, give millions of customers affordable fuel economy.
cspenn: @ScottMonty Interesting and insightful. Is there any way for Detroit to free itself from unions or is that baked in forever?
ScottMonty: @cspenn Re your union question: I don’t know. It’s had a long history in Detroit (and Ford was the last to join).
ScottMonty: @cspenn Bankruptcy for GM would mean thousands of suppliers/vendors would be at risk. Cascading effect would be immense (and take us down)
cspenn: @ScottMonty what source would you recommend for reading to dig more into a GM bankruptcy? Would love to see the chain.
ScottMonty: @cspenn There’s a good graphic that illustrates it in a recent Merrill Lynch report on the auto industry (Nov 3, “The ‘Big Bang’ Theory”)
cspenn: @ScottMonty Cool – link? or not publicly available?
ScottMonty: @cspenn Not publicly available. I can fax you the page if you want.
cspenn: @ScottMonty That’d be wonderful. 206-350-1208 thanks! (also the podcast comment line!)
cspenn: @ScottMonty Only upside I can see is if in bankruptcy, GM and others can jettison the union for improved survivability.
ScottMonty: @cspenn I hear you. Don’t know if that would ever fly, though.
cspenn: @ScottMonty sometimes, it’s fly or die. maybe they’ll get that NO one is entitled to anything you don’t work for one day.

Thanks to Scott and Christopher for the great and candid dialogue, giving personal insight to a big corporation’s challenges in the current economy. Have some other ways Twitter has added value for you? Would love to hear ‘em.

Photo credit: gi via flickr

Gearing up for Forrester Consumer Forum 2008

The last week of October will see some great content in the social media sphere around getting ahead of tomorrow’s customer. In April of this year I attended Forrester’s Marketing Forum in LA, and enjoyed “live twitter” and blogging related to the event. Knowing an onslaught of content is coming, I decided to reach out to Alexis Karlin, Forrester’s community manager for Forrester’s Consumer Forum in Dallas on October 28-29. She was gracious enough to share some good info for “where the content will live” for the event. Rosetta is a Forrester client and as a marketing agency we get a lot of relevant industry content out of these events - but lots more will be shared through social media.

Going to Dallas? Please reach out on twitter @adamcohen or contact Alexis @akarlin – there will be a gathering planned. Whether you will be there or are just interested in the content, here are some other guidelines from Alexis:

On Twitter: @Forrester, @akarlin and I’m sure analyst Jeremiah Owyang @jowyang will do their part to highlight what is going on at the Forum.
Pictures will be posted to Forrester’s Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/forresterresearchInc
Official “tags”: #FCF08 and #Forrester
Alexis and team will be monitoring their Facebook pages at: http://www.facebook.com/forrester and http://www.facebook.com/groundswell
Forrester Keynote speeches will be streamed live on Ustream, with a Meebo chat room embedded on the following blogs:
- The Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies – http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/
- Interactive Marketing Professionals – http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/
- Marketing Leadership Professionals – http://blogs.forrester.com/agencies
- George F. Colony’s Blog: Counterintuitive – http://blogs.forrester.com/colony

I’m looking forward to some great content and expect to have follow-up posts in the next several weeks around some of the more provocative topics. Take a look at the agenda if you have a few moments – what topics interest you?

Photo credit: bitmapr via Flickr

Putting Your Social Network To Use

Over time, social networks become a place to accumulate contacts. I’ve used LinkedIn for nearly five years, and tools like Facebook and Twitter have become part of a daily ritual. Do you interact with those folks regularly, or is it a virtual rolodex accumulating dust? Do you watch on the sidelines, or really engage? I’ve written before about how I scrutize connections on social networks – I like to keep both Facebook and LinkedIn contacts to people I know or have interacted with in a meaningful way. I’ve also discussed how social media can enhance real world relationships. With little effort, we each can make these network connections more personal and useful.

Recently a friend contacted me about a potential job opportunuity at one of my clients. Of course I’d be will to pass along a resume and make an introduction. We started talking, and I suggested to go through my LinkedIn contacts to see if there are other potential folks she would be interested in talking to. She was very appreciate of the help, which took a quick conversation and an email to make happen. It’s not difficult – so why don’t we do it more often?

Take a few minutes and think about the last time you helped someone out leveraging your social networks. Bryan Person wrote a great post this week about how often he mentions himself vs. others in his posts on Twitter. While social media and networks can be a great personal promotion vehicle, there is definitely a sense of contributing to help others that makes the networks meaningful.

I’d encourage you to take a moment after reading this and reconnect with someone in one of your social networks. Personally, I like to connect dots to help folks – there’s some satisfaction from being able to leverage social networks to help friends out – either professionally or personally. Some small examples:

I have a friend who is an entrepreneur and connected him to a reporter on Twitter who was writing an article about the same industry.
I noticed a contact changed jobs on LinkedIn, working for a company that our agency partners with, and reached out to her to see how things are going and share our experience in working with that company. This helped her understand her company’s partner relationships and we may be working together on a future project.
A friend’s Facebook status read “I’m heading to Hawaii…” and I sent her some restaurant recommendations from our honeymoon trip many years ago.

These small interactions make your social network more relevant, meaningful and worthwhile – and one day those folks may come around and “scratch your back” too. How can you help someone out? Share a useful link, introduce a relevant connection, recommend a resource. You’ll get more from your social networks than just “people watching.”

How did your social network last help you? Have a good story to share?

Photo credit: 7-how-7 via Flickr

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