Peter Shankman (founder and CEO of The Geek Factory, Inc., a Marketing and PR Strategy firm in New York) gave a talk on Social Networking for the Princeton ACM / IEEE Computer Society chapter meeting on February 19. Peter's web site is http://www.shankman.com.
Here are the top five points in the talk--
Social media is: Sharing and creating content that is good enough that:
When you are looking for a job, think of yourself as a "brand". It isn't your job to do your PR -- to say how great you are. Your job is to get other people to do that for you.
What is the attention span today? 140 characters! You have 140 characters to tell your story -- that's why Twitter.
Top of mind presence is created by doing something nice without asking for something back, to create a connection that will come back to help you when you need it. The thing about social media is that it has never before been easier to do it.
Advice: Find what you can do that is interesting enough that people want to visit and get information. Then figure out how people want to get that information.
First assertion: Social media doesn't exist. We just have a bunch of technologies to screw up a larger number of people in a shorter time.
Everyone talks about "viral" -- viral videos, viral marketing. You don't need to make things viral, you just need to make things *good*.
Social media is: Sharing and creating content that is good enough that:
When you share, you (not a commercial network) are putting your reputation on line.
An example of interesting social media: www.wherethehellismatt.com. Matt has made a series of web videos of himself dancing at various places around the world. His first video in 2005 was just for fun, but his video on YouTube had around 3 million views in 3 months.
Matt later received sponsorship from the manufacturer of Stride chewing gum -- to travel around the world, dance with people on video, and give out Stride gum. His 2008 video had 21 million views in 2 days followed by an appearance on the Today show.
Most of the viewers of these videos found out about them through friends. "If we are going to forward something out, it better be worthwhile." The video wasn't intended to be viral, it was just good.
Who am I? I was in graduate school studying fashion and portrait photography. With 18 credits to go, the government took away my financial aid, so I moved home. In one of the AOL chat rooms in the early nineties, I found out about AOL setting up a digital news room in Vienna VA, and since I had a journalism degree, I submitted my resume. I became the second-hired news editor to help launch AOL News. For the next 3 years, we made up the rules. When things worked, we did them again. When they didn't we stopped doing them. This is a lot like what is happening with the evolution of social media.
Later I moved back to New York, and I wanted to work in PR. In the winter of 1997 -- I was looking for a job, but I didn't want to send a thousand resumes. I went to 51st Street and Park Avenue wearing my resume on a sandwich board, on the coldest day of the year. I also handed out paper resumes. I received 400 phone messages by the next morning - 79 interviews and 37 offers -- from doing something a little non-traditional. It was in all of the newspapers.
It is almost impossible to get a new cell phone *without* a camera. That means we have an enormous number of "citizen journalists" out there. For example, 60% of CNN's 2008 election coverage prior to election night was done by citizen journalists.
So now we have an enormous number of "content producers" -- who don't need an agent, don't need to pitch it to a network -- we just shoot it on our flip camera and upload it to a network. If the world likes it, the world will let us know.
Two ways to view "everyone as a content producer":
MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
MySpace versus FaceBook: MySpace has Arsenio-ed (died), because the emphasis was on getting as many friends as possible. But FaceBook is about connecting with people you actually know.
Twitter -- microblogging via any device you have (computer, cell phone, Blackberry, camera, etc.). How you access the network doesn't matter.
Twitter is about putting out little pieces of information to people who matter -- those people who follow you.
If you are really boring, there won't be a lot of people following you. You learn to put forth information that is similar to what you do -- and the people who are like you will find you.
People who are looking for a job should have a Twitter account. They should be talking about the stuff you know. As you talk about it, people will find you. Twitter is the world most perfect focus group.
When things happen in the world, you can find what people are saying about it. When I see a celebrity pop up on the Twitter "most talked about list", who hasn't been there before, I know one of two things: that celebrity is in jail or that celebrity is dead. When I saw Paul Newman on the list, I said to myself "oh-oh".
We like to share or "give off knowledge" to our friends -- to say we are smart about something. The more you do it, and the more people will think you are really intelligent about something, the more people will come to you.
When you are looking for a job, think of yourself as a "brand". It isn't your job to do your PR -- to say how great you are. Your job is to get other people to do that for you.
Trust is more important than recommendations from people you don't know.
Who is on LinkedIn but not on FaceBook? Why? There is a perception: FaceBook is college students, LinkedIn is professional.
But: How many of you have ever made a dollar from your presence on LinkedIn? -- 2 people raised their hands...
The question becomes: If LinkedIn is so professional, why aren't more people finding out ways to get new clients with it, or to get new jobs with it, or why are people out of work?
The problem with LinkedIn is: People don't hire "resumes" anymore. They still do a little more in your industry. But "hiring a resume" died about 10 or 15 years ago.
If you are going to reply to an ad that I put out about a job, I'm going to assume you are smart enough to have the credentials. If I'm going to be working with you 10 or 12 hours a day, I want to know about you and who you are.
If I'm on LinkedIn and looking at your profile, you're not going to ask for unfavorable information from people you worked for. I don't want a bunch of recommendations from strangers, I want to see who your friends are. I want to see your friends' profile photos.
For the first time, your friends can keep you from getting a job.
So what are we looking for from a personal and professional perspective? Four key words:
1. Transparency - For the past 100 years, big companies have been run by old white men. Over the past 20-25 years, corporate boards have been skewing younger. More younger and darker people in leadership. Companies like Enron, Worldcom, MCI, Tyco, and Cendant have destroyed a lot of our savings and our parents' savings.
The people who are coming on board now are not going let these things happen -- they will be more transparent. Clients and customers are also demanding transparency.
Today, when you have bad news, you issue it -- you don't try to hide it. You will be found out if you try to hide, and it will be worse.
2. Relevance - There is a fragmentation of news sources. We get news from newspapers, internet, television, radio -- not just from the NY Times. If you are going to give information: your resume, your blog, or your company's information -- you need to make it relevant to your audience.
Your audience might have a preferred format to view things. I watch all of my television programs on "TiVo to go". My TiVo records my programs and puts them on my Mac, so I can watch them on the plane.
The TV networks used to "own" the viewers. Where was the viewer on March 13, 1982? In front of their television set, watching the last episode of M*A*S*H. Today, you would get 5% watching on television, 40% on Hulu, 20% on RealPlayer, the rest of them watching it the next morning.
Be relevant to how your audience wants your information. If you are responsible for getting your company's brand or your personal brand out there, make sure you get that brand out the way people want it.
There are people who might be looking for a job here who should be doing a video resume, or a desktop resume where you can click from program to program -- recordings showing people what you have done. Send that as an MP4 file to your prospective employers.
3. Brevity - Back in the eighties, we had MTV. The length of a music video was 3 minutes. The generation of the eighties (the MTV generation) had an attention span of 3 minutes. What is the attention span today? 140 characters! You have 140 characters to tell your story -- that's why Twitter.
Obama announced his choice for vice presidential running mate in 93 characters on the Internet. He used Twitter to do it.
Things are being captured by camera phone -- the London subway and Madrid train bombings, the flight landing on the Hudson River. The first photo on that event was on Twitter: it was someone on one of the ferries that had a Twitter account. She uploaded it to Twitpic.
Brevity is being able to tell your story quick enough to not lose the person's attention.
How many requests for attention do we get per day? 17,000. We don't have much time to decide whether something is important or not.
The only time brevity doesn't work is when your girlfriend has had a bad day and she wants to tell you about it. "Can you text me?" "No." and your are supposed to listen.
4. Top of mind presence.
Barry Diller, when he was head of Paramount back in the 70s, had a good process. He would "launch Outlook" (open his Rolodex) and he would pull about 10 cards each day -- he would call and say hi. He wouldn't sell anything, just talk. Over the course of three to four months, he would go through the whole Rolodex, and he'd start again. Three or four times a year, you would get a call from Barry Diller saying hi. When you are doing a movie, or you wanted funding, or you had a winner, who would you call? Barry Diller. Because he took the time to call you.
That "top of mind presence" made for a lot of success.
Let's go back to the LinkedIn/FaceBook question. What is on the top right of FaceBook every time you log in? Birthdays.
I get up every morning, open FaceBook, and wish everyone on my FaceBook list a happy birthday. I don't sell them my new book. I make the connection so people remember me.
Top of mind presence is created by doing something nice without asking for something back, to create a connection that will come back to help you when you need it. The thing about social media is that it has never before been easier to do it. It's there for you every day -- you can look like a rock star.
How do you make money from this?
Offering something people need...
Example: There is a website called willitblend.com, started by BlendTech, a company that makes blenders. The site was the idea of George Wright, VP of marketing.
He couldn't figure out how to make blenders interesting, when about two weeks after he started, he was leaving the office and heard sounds coming from a testing room. It was his boss, the CEO of the company, who was blending a rake. He asked "Sir, why are you blending a rake?" "I wanted to see if it would blend." "Any reason." "If it could blend a rake, it would definitely cut the ice for a margarita." The VP of marketing went out the next morning, bought a flip cam, a white lab coat, goggles, and a crazy Einstein wig. He put them on the CEO, gave him some of his son's plastic toy soldiers to blend, and put the video on the web.
Once a week they would blend various things: iPods, chairs, ... By the time the iPhone came out, they bought 5 of them, and they were about to blend them in their corporate offices, when they got a call from the David Letterman show, asking them to blend the iPhone on television. 21 million downloads in 24 hours.
How does that translate into revenue?
Willitblend is creating a brand. Their blenders are mostly for restaurants -- they cost $500 each. BlendTech's 2008 sales went up 529%.
It wasn't the 15 year old kids buying them, it was their parents. It was adults saying "If that blender is the best one on the market, I've got to have it." It was caused by something good that people forwarded to others.
Advice: Find what you can do that is interesting enough that people want to visit and get information. Then figure out how people want to get that information.
Example: The Florida Aquarium emailed me their problem. They couldn't get people to join their Twitter stream. "What are you posting?" "The Florida Aquarium will be open from 8am to 8pm. The manatee exhibit is currently closed." I told them that they are visited daily by "ocean geeks". Why aren't you posting interesting facts about oceans?
They started posting really interesting information, and in one month they went from 30 to 3000 followers.
If you are posting interesting information, be it on your blog, podcast, videocast, FaceBook, status update, or whatever, that is what gets people interested in what you have to offer. If you are posting information, you by extension become interesting.
What kind of conversation can you start with the technology you have?
One last piece of advice:
Just because you have the tools doesn't mean you are going to use them well. Spend some time watching how other people use the tools.
Go onto search.twitter.com and watch what other people are talking about. See how they are using brevity and top of mind presence.
Get a FaceBook account and enter in your address book. I guarantee you will see 60 to 70% of your contacts. See what they are doing -- see how they are putting their information out there.
The true social media is everyone evolving into one network. Business and personal side will all be on one network (probably Google).
One problem with FaceBook is it puts everyone on the same level. We are going to see a network that understands that the concept of frequency of interaction. If we've been talking every day, I want your messages to go to the top of the email pile. Today, with FaceBook, I get the same number of updates from my mom and the person I have one interaction with per year.
Go and explore it -- just see what is out there. Learn how to use it your advantage. Whatever you do and whatever your niche is, there is a world who wants learn more about it. To become that "go to person" is the greatest way to get credibility, to the following to improve that brand, to get those clients, or to get that job.