Putting the new rules to work

Archive for the ‘Media selection’ Category

If I didn’t think it would start a riot, I’d suggest we do away  with “social media” altogether. Not the media, but the term. By lumping widely disparate vehicles together on one term, we give people the mistaken idea that they all do more or less the same thing. This seems to be especially true of Facebook and Twitter, which have just enough in common to feed the mistaken idea that they’re two tools for doing the same job.

After all, both allow only short messages (140 for Twitter and 420 for Facebook). Both let you post photos and links. Both allow people to connect with you by following you (Twitter) or becoming your Facebook friend. And indeed, a lot of the “social media” posting utilities, such as Tweetdeck and Seesmic, allow you to post to both, simply by clicking a second icon. So I guess it’s easy to see them as more or less equivalent.

But here’s the big difference: Twitter can allow you to reach a targeted group of thousands, regardless of how many “followers” you have, whereas Facebook makes reaching out beyond your “friend” base much more difficult and less certain. On the other hand, Facebook provides a far better place to have conversations and develop relationships. I find it helpful to think of Facebook as a telephone (OK, maybe one with a party line) allowing two-way conversations, whereas Twitter is more like a PA system, better suited to one-way communication.

When I hear someone brag about having thousands of Twitter followers, I just roll my eyes, because in most cases, those followers may have very little to do with what you wish to accomplish. Instead, it’s better to place your messages on appropriate channels using hash tags (you create a hash tag by putting a # at the beginning of a work, e.g. #hashtags). We’ll talk more about that later.

Yes, I know you can reach people searching for topics on Facebook, but that doesn’t seem to be the way people are using it for now. It may change later, but for the moment, think Twitter PA and Facebook telephone.

As we saw in Building Your Media Kit Part 2, your lineup needs to include media with various characteristics, such as carrying capacity (the ability to carry long or complex messages) and reach. These days, when I see companies build entire marketing programs around Facebook and Twitter, I wonder if they’d try to build a house with nothing but a screwdriver.

• Immediacy (How quickly can it get the information out there?).
• Carrying capacity (How much information can it convey?)
• Reach (Who can it help you reach? Are they the right people for your purpose?)
• Interactivity (Is it one-way, or does it permit dialogue and feedback?)
• Cognitive impact (Does it appeal to the “right brain” emotions like TV or to the rational mind?)
• Cost-effectiveness (Does it get the job done at a cost you can live with? Do you KNOW what the job is?)

In the next few days, we’ll develop each of these characteristics. For the moment, you may want to look over this grid that follows. Everything on it is debatable, to say the least, but it may help organize your thoughts around the question of which Social Media may be useful for various purposes.

One of the best ways to understand a concept is to peel away all the clutter around it so that you’re left with no distractions. So just for the moment, let’s imagine you’re putting together your media toolkit using only tools that were available in 1983 – a year before the World Wide Web appeared.

And just to give us something to talk about, let’s say you’d opened a sandwich shop with a really unique concept – a New York style deli run by a Norwegian immigrant who spent 10 years in Mexico learning to do wonderful things with corned beef and pastrami. Your communications “to do” list might include the following:

• Publicize your menu.
• Tell the story behind the store.
• Get people talking.
• Remind people that you’re there. Signs and billboards would be the natural choice.

Now, let’s look at your challenge in terms of the characteristics we outlined previously in Building your media toolkit: Part 1: Immediacy, Carrying Capacity, Reach, Interactivity, Cognitive Impact and Cost Effectiveness. Remember, we’re dealing only with vintage 1983 media!

The menu might be relatively long, so you’d need something with a decent carrying capacity. Maybe some fliers distributed through neighborhood stores would do the trick. (Remember, this is 1983. No Web!) You might be able to expand your flier into a newsletter and tell your story. If the story is compelling, you could even interest the local newspaper into doing a story on a slow news day.  That’d have a lot more reach.

Now, what if you were promoting your Norwegian/Mexican New York Style Deli today? Some of those would still be good choices, but you’d have some alternatives:

• To publish your menu: Web site with story and menu – High carrying capacity, inexpensive (which doesn’t make it cost-effective, but we’ll deal with that later).
• To tell the story behind your store: Use your web site due to its high carrying capacity. However, you’ll need something to attract people to the site, so Twitter, Facebook and permission-based e-mail marketing are worth considering.
• Get people talking: Facebook group with specials. Actually, I stole this idea from a little sandwich shop that’s doing this very well. High immediacy, high carrying capacity, and cost-effective. Plus, Facebook’s a great place to start conversations that can give you a chance to tell your story.
• To remind people that you’re there: Twitter has virtually no capacity, but it’s great at reaching a large audience (if you know how) and pointing to something like your web site that can tell the complete story. Think of it as a sign or a billboard.

The point of this post is simply to begin positioning some Internet-based media in terms of their pre-web counterparts. It obviously gets a lot more complicated than this. One thing at a time.

To make the most of today’s vast array of communications tools, we have to understand how they relate to each other and which ones we want to use. Trying to figure out every new medium or gadget that comes along will drive you nuts and render you useless as a communications professional.

So when you’re feeling overwhelmed and hopelessly behind the curve with all the options out there, just take a step back and look at the big picture. And breathe.

Remember that there have always been far more ways to communicate than anybody can use effectively. Most of them work for one thing or another. But there’s never been a magic bullet, and there never will be. Not television. Not sermons. Not press releases. Not newsletters. Not podcasts. Not web sites. Not even Twitter.

As we begin our conversation about how to navigate today’s media landscape, we’ll look often at various media in terms of their core characteristics. Some of these include:

• Immediacy (How quickly can it get the information out there?).
• Carrying capacity (How much information can it convey?)
• Reach (Who can it help you reach? Are they the right people for your purpose?)
• Interactivity (Is it one-way, or does it permit dialogue and feedback?)
• Cognitive impact (Does it appeal to the “right brain” emotions like TV or to the rational mind?)
• Cost-effectiveness (Does it get the job done at a cost you can live with? Do you KNOW what the job is?)