www.inkthinkerblog.com — I’ll be blogging my notes for the WIW 2008 Annual Conference and posting them between sessions throughout the day. I’ll be fixing typos later!
Moderator
Randy Sly
Panel
Peter Bowerman
Cecilia Sepp
Howard Clare
CS: All social media is is any form of communication that connects people with each other so they can share information or news. For example, the ancient marketplace is where people went to find out what’s going on. Another example is “cafe society” in Europe in the 1920s. The telephone in the 1950s. Today’s social media is just an evolution of concepts we already know, and it’s just the next step beyond the telephone. I look to look at it as we (the people 35-50) are the most adaptable generation, not the greatest one. We keep embracing and integrating these new concepts and changes.
CS: Today what we look at as social media is e-mail and instant messaging, cell phones and text messages. What I think gets people confused is LinkedIn, MySpace (which really isn’t as bad as it’s been made out to be), and Facebook. You have to put in the time to make the connections and work your network. To bake a cake, you have to break a couple eggs, and then you have to wait for the cake to bake.
CS: Associations are a great example of social media, but the whole industry that IS social media can’t seem to get a grip on this. Associations are getting all caught up in the technology but they’re forgetting the purpose. People get silly about technology. It’s like any tool: you need the right tool for the right job, and you need to know your audience. Applying it to your writing business is like ay other thing you would do with marketing: You have to apply it, you have to use it, and you have to keep it updated.
HC: If you want to understand social networking, read. In the Washington Post, almost every week without fail there’s an article about social networking, and recently there was an article that didn’t even have a mention of technology in it. There are a lot of applications for it, don’t be afraid of it, it looks more daunting than it actually is. I’m going to talk about it internally and externally in the context of corporate organizations.
HC: It’s had a lot of fits and starts. A lot of organizations are embracing it but many aren’t still. There are a variety of reasons but a lot of it revolves around corporate IT, and it puts up a lot of road blocks. It’s in the name of security, but still. Organizations like Freddie Mac are bound by IT and regulations. Sodexo is really developing online more and more, using wikis and blogs and amending their e-communication policies to keep things under control. And a lot of entrepreneurial companies are doing more things in the social media, and it’s good business more than anything else.
HC: Internal social networking. A company called Serena has Facebook Fridays. 800+ employees in 18 countries worldwide, and the encourage employees to use an hour of every Friday to go on Facebook. They’re not only making connections, like friendships in the corporate structure, but they collaborate more. Existing intranets are ineffective in a lot of cases for finding documents or sharing information. Serena developed the internal Facebook group and some of their own applications, and secured it behind their own firewall. Improved recruiting, increased morale and retention, and contributes directly to the bottom line.
HC: Advertising on Facebook and MySpace is working in the audience’s mind set and network going beyond the tpical banner ads to do things like send a virtual bottle of water or a Tic Tac to a friend, and develop relationships with the brands. Contact the agencies that are doing the work for these organizations, or take a crack at Coke yourself.
HC: There’s a hospital in Dallas, Parkland, reaching out to teens on sex, reproduction, and general health topics and so they created a MySpace page with a physician Q&A and are reaching the audience on their level in a way that’s not threatening, and it’s getting people in the front door at their family planning clinics as well as attracting people (inadvertently) who are interested in jobs with this hospital.
HC: Dell computer has a site called IdeaStorm that allows customers to interact directly with company employees at Dell that’s all about sharing ideas, and Dell is committed to listening to these suggestions and using them. Starbucks is doing the same basic thing. In the face of the recession, people aren’t buying as many lattes, so they created MyStarbucks for people to submit ideas and feedback. (like people want free wireless [listen up, Starbucks!]). And Toyota has a stand-alone site for the Toyota Prius for owners to share their passions about their hybrids and allows visitors to represent themselves visually and virtually online and attracted 10K+ new users in 2 months.
HC: Don’t be helpless. Read. Go online. Venture online, I should say. Go to the company sites. See what they’re doing with their blogs and their customer-centric sites. Go to a site that you’re interested in and subscribe to the RSS feed. In becoming a resource to the organizations out there, don’t rty to be a jack of all trades. Become an expert in your area whatever it is., and you’ll be the trusted freelancer. RESOURCE: www.blogholtz.com by Shel Holtz. Good resource to see what’s going on.
RS: Using social networking to develop your freelance business. “There’s nothing new under the sun,” and that’s still true. our connections are the currency of our success. The nature of how these connections are made is what’s changing. “The medium is the message.” When it comes to freelance success or developing your business, you can’t depend on the new media to do that by itself — but it is a great cmponent that we can add on as a value add. I propose a bifocal approach that w don’t limit the amount of face to face networking that we do. Networking as an oportunity to earn new business has been raised to a new level. BNI, Chambers of Commerce, nw contexts to share what you do and how you can support others’ businesses. Face to face entworking isa great environment for freelance writers because we’re people who work with words.
RS: Your elevator speech is even more important now, and you have 30 seconds to tell people what you do and how you can do it for them. We just don’t know what to say about our business. We know what we do, but wr don’t know how ot describe it. Decided to do something different, so wrote “WriteView, LLC, Hears a Who” [which he just read and which was brilliant] Writing is transferrable from the physical space into the virtual space. People are literally portraying their lives online.
(Peter Bowerman is not on LinkedIn. I would be shocked, but since he just got a blog, I’m not that surprised. Come on, PB, you know you want to connect to me.)
RS: LinkedIn is a way of building your online reputation. Answer questions, add to your online profile. If you give the best answer, DING DING DING! FastPitch, PlaxoPulse, Zing. The key to LinkedIn is not just going there, but rather that I’m going to begin working my sysfem. I’m going to begin using LinkedIn to make myself visible. Every time you do something, you appear on the screen of each of your contacts. The more you work with it, the more practical it becomes. The same is true with all of these. One college is using Facebook exclusively to advertise campus events. The more you use these, the less scary they become.
RS: LISTSERVs [I think he means e-mail discussion lists, grr] are another great example, and a way to be seen as a subject matter expert that allows you to promote your services and reach a huge audience. The internet is becoming a whole new way to turn connections into business. Example of a writer who got a contract within 24 hours of getting on LinkedIn. Don’t count on it, but the thing is, it’s all about visibility: visibility through face to face networking, visibility through being on LinkedIn and these other social networking sites, and continuing to propagate yourself to all these other places.
PB: Literal interpretation of the session title: read from other people’s comments on a WFW blog post. [note to self: insert link here] I personally believe that the economy has very little bearing on one person’s financial success, so don’t read the papers and what they’re saying about how this is a bad time to start a business or whatever.
(audience question time!)
PB: Better to have a smaller network with better people. Way to avoid “inconvenient reciprocity” (ie, crap people send you on Facebook like stupid applications and messages and stuff.)
(Cecilia Sepp — YES, WIW/AIW should have a wiki. We may not be able to make money from it directly, but we will indirectly because it will bring people to the organization and generate membership, subscriber, and event revenues. Why is this not on the list already??? It’s brilliant.)
HC: Article marketing — viral marketing technique to promote yourself as an expert.
PB: Creating free reports is valuable. Driving people to your site and creating that list. Create a report and sell it as an e-book. It starts monetizing some of the stuff that’s in your head. And that takes no more effort than it takes to create it if you’re going to stick with the e-book route in the short term.
(audience question about the ethics of ghostwriting a blog)
CS: There is absolutely nothing wrong with hiring blog ghostwriters. It’s the same as ghostwriting a book. It’s a job like any other. What you have to do is, if you aren’t going to write in their voice, just make up one for them, and then that is their voice. (Example: TV characters who have their own blogs. It’s a promotional tool.) Mozart would not have died broke if he could have written for commercials, and he still would have been a great composer (quoting Fame).
PB: And that can really build your value if you crease a persona and a voice for that person. I always joke with clients but I’m not really joking that I’m going to make them sound like a million bucks. They will sound brilliant and articluate and witty, and who wouldn’t pay for that?
CS: There are so many thigns out there. We’re moving to a less-paper world not a paperless world. Writing will never disappera. We like to touch things. When we meet people we shake their hands. We have to touch things, see them, and feel them.
HC: It’s a generational thing. I have a daughter who’s 20 and she doesn’t read newspapers. She prefers to get her news electronically.
(I commented that I’m a digital native and I still like to have a book in my hand because it’s a tactile, sensual experience.)
(Then we got into a discussion about the smell of mimeographed pages and Sharpies.)
PB: To have somehting to give to a potential client at a show, whether they actually read it, makes an impression on them. Sometimes we will be very well paid to write stuff that no one eve reads, and I’m okay with that.
CS: You get paid whether they use it or not. They’re buying your time and your expertise.
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