How and When to Use Social Media

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2011

April, 2011

From Orbital to In-the-weeds: When and How to Use Social Media

Gadi Ben-Yehuda, Social Media DirectorIBM Center for the Business of Government

[email protected]


What to Expect

• Preformatted tweets for you to send out from your mobile devices

• Illustrations that will help:

• Distract from my strolling lecture style

• Clarify abstruse concepts

• Directions so you know when to laugh, applaud, or shake your head in disbelief



Tweet

@GBYehuda will start at vertiginous heights to lay groundwork. #paradox #socmed


What is a medium?

Tweet@GBYehuda thinks MacLuhan is famous #quotes him: "All media are

extensions of some human faculty- psychic or physical." #socmed

Marshall MacLuhan, right, in Annie Hall.

His book, Understanding Media, laid out his understanding of media: “extensions of some human faculty, either psychic or physical”


Every medium requires a human being to supply the content, it doesn’t make sense to think of newspapers the same as light, completely content-free except in some very rare cases.

It’s a Medium; Is It Social?

Social media Asocial Media

Conferences Newspapers

Facebook Television

Happy hours Motorcycles

Twitter Fortune Cookies

Wikis Encyclopedias

Sports Arenas Running Shoes

Rock Concerts Mp3s

Google (current) Spreadsheets and databases

Book Clubs Books


Almost


Tweet

@GBYyehuda: adding a medium engenders large changes #socmed


Descending. . . .


Switching gears, switching metaphors

Social Media are tools, not blueprints. If you use them without figuring out how they will hold up actual necessary parts of your house, then you’re wasting your time and resources. Worse, you’re setting yourself up for failure because the house you’re building is going to be inefficient and possibly dangerous.


Microblogs

What they’re good for Listening, listening, listening! Also, getting out your own message in a real-time medium that encourages quick conversation and rewards high-value communiqués

What they’re bad for Developing ideas, communicating nuanced positions, building a community, directing complex action

When to use them To disseminate news, react to breaking events, listening to constituents, as a back-channel at events

When to avoid them Communicating complex ideas, outlining detailed positions, seeking structured data

How they fit in to your operational strategy

Twitter is like the foundation of your house: you use it to listen and all other media can be supported by twitter. Importantly, Twitter depends on the use of non-digital social media—promote your Twitter feed at conferences and all events

How to get started; what a campaign looks like

Setting up a Twitter account is easy and fast, but it is recommended for everyone to use an app like hootsuite or tweetdeck to optimize the time spent on Twitter. See my Twitter Usage Guide for more details. Microblogging campaigns are usually open-ended.

What kind of resources will be needed for success

Ideally, everyone in the office will know how to use Twitter, will garner their own following, will follow their own (likely overlapping) set, will subscribe to various lists

Success metrics Followers, retweets, mentions, analytics showing traffic from Twitter, sped up response times tied to replies and mentions


BlogsWhat they’re good for Communicating nuanced ideas and garnering feedback. Presenting a more

immediate and personable face for your organization

What they’re bad for Real-time conversation, quick dissemination of ideas, posting material on which you do not want feedback

When to use them To espouse complete ideas or let people know your plans (even if slightly inchoate) in a venue that encourages comments and further discussion

When to avoid them Detailing a policy or plan of action that is not open for discussion

How they fit in to your operational strategy Blogs help to humanize an office, or provide an editorial outlet for specific people within an organization. Above all, people expect authenticity from a blog—Web sites are the best loci for official statements and position papers, while people expect the voice and content of blogs to be more personal.

How to get started and what a campaign looks like Before starting a blog, it is best to have at least the first month’s of posts written (or at the very least, sketched out). In the first month, do not expect to attract a huge following, but rather, just start writing to engage in the conversation with other bloggers or maybe even only your internal audience. Draft a blogroll, post it on your site, and leave comments on their blogs with some frequency, as appropriate. Make yourself part of the ongoing conversation. Importantly, blogs can be open-ended or keyed to a specific event or topic that will run its course and then be archived.

What kind of resources will be needed for success It takes significant time to operate a blog. More than one person can be involved, and writing the blog (while a time-consuming activity) is not the total, nor even necessarily the half, of maintaining the blog. Updates to Twitter, comments on others’ blogs, mentions of the blog in analog social media are all required to build an audience for and add value to the blog.

Success metrics Comments, tweets, mentions, links from others’ blogs, traffic.


Social Networks

What they’re good for Joining, forming, or enhancing an online community focused on an event or interest. Monitoring, engaging and/or directing, conversations within that community. Sharing content from your other media with the network.

What they’re bad for Hosting original content, debating contentious material, requesting structured data,

When to use them Disseminating content published in other media, engaging discussions already started within the medium

When to avoid them Discussing contentious materials at length, developing the data points that will lead to policy decisions, publishing content on which you do not want comments


Social media are excellent means by which people can self-organize and even begin to become activated to perform tasks beyond the realm of the medium (or any digital medium)

How to get started; what a campaign looks like

Prepare both to post new material to your feed (with four components: headline, lead, link, and image) and respond to comments. Social networking campaigns are usually open-ended.


Significant time should be spent monitoring the traffic and coordinating between this medium, your blog(s), Web site(s) and microblog(s). Further, analog social media engagement should feature the URL for your social network

Success metrics Friends, activity on your own feed (e.g. comments to your posts), traffic driven to your other digital properties, dissemination of your content through others’ feeds, increased participation in offline attributable to your social network activities.


Ideation Platforms

What they’re good for Requesting and receiving ideas around a general topic or theme, from internal or external participants, and evaluation of submissions

What they’re bad for Technical, legal, or policy decisions

When to use them To generate and evaluate a wide range of ideas from all interested parties

When to avoid them When you do not have the resources to follow through or you do not expect to reach a critical mass of users with appropriate knowledge or skills to create a meaningful sample of ideas


Ideation platforms are like long-running brainstorming sessions with the added value of an evaluation tool. When implemented correctly, they make your organization more responsive, agile, and open

How to get started and what a campaign looks like

Open an account with an ideation platform (bubble ideas, idea scale) and post a topic. Augment the campaign through Twitter, social networks, your blog, Web site, and analog social media, raising awareness of and interest in the site. Leave comments on others’ blogs, highlight especially helpful/insightful entries, and invite people directly through Twitter and other semi-public media


Significant resources required to monitor and promote the brainstorm and then to gather the evaluations and implement the appropriate submission(s)

Success metrics Number of submissions, quality of submissions, number of evaluations


What will you do in your house?

Monitor – keep tabs on the conversations that affect our missions Communicate – transmit information or allow for recipients to

transmit information among themselves Organize – create groups of people with a shared identity to ready

them for tasks Activate – give people tasks, goals, and tools to accomplish

meaningful assignments Empower – Provide a platform for people to self-organize and set

their own goals, develop their own tools, and accomplish their own mission.


Abandoning metaphors: what can you do in social media?

Find specific people we might not otherwise be able to talk to; Engage a number of people that we might not be able to reach; Identify and enfranchise groups of people we might otherwise

overlook; Organize and direct activity more efficiently; Push content to people who have self-selected to receive it; or Allow people to collaborate on a single project synchronously or

asynchronously.


Questions?

Gadi Ben-Yehuda

[email protected]

Twitter: @GBYehuda

How and When to Use Social Media

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analog social media

twitter feed

twitter account

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blogs comments

content of blogs

twitter usage guide