Social Networking in Rural Areas

September 25, 2009

Earlier this week I did a presentation in a more rural area of my home state related to social media.

The presentation has been done in a few other areas of the state and I felt the crowd while maybe not wholly engaged was at least somewhat listening and understanding what was being said.  That wasn’t the case in this audience of rural area dwellers.

When asking the questions about how many have MySpace or Facebook or otherwise engage in the world of social media, the hands up were fewer than expected.

The blank eyes gazing back at me when I talked about applying social media strategically in both a research and business procedure manner was shocking.

I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that we mustn’t forget that while Social Media may be old hat to geeks like me, not everyone understands it and despite the millions of Facebook users there are millions more who do not update their status and live and breathe mobile technology that keeps them connected with their social network.

Lesson learned: never anticipate that your audience knows what you are talking about and always be ready to adjust your presentations to get them to a comfortable level that allows them to get something for their time, effort and money.

Constance Ard September 25, 2009

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Twitter, I thee Wed

December 16, 2008

Finally, Robert Ambrogi has sold me on Twitter.  I’ve been on the fence for many moons.  This post offers 16 tips that finally pushed me into the field rather than leaving me riding the rail.

Now this does not mean that I will Twitter my days away but it does mean that I will start using Twitter as a tool in my research, marketing and networking arsenals.

If you are sitting on the fence, perhaps knowing what sold me can help you too.

  • Promotion Value:  Yourself, Your Writing, Your Events
  • Quick Messaging without Email Clutter

Several of Ambrogi’s tips seem to me to be duplicates but I guess they have their distinctions for others.  I think if you are “driving traffic” and “molding your image” you are “promoting” sure the specifics are different but the purpose is the same.

As a librarian, often in conflict with those around me, I embrace the “simple is better” philosophy.  Why have 10 subheadings if your average user is going to enter one or two keywords?

However, that’s a post for a different day.

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Social Media & Business

August 20, 2008

On Monday evening I attended the Social Media Club of Louisville’s monthly gathering.  I ran into a few people I knew and listened to an interesting presentation by Jason Falls of Doe Anderson.

A few things I noted during the presentation have caused me to think more deeply about information evolution.

  1. A comment was made that hearkened to the days of doom-saying.  (I am paraphrasing here.)  “User generated content is threatening the value of journalists and journalism standards.  Anyone remember about 10-12 years ago when the Internet was going to replace librarians and Information Professionals?  This crowd got that journalists would need to position their knowledge as a value-added service – not every citizen journalist has the credentials and ability to write news that meet high standards required for litigation or mega-dollar mergers.  There was a good discussion about the need to balance citizen journalism with proper editorial controls and clarifications.  The sentiment was that sometimes, fast was good enough for now.
  2. One concern that came to my mind regarding user generated content was the continued explosion of information.  What is the value and how can this truly be verified?  Can user generated content be valuable and reliable for research?
  3. On the fun side, social media and user-generated content was touted as a new phenomenon.  There were a few folks in the crowd who disavowed that assumption.  I for one quite fondly remember the social column  (written by a citizen, not a journalist) in my hometown newspaper that would occasionally mention my family members who visited from out-of-town, or even my name being in print when I was heading out-of-town to visit those same relatives.  (Yeah news was hard to come by in my hometown but hey, as a kid, it was fun.)
  4. The other topic that I’m still struggling to get my head around is applications for Twitter to business.  Twitter is fast – instantaneous even.  Can you trust the fast unverified data to make a business decision?  If you follow me on Twitter you won’t get much useful data at this point but if you follow Jason Falls, it might be a different matter.  This topic is getting a lot of press lately and I’ll be paying more attention to Twitter in coming weeks as I begin to make my own determinations of its value.  I think the big point I have missed thus far about Twitter is choosing the right folks to follow – I still think I need to know people to participate in this on-line permitted voyeurism.  The truth is that if you are going to use Twitter for something other than voyeuristic pleasure, you need to target the right folks.  Think about the impact this could have on CI research, if you are following the right competitors it certainly makes the old adage keep your enemies closer that much more powerful – or at least it has the potential.  And it seems that following strangers is easy — I’ve refused requests from people I have never met.

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