Author: Lisa Chau

• Wellesley College, AB Economics • Dartmouth College, MA Creative Writing International marketing and public relations professional with a highly competent, results-oriented attitude and over 6 years of experience in the field, including 3 years of experience in higher education. Versatile qualifications include logistics, social media and finance. Excellent written, verbal and presentation skills with demonstrated competencies in client contact, business development, project management and event planning. Supervisory experience and ability to utilize leadership, communication and interpersonal skills to build teams that meet/exceed goals. - - - Interested in projects in need of a social media strategist to: • Promote clients’ online initiatives and web properties • Participate in internal brainstorm sessions to give social media perspective/strategy • Attend and speaking at industry events • Research and author social media marketing-themed studies • Introduce new and alternative ways to leverage social media activities • Create ROI and performance reports for social media clients and internal decision-making • Manage a portfolio of social media accounts and engage online communities • Be reactive and proactive on social channels such as blogs, message boards and video upload hubs

An Interview with ChatLingual’s Founder, Justin Custer

Posted on by Lisa Chau

JCGrowing up, Justin Custer’s family moved often, introducing him to many different cultures at an early age. In high school, he learned a second language and began to realize the benefits of understanding different perspectives.

At university, Justin studied engineering and interned with French and German companies. His professional experiences fostered his interest in an international lifestyle. After graduating, he worked with Accenture for 5 years in 9 countries, helping global organizations solve complex problems. Often, these problems involved many languages, and resulted in complex, expensive workarounds.

Now at 29, Justin has traveled to 35 countries and worked in 11 of them. He experienced the challenges of language barriers personally and has designed professional solutions such as ChatLingual. You can reach Justin via Twitter @thinkjc. Learn more about him and ChatLingual with us below:

 
What was your inspiration for ChatLingual?
My impetus to build ChatLingual developed from a few things, though it was ultimately was inspired by a lifestyle I wanted to live. I wanted to run a company, and the quickest way to do that seemed to be starting my own. I had some experience in software development, and decided an internet company made sense.

At ChatLingual’s inception, I was living in Buenos Aires with two close friends who are ambitious entrepreneurs. Many late night chats led to a few business ideas that seemed to make sense on paper.

While researching their market potential, I took a trip to Panama. Through a series of events, I tried talking with someone who didn’t speak English, German or Spanish and thought: “This is dumb. It’s 2012. Language shouldn’t be a barrier.” That moment motivated me to build ChatLingual.
 

What is ChatLingual?
At the highest level, we’re on a mission to challenge convention. For now, we’ve decided to focus on the barrier of language.

ChatLingual is an instant messaging platform that enables you to communicate with anyone, anywhere regardless of language. Imagine chatting with someone, always reading and typing in English – it’s easy. The person you’re chatting with thinks the same thing, only she’s reading and typing to you in Japanese.

We’re excited about ChatLingual. We also know that chat is only the beginning. Taking that a step further, we’ve built a platform to improve machine translations by crowdsourcing feedback from our users.

Right now our team is focused on product – building one our customers love. ChatLingual doesn’t require annoying downloads, people can sign up via Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, and we support group conversations, translating up to 5 languages simultaneously. ChatLingual enables people to communicate across languages more efficiently than in our entire human history.
 

How do you see CL influencing global collaboration?
Many of the challenges discouraging global collaboration have already been solved.  We’re able to communicate with anyone anywhere for a relatively low cost. I propose that our next biggest hurdle is language.

The approach most people take is to simply avoid talking with someone who doesn’t speak their language. If you only speak English, how often do you communicate with someone who doesn’t? It’s tough to do and fairly inefficient.

ChatLingual makes it efficient, and opens opportunities to share ideas in ways that haven’t been explored, especially on a global scale.

In the near term, we see some straightforward applications, such as enabling cross-language communication for businesses, nonprofits and travelers. We’re excited for that, and we’re also excited for the long term potential:

Can we improve business operating strategy? What if people could collaborate with anyone in their company, regardless of what language they speak?

Will ChatLingual help provide a better understanding of international events?  What if anyone could connect directly with someone in Syria who only speaks Arabic?

Can we help NGOs make the world a better place? What if we can make it easier to sort out logistics and project planning before teams arrive to aid a foreign country?

Until recently, instant cross-language collaboration wasn’t a realistic option. Now, it is.
 

What are your target markets
Global businesses 
Knowledge transfer and internal communication. Consider the merger of an American company recently acquired by a Brazilian company, or a fashion designer in Copenhagen who can now collaborate with suppliers in China and her sales associate in France.

Multinational NGOs
Organizations with more than one voice, like Médecins Sans Frontières, Rotary Club and the United Nations have millions of people all over the world working together for one cause. The challenge now is that communication is limited to those who speak the same languages.

Travel industry
English seems to be the common language for travel. Non-native English speakers travel to foreign lands and both both parties attempt to communicate in broken English. The conversations are short, questions aren’t asked and great recommendations become lost in translation.
 

What are the applications for CL in social media (ex. A Small World (aSW), Couchsurfing)?
Firstly, I love www.CouchSurfing.org and the fact that they’re now registered as a b-corp. We want to use ChatLingual to help make the world a better place, and are looking at models like CouchSurfing that can meet our needs.

Being able to understand someone who doesn’t speak your language instantly is still an emerging concept. Facebook is now offering this through their use of Microsoft Bing, which is fantastic. The reality though is that people need a reason to want to connect with people who speak a different language. If you don’t speak that persons language, how do you know you want to connect with them in the first place?

The biggest submarket in the social networking space will be travelers and expat communities. These groups have similar interests; they want to connect.

Conversations within global, private social networks, such as InterNations and A Small World usually take place in English. Though many will understand English at some level, most people are far from fluent and would prefer to communicate in their native language. Enabling that will create a more engaging experience and increase participation.

Your company, Social Media Week is also a great example. Last year, I believe you had more than 60,000 people speaking at least 9 different languages, all coming together for the same reasons. I am curious to know how many of those people collaborated across languages, and how ChatLingual would have helped improve results.
 

What are some of the challenges?
In the near term, we see three major challenges: connecting with our early adopters, managing user expectations, and continually improving translations.

In learning to speak a language, it can take a year of living in the country to become conversational, three to become proficient and fifteen to learn every nuance. Many people who speak another language fall between the conversational and proficient range, which is enough to feel comfortable, but far from understanding everything.

ChatLingual provides a far better experience than that. Our early adopters are tech saavy and understand that proficient translations will meet their needs. Now, we just have to connect with them.

Helping users understand how to get the most of our services will also be challenging. Many users approach ChatLingual by typing the same way they would to their friends, using slang, colloquialisms and idioms. We are focused on enhancing natural language translation; until then, the best experiences will be through proper grammar and vocabulary learned in the classroom.

ChatLingual crowd-sources feedback for future translations. We are focused on improving the quality of translation, and translating more natural language. Another challenge will be designing an experience that encourages users to provide relevant translations, and engaging people who are as passionate about we are about removing the barrier of language.
 

Can you provide me with some use cases?
Imagine a billion dollar US-based company is acquired by a Brazilian enterprise. ChatLingual can dramatically improve knowledge transfer, reducing costs of the merger. Additionally, ChatLingual can enable more integrated operations and help build a better connected company culture.

A multinational nonprofit has decided to eradicate a treatable disease. Members are located in many countries throughout the world, and are all working together towards the same cause. The challenge is that many of the members speak different languages, and collaborating is highly limited to others who also speak the same language. In effect, any one person may only be able to communicate with 10% of the nonprofit, significantly limiting their ability to deliver the most effective results.

University students in France and Italy are interested in studying the technologies associated with autonomous vehicles. Students at Stanford have findings they’d like to share. With ChatLingual, the three groups could collaborate in real-time, each typing and reading in their native language.
 

When do you launch?
We’re live now!

Feel free to check us out at www.ChatLingual.com!

Master Class: Engagement@Scale – Three Steps to Leveraging Brand Advocates

Posted on by Lisa Chau


On 20 February 2013, I had the pleasure of attending Master Class: Engagement@Scale – Three Steps to Leveraging Brand Advocates with Dachis Group. Speakers from the Dachis Group included: Michael (MJ) Jones, Vice President of Technology; Liz Schroeter Courtney, Social Strategist and Allison Squires, Social Strategist.

The presentation focused on social marketing as the ideal way for brands to authentically interact and scale engagement with customers. Social media facilitates messaging large groups of people. Additionally, panelists spoke about leveraging brand advocates, a brand’s most trusted and effective audience group, to spread a brand’s presence beyond internal corporate efforts.

The Dachis Group offered a three step approach to working with brand advocates around (I) identification, (II) mobilization and (III) measurement.

How do companies identify advocates?

Advocates:
+ Frequently talk about particular brands
+ Have positive feelings about particular brands
+ Desire to influence others
+ Advocates should be people that others trust

According to Edelman’s trust index, people trust academics, experts, people like me and employees at a company more than CEOs, government institutions and financial analysts.

“Friends are better marketers than marketers.”

92% of people trust earned media, such as word-of-mouth.

What’s more, 67% spend more online after receiving recommendations from online communities.

It’s the power of advocacy.

How do companies mobilize advocates?

+ Foster relationships — Make advocates feel valued
+ Create mutually beneficial relationships – Reward your advocates
+ Must be authentic, not just driven by money

Good examples of brand advocacy include:
+ Red Bull
+ Coffee Mate
+ Starbucks
+ Vitamin Water

How do companies measure results of working with brand advocates?

The aforementioned companies successfully mobilized advocates to increase customer awareness and mindshare in the market.  Things to consider:
+ Increasing the reach of the brand
+ Enthusiasm and sentiment
+ Conversion patterns and business impact
+ Community engagement
+ Frequent activity, frequent brand mentions and frequent purchases

Finally, give advocates space to engage with the company’s audience. Does your company provide forums, community events, product initiatives, etc. Help advocates develop a suite of experiences for audiences to engage and invigorate positive feelings about your brand.

Want to see it for yourself?

Lisa Chau has been involved with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. Lisa currently works as an Assistant Director in Alumni Relations at Dartmouth College. She has been published in US News and Forbes. You can follow her on Twitter.

An Interview with Mike Hemingway: the Man Behind Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty”

Posted on by Lisa Chau

Mike Hemingway has been in communications and advertising for over 30 years.

In the 1980s, he worked at two of London’s most famous Advertising Agencies: Collett Dickenson Pearce (CDP) and Boase Massimi Pollit (BMP). His award winning accounts included: Fosters, Wrangler, Cinzano, Barclay’s Bank, Martell Brandy and Hamlet.

In 1990, Mike joined Grey Advertising in London as Vice Chairman, and led the team that launched and positioned Pantene as “Healthy Hair and Pro-Vitamin.” It was this move that catapulted Pantene to worldwide leadership in the hair care category, where it remains to this day. Mike also worked on Covergirl and their fragrance collections.

In 1995, Mike pitched for the worldwide Mars Confectionery business which he won. As a result, he was asked by the Mars Family to create a seminar for Mars Associates and their Agencies called: “How to Create Award Winning Effective Advertising.” Mike ran this seminar in over 20 countries around the world.

In 2000, Mike was invited to join Ogilvy and Mather New York to work on Kodak. While there, he helped to create the “Share Moments. Share Life” campaign. In 2003, Mike took over Ogilvy’s Unilever business, Dove, and led the team that created the Dove “Real Beauty” Campaign. This now iconic campaign led to incredible sales increases, whilst pioneering new concepts in “Equity Innovation” and “Mass Media.” Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” is now the most awarded advertising work of the 21st century. Mike continued to lead the Dove Team until 2009, when he left to start his own business: Brandhunger.

Through his Brandhunger website, as well as his many speeches and specific client assignments, Mike helps companies and well known personalities incorporate social responsibility into their mass communications. He has also become an inspiring speaker. His newest speech is called The Rise of the Citizen Consumer.

A father to four sons, Mike authors illustrated books which he hopes will inspire parents and children alike. They are available free, on the internet. You can find Mike here.

Mike, does authenticity belong in any conversation about social media?

Authenticity is really only referenced in social media in the negative. For instance: “The jeans he bought were not authentic. They were Levi’s imitations.”

How do you define a brand? How do brands differ for genders?

This is the 21st century definition of a brand: A brand is an opinion. An opinion about your category that the customer finds personal and important. Brands are different for men and women. Men’s brands are mainly about the quality of the present. Women’s brands (mothers) are mainly about the quality of the future.

How do you advise companies to use social media in building their brands? Who is doing it best right now?

Companies need to realize that consumers have an equally keen interest in what they do, and why they do it. Motive is important. A brand is about motive. A product is about persuasion. Social media is the best way to get a brand’s motives into the public space.

Why isn’t Coke a brand? What do you think of Coke’s new ads to address obesity?

Check the definition of a brand, as stated above. Coke is discussing the key issue that is most important to their key purchasers (mothers). Obesity. Coke was a brave and great company once and are back to being that brave and great company again. They need to be congratulated. In many companies, passion is used and overused. Passion this. Passion that. But Hitler had passion! Compassion is really what’s needed. That one syllable “com’ states the direction of the passion… “for others”. Great brands put themselves second, and their consumers first.

Why doesn’t cause marketing work?

Cause marketing works in terms of increasing the overall knowledge of the true soul of a company. But in terms of sales and persuasion, cause marketing does not add specific enough information for the consumer to make a choice. For instance, the great work Bill Gates does on polio and other causes does not help Microsoft in terms of either share or affinity.

You’ve led some incredibly well-known campaigns. What is your strategy for success?

The key to success? Get to know your consumer really well. Fall in love with them. Never show them a mirror of themselves, but offer them a window to look through, to a place that is happier and achievable! Remember, we all have more in common with people who haven’t won the lottery, than with people who have. Don’t insult their intelligence and don’t dumbly overpromise.

What is “coliseum culture” and how does social media play into this?

The coliseum was built in Rome by the emperors for the citizens to witness gladiator fights. When one gladiator was defeated, the other gladiator would look up to the spectators and they would give the losing gladiator a thumbs up or a thumbs down. If it was a thumbs down, the gladiator would die. This power made the spectators feel they had some power, and made them feel better about themselves. Schadenfreude. Reality programs are the same. There is an elimination process, and the viewer sees the pain or joy of the contestants in close up! All of these contest reality programs have the same theme of elimination. Social media discussions give the public of sense of importance. (When, in fact, they are just pawns and unimportant in the eyes of the media owners.) Facebook and Twitter give the public the same false sense of importance.

What do you predict to come down the digital pipeline over the next 5-10 years?

The word digital will vanish from our vocabulary; just a turbo has vanished from the car market. What isn’t digital these days? The next “big thing” will be virtual reality for the masses.

 

Lisa Chau has been involved with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. Lisa currently works as an Assistant Director in Alumni Relations at Dartmouth College. She has been published in US News and Forbes. You can follow her on Twitter.

Social Media Affects Consumer Holiday Buying Decisions

Posted on by Lisa Chau

Liel Leibovitz is a visiting assistant professor at NYU Steinhardt, primarily focusing on video game and interactive media research and theory. His studies in the ontology of electronic game play, ranges from representations of death and violence in video games to human-machine interaction, gaming and the construction of player subjectivity. A founding member of the NYU Faculty Council on Games, he also serves as a member of the advisory board of the New York chapter of the Digital Games Research Association.  His latest research, commissioned by Offerpop, a ‘next generation’ social media marketing company, finds that Social media outranks TV, newspaper and online advertising as source for consumers’ holiday buying decisions. The study surveyed a demographically-precise sample size of the American population, to gauge their perceptions of holiday shopping via social media.

Mark Cooper is Co-Founder and CMO of Offerpop, a fan-marketing platform for Facebook and Twitter. Thousands of companies use Offerpop to run promotions, sweepstakes and fan engagement programs – launching campaigns in minutes and tracking performance in real-time.

Mark has helped launch an array of online, mobile and media businesses, including the first TV product placement ratings service (Nielsen IAG) and the wireless industry’s first mobile virtual network operator (ESPN Mobile). He began his career building brand campaigns for leading consumer marketers in the US and Asia / Pacific, including NIKE, General Mills and Apple. Mark holds a BA in History and a BA in International Economics from Brown University.

Lisa Chau speaks with both men on their collaboration:

Why is social media the leading source for consumers’ holiday buying decisions?

MC: Today’s consumers are constantly interacting with social content — in fact, 22% of their time online is spent on social networks. Social media offers consumers a platform for seeking advice about their buying decisions from trusted, influential sources like friends, family, and the brands they follow.

In your study, 90% said that following a brand on social media influences their buying habits, with 32% using social to discover new gift ideas. Please explain this with specific examples.

MC: Social media is a great discovery tool by nature. When fans of a brand redeem a coupon or comment on a brand’s status update, their friends see that action in their news feeds. That’s why it’s important for brands to consistently post about their products and offers via channels like Facebook and Twitter.

Many brands ramp up these activities around the holidays with gift-themed campaigns. For example, last year we saw clients like Barney’s creating holiday look books on Facebook that allowed brands to browse gift ideas and click through to their site to make purchases. Additionally, American Eagle recently ran a successful holiday photo contest using Offerpop’s Photo Contest 3 app. They accepted entries across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram — driving brand awareness across the three biggest photo sharing platforms.

How can retailers leverage this knowledge to boost sales even more, especially now that the holiday season is upon us?

MC: Offering fans exclusive coupons and offers is a very effective way to boost sales, particularly around the holidays. Brands can also drive more sales by tracking the content that their fans interact with on social channels — and using that knowledge to target them with offers via other marketing channels like email.

What is the best use of social media for sales that you have seen?  Why?

MC: Last year, Bonobos accelerated e-commerce with a successful coupon program on Twitter that gave followers deals on gifts like gloves and scarves. Using Offerpop’s Viral app, they gave followers three hours to unlock three time-sensitive deals by retweeting the offers. It was a smart way to facilitate sharing and drive sales — they exceeded their virality goal by 60%.

LL: I can absolutely say that there is little doubt that those businesses that distinguish themselves in this field believe that social media are not just tools but platforms and that consumers expect to have an dialogue/ongoing relationship that far transcends spot considerations.

What do you foresee as the next big development in social media? 

LL: People actually learning how to use it.  I think that there what we’ve been seeing with social media is what we’ve been seeing with all other nascent kinds of media.  As soon as they appear, people try to assume that it’s just like the previous medium. It’s a completely different medium, with completely different rules, completely different vibes, completely different expectations.

The companies that do it best, are the companies that understand that there is a possibility there for a wholly different relationship that is deep and meaningful and based not just on limited commercial transactions but around shared tastes, passions, and interests.

I think that brands that really try to be category aggregators do really well. These are the brands that don’t just post about their products, but post about things that interest their consumers.

 
Lisa Chau has been involved with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater.  Lisa currently works as an Assistant Director in Alumni Relations at Dartmouth College.  She has been published in US News and Forbes.

Independent Creative Studios Open Their Doors to the Public in WalkaboutNYC 2012

Posted on by Lisa Chau

There has been no better time for independent creative studios to disrupt the branding, advertising and marketing industry long dominated by large Mad Men type agencies.  Thanks to new technology like social media and modern attitudes, the current generation of smaller boutique firms are proving themselves worthy of attention from big name clients.

For those interested in stepping foot into the offices of the talent responsible for many of today’s most imaginative campaigns, 25 of the leading independent creative agencies in New York City will be opening its doors to visitors on October 19th.

WalkaboutNYC 2012 will be the first-of-its-kind event which allows the public an opportunity to go behind-the-scenes at some of the coolest studios stretching from the Flatiron District to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Meet with designers, technologists and copywriters for an in-depth look into their world and why their companies have an edge over the outsized competition on Madison Avenue.

What gives an independent agency the advantage?

An independent agency has the advantage in being able to work “very up-close and personal to build relationships,” said Anne Aretz of Moment, a digital product design agency with just over 40 employees. Clients include MTV, AT&T, and Citi Group. “You can really create and curate the type of environment you have within a small agency, which definitely makes a difference. Some of our clients stay with us because we care about our clients as people, not just the project they are paying us to execute.  It’s a personal effect that we think really shows in our work.”

Sarah McCormick at Canvas adds, “We’re small on purpose.  We really want to make sure that everyone knows about every project that’s going on – No one is operating in a vacuum. We know each other well, so we know the best combinations for each campaign and can tap those kinds of resources for strengths and weakness to the best of our ability.”  Despite a staff of only 25, Canvas has garnered such clients as AMC, Microsoft, Showtime, and Sony.

“You can pick up a lot of bad habits at those big agencies,” said Jonathan Hills of Domani Studios, a 50-plus person agency that specializes in digital production work with a focus on fashion, luxury, and prestige brands. Clients include Estee Lauder and Starwood Hotels and Resorts. “The halls of Ogilvy don’t reek of inspiration. We’re much more excited about staff that hasn’t done that.  We want a group that has stayed more organic and creative.   It’s almost better if you’ve never had a huge support staff to rely on because it keeps you flexible and wearing lots of hats.”

Andrew Ackermann of Area17 acknowledges that many of his clients have reached out to him because of the frustration they have encountered working with larger agencies.  He explained, “Large agencies have too many cooks in the kitchen, making the experience impersonal and sluggish.  Our small size allows us to be nimble and quick.”

WPP and Omnicom watch out! The little fish are getting the big bites, too.

So take a walk about and let me know what you discover.

Lisa Chau has been involved with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. She has been published in US News and Forbes on the subject of social media.  Follow her on Twitter @Lisa03755 

LinkedIn Advice from a Career Coach

Posted on by Lisa Chau

Melissa Llarena has been coaching entry-level, mid-level and seasoned professionals for more than 10 years. In 2012, she decided to officially incorporate Career Outcomes Matter LLC (i.e., the firm), which is headquartered in Astoria, NY, and certified as a Minority Business Enterprise by the New York & New Jersey Minority Supplier Development Council, Inc. Her client base has included professionals across a variety of sectors who were ready to change roles, explore new sectors, or work in new countries to accelerate their careers. As coach, Melissa has often championed “least likely” candidates as best contenders for the exact stretch roles that changed their career paths.

Melissa earned an undergraduate psychology degree from NYU and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. She received more than $200K in scholarships to fully fund both degrees. Melissa started her career at JPMorgan Chase working in HR, and then continued at Reuters as a trainer. She later successfully transitioned into internet marketing, which positioned her well for her subsequent roles promoting mega brands such as American Express, IBM and Charmin. Parallel with her business ventures, Melissa has successfully coached peers since 1997, including as a student at Tuck working as a career development fellow. Her interest in professional development education led her to develop and conduct an interviewing workshop for Harvard University, helping undergraduates and graduates interested in finance careers. She also created and delivered the “Emergency Kit for Thought Leaders” seminar for MBA students at Baruch College in NYC.

 
Melissa, many of today’s job seekers are not prolific social media users, how should they begin to incorporate this practice more into their process of landing a job?

ML: Start by assessing your Google footprint. Google yourself. This will help you prioritize where you need to clean up your image and then you can start introducing the best social media vehicles into your job search. LinkedIn is the clear winner (for now) when it comes to the one tool you must incorporate immediately into your job search process because recruiters are there and actively seeking candidates 24/7. Spend time completing your profile with an emphasis on your headline. Your headline is what everyone can see (including folks not connected to you) so spruce it up by making it clear what you do and if space allows include your point of differentiation e.g. Remarkably Collaborative GAAP Accounting Director at Citicorp.
 

How can job seekers resolve the conflict of social media’s very public platform with the need for confidentiality while searching for a job?

ML: There are different solutions to staying private during a job search depending on the platforms in which you are operating. In Facebook, create a group and invite only folks that can help you land your next role. This allows you to keep your job hunt talks within an intimate group of people whom you trust. In LinkedIn, change your privacy controls. Turn off your activity broadcasts so that your current boss does not see in their newsfeed that you connected with 15+ recruiters or are now following a peer company. While using Twitter, you can control who sees your tweets. The big lesson here is make adjust these settings before embarking on any social media campaign. Learn how you can remain as anonymous as you need to be to retain your current job yet be findable so that you can attract the right opportunities; there are ways to accomplish this balance — It just takes homework.
 

What are some general best practices in using social media when looking for employment?

ML: Use social media to…

– Get to know your audience firsthand (i.e. from the horse’s mouth) before chatting with them to have richer and more successful conversations.

– Learn about prospective organizations to identify the areas of opportunities where you can best contribute your skills (e.g. consumer discussion boards, Facebook comments).

– Position your experiences, interests, and skills in light of the jobs that you desire. Blogging is a great way to start repositioning yourself for a new field.

– Garner brand advocates during your job search by highlighting your strengths, viewpoints, etc. via social media so that your network can confidently endorse your candidacy.

– Accelerate a job search by updating your status to efficiently reach a wider net of people more quickly than having to call all 500 of your contacts (of course, be aware who can see that status update).
 

Does social media level the field for people trying to get jobs in completely different geographic locations?

ML: Yes, social media opens the world to job applicants. However, I wouldn’t say social media levels the playing field completely. Instead, social media facilitates a job hunt for people seeking opportunities in completely different geographic locations. For instance, if you want to work in Argentina then you can leverage your social networks to learn about the opportunities there as well as what an Argentine CV looks like.

However, just as you can use social media to find great jobs and prepare for them, so can others around the world (of course, those with internet access) because they are also on social media. As a result, social media has also made the job search process more competitive because applicants can come from a wider geographic footprint. At the same time, there are still very real hindrances that social media does not resolve including the need for work authorization in relevant countries and oftentimes the need to conduct in person interviews. In terms of the latter, there are both US firms as well as non-US firms that will not accept a Skype video interview as a substitution for an in person interview– They still want to meet a job candidate in person before making an employment decision.
 

Please tell us how to leverage groups on LinkedIn.

ML: Join up to 50 groups then prioritize your top three LinkedIn groups and actively start or join in on discussions within these three groups at least once a week. LinkedIn groups enable you to demonstrate your thought leadership amongst seasoned professionals in your desired field. However, it only works if you are more than just a passive LinkedIn group member. Instead, rise to the top and become an influencer. Share compelling articles, provide your viewpoint and make suggestions. Once you are an influential contributor then you can connect with group members and they will accept your invitations based on your credibility as an influential group member. With regards to your other 47 LinkedIn groups, keep an eye on them by receiving weekly emails that outline new discussions, comments, jobs, etc. Engage in those other 47 groups as appropriate and read suitable content to increase your sector expertise. To learn more about how to optimize your LinkedIn groups going forward read my blog that talks about how to avoid missing out on the weekly opportunities LinkedIn Groups present to job seekers: http://bit.ly/Lcu15f
 

Do you have other advice on using LinkedIn?

ML: Credible LinkedIn recommendations are critical yet underutilized. LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to showcase endorsements from your colleagues, former bosses, and clients. Here are some best practices to consider when thinking about LinkedIn recommendations.

A great recommendation is:

Specific. When asking for recommendations give your endorser ammunition i.e. relevant information to make it easy for them to write a specific recommendation.

Strategic. Think about the gaps in your candidacy for your desired job. For instance, if you’ve never had a direct report then ask for a recommendation from a team member within a team that you led — Have them highlight a skill you exhibited, a skill associated with managing a direct report e.g. giving clear directions.

Supportive. It validates your greatest strengths. Be wary of accepting and displaying a recommendation that contradicts your greatest strengths.

Reciprocated. If someone recommends you and you have great things to say about them, volunteer to write a recommendation for them. This strengthens existing bonds.
 

Is Facebook useful at all for job seeking? Do you know anyone who landed a job using Facebook?

ML: You can never tell where you’ll hear about an opportunity and Facebook could just be the medium in which an opening is announced by one of your friends or even a company. Think about the sector in which you’d like to work and then consider if they are looking for a social media savvy hire. If the answer to that question is YES then expect to find information about jobs across social media platforms including Twitter. For example, if you desired a job at Gary Vaynerchuk’s media firm then expect to learn about the opening on Facebook amongst other channels.

Alternatively, there are appropriate pages including Mashable – Jobs which you can “like” to receive work information via your newsfeed including real opportunities. Also, be aware that there are rumors of an up and coming Facebook Jobs Board. According to Mashable, if such a job board is available via Facebook then you’ll need to include Facebook as a job hunting resource. Read more about this here. Lastly, I do know someone that launched her business because a friend put a request on Facebook: A request for a caterer to cook for a bridal shower she was hosting – This strictly a Facebook opportunity that she would not have known about if it were not for Facebook.
 

How does Twitter help break past gatekeepers?

ML: Aside from the situations in which a PR firm is handling a Twitter handle, there are some top executives that actually like tweeting on their own such as Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos as well as Dan Kim, Founder and Chief Concept Officer at Red Mango. You can follow them, engage in their conversations, retweet their messages and eventually you may find yourself engaging in a 1-on-1conversation with a top executive at a firm you’d like to work for, thereby making it past gatekeepers. Yes, this strategy takes time, however, if you really respect a leader you should be following him.
 

Lisa Chau has been involved with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater.  She has also been published in US News & Forbes.  Since 2009, Lisa has worked as an Assistant Director at the Tuck School of Business.  Follow her on Twitter.

Not Just Comic Books

Posted on by Lisa Chau

What began over 40 years ago as a comic book convention has flourished into a pop culture bonanza full of devoted fans and big-name celebrities, including Kristen Stewart, Mila Kunis, Tim Burton, Will Ferrell, Robert Downey Jr. and Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Comic-Con 2012 spanned four days in San Diego and was spread across 18 rooms that ranged from 280 to 6,500-seats.

“Comic-Con attracts the most sought-after celebrities and shows to step up and engage with fans,” says Kelly Abbott, creator of ComicConHub.com, which allows fans to view all of the conference’s social media content in real-time. “What makes Comic-Con different from awards shows and premieres is the sheer mass of fans. That’s what makes it such an important media event. And that’s what makes it such a singularly unique opportunity for social media. It’s the one real chance each year that stars, shows and studios get to listen to what fans are saying firsthand.”

And listen they do–witness the obsession through photos of fans dressed in various mashups, such as Zombie Waldo, Zombie Nurses and Zombie Minnie Mouse. Better yet, watch them parade past you in the now-classic ZombieWalk. Indeed, what used to be counter-culture has become mainstream, as evidenced by the popularity of shows like The Walking Dead and True Blood.

“I’ve been making the trip to Comic-Con for 20 years now and honestly, this year’s con was the best time I’ve had in years,” says Eric Stephenson, publisher of Image Comics. “I understand some of the concerns about comics being sidelined in favor of celebrities, films and TV, but even so, it’s a fantastic event unlike any other.”

The convention has truly come to represent the best in its genres and highlights emerging talent. Philosoraptor should know better than to ask, “If I like comics, am I ‘comic pro’ or ‘comic con’”?  There is no con in Comic-Con.

Celebrities and companies clamor to keep the fans happy. Just look at the numbers. A 2008 survey by the San Diego Convention Center Corp. estimated that the event yielded a whopping $163 million for the city. To put that into perspective that means each of the 127,000 estimated attendees to Comic-Con 2012 might have spent nearly $1,300.

“When you represent a company like Lucasfilm, you know you have a responsibility to the fans—to surprise and amaze them with your Comic-Con presentation,” says Dave Filoni, supervising director of the TV series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. “What can be easily missed is what the fans themselves bring to Comic-Con. Incredible costumes, limitless energy, and a passion for so many different characters and stories. Clone troopers, Tusken Raiders, Jedi, bounty hunters, and countless others. We are lucky to have such incredibly dedicated fans. I go to Comic-Con to inspire our fans, but I always come back inspired by them.”

Coauthored with Daniel Vahab, Social Media Researcher/Strategist and Freelance Journalist. His work has appeared in Mashable, Yahoo! News, The Baltimore Sun, The Huffington Post, The Jerusalem Post, the Sun-Sentinel, the New York Press, and the Jewish Daily Forward, among others. Follow him at https://twitter.com/danielvahab

Lisa Chau has been been involved with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. Her work has appeared in US News and World Report, as well as Forbes. Since 2009, Lisa has worked as an Assistant Director at the Tuck School of Business. Follow her at https://twitter.com/Lisa03755

Photo: Ten Bandits 

Nancy Slotnick, Founder of Matchmaker Café

Posted on by Lisa Chau

Nancy Slotnick has been featured on Oprah, the Today Show and numerous others as a relationship expert. She has a B.A. from Harvard in Psychological Anthropology, and she is a renowned Life Coach, specializing in dating, love and marriage issues.

In the late 90’s, Nancy founded the original dating-cafe, Drip, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and her most recent venture is a matchmaking site on Facebook called Matchmaker Café. We got the opportunity to talk with her on her background and this new venture.

When would you say social media starting gaining prominence in the dating world, and in what capacity?

Unfortunately, social media still hasn’t gained prominence in the dating world. The reason that it’s so difficult, and the reason that I say unfortunately, is that people continue to keep their social life and their dating life separate. On the other hand, on social media, where there are so many mutual friends that are dying to meet, they are embarrassed to reach out and admit it. The “poke” is considered creepy and even the status of “single” is way underutilized. I call this putting your “cablight” on. (i.e. turning the light on to show you’re available).

What is the best way to leverage social media to meet a match?

3 excellent ways:

  1. 1. Go through the friends of your friends and ask your mutual friend about the ones that look cute;
  2. 2. When you meet someone at a bar/party/event and you haven’t exchanged numbers, just ask if they’re on Facebook and start off by friending.
  3. 3. Look on social media at the events that your friends go to in order to find good events for yourself.

What are the pitfalls of using social media to meet a match?

The transparency of social media is both a pro and a con. In contrast to online dating, which is very anonymous and segregated from friends and ex’s, social media is everybody’s business. If you have a girlfriend and things are rocky, you can’t easily use social media to try to replace her. Chances are that one of her friends will find out.

Is there still a stigma to meeting a match online?

Yes, the stigma is part of the reason that people don’t put their cablight on and why they try to remain relatively anonymous about their online dating endeavors. It’s still embarrassing to “resort” to paying for help getting a date. Yet it’s something that almost everyone needs help with. There’s even a stigma about being single. Ironically, if you hide behind the embarrassment by being passive in your dating life, you often miss the boat.

Social media has been blamed for the ruin of many relationships and marriages– What are your thoughts on this?

Social media is a tool, not a player, in the game of love. People are the ones who take various actions that are either private or public, and people are the ones who decide to post various actions in either a private or public way. It’s annoying when people don’t take responsibility for their actions and try to blame the media. We’re not victims of technology, and technology is an amazing tool to make our lives more efficient and to make connections possible that might not be otherwise.

Are there any ways that social media would enhance relationships and marriages?

I don’t know. I’d have to say not really. Social media tends to be a way that people avoid intimacy. They have the illusion of connecting with others but it is not real. I would say that marriages and relationships should be about less social media, and more about vulnerability in the connection. Social media is sharing in a more public way. Relationships are meant to be private, and not for show.

Should couples share social media accounts and/or passwords?

No. We are all individuals, and couples that are “joined at the hip” are not that likely to be in a healthy relationship. It’s not a very stable relationship model. I believe in respecting the differences in each other’s world.

Please tell me about Matchmaker Café, and why you chose Facebook as your platform.

We [at Matchmaker Café] aren’t looking to re-invent the wheel. Facebook’s social graph already exists; we are just trying to leverage it to help our members solve a problem in their dating life. We want to help our members utilize Facebook’s social graph to get themselves the dates they want. It’s simple but surprisingly it hasn’t been done.

Why use social media instead of traditional methods for meeting a match?

Because it’s there and it works better. 90% of people that we interviewed tell us that their first choice of how to meet someone is “Through friends.” So why not?

 
Lisa Chau has been involved with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. Since 2009, Lisa has worked as an Assistant Director at the Tuck School of Business. In 2012, she launched GothamGreen212 to pursue social media strategy projects. You can follow her on Twitter.

In Brand Ambassadors We Trust

Posted on by Lisa Chau


This month, General Motors (GM) decided to stop spending ten million dollars a year on Facebook advertising. In a time when many are suffering Facebook fatigue, it’s easy to point the finger at the social networking platform. Surely, as a company which employes 202,000 people, conducts business in approximately 157 countries, and has a 100+ year history, GM must have made an informed and saavy decision.

Not so fast.

While I do suspect that Facebook has reached a saturation point, at least in the United States and Canada where seven million active users left the site in May 2011 (Yes, seven million in one month, according to CNN.), were GM and other businesses really optimizing their presence on social media sites?

The rest of this article will discuss the union between Facebook and businesses in general. I am not familiar enough with GM’s advertising strategy to speak specifically about that company but I do think it presents an interesting starting point for discussing the intersection of advertising in social spaces.

Individuals were much more enamored with Facebook before corporate management realized its advertising potential. While Facebook has been available to the public at large since 2006, many businesses have yet to fully comprehend the power the network still encapsulates & the work necessary to harness the network’s power. I touched upon this subject briefly in my previous article: Public v. Private.

A few months ago, a company who is a leader in management consulting tasked me with creating a Facebook campaign which could be deployed in 30 to 60 days.  Deadline: One week. I have never done any outward-facing work for this company before. My first thought: This company does not understand social media.

The most valuable, and consequently most effective component of social media is trust.

Trust is built over time. Even ten million dollars won’t buy that- at least not immediately.

As Ben Kunz wrote for Bloomberg Businessweek, “What GM’s retreat really shows is the harsh reality that other brands must face: Making social-media communications work requires heavier lift than many organizations can muster…”

From personal experience, I would say it takes at least six months to get a new online community to accept, & possibly trust, a new member as one of their own. That is, after a dedicated campaign of listening & regular participation. On more than one occasion, I have been mistaken for a community manager or asked if I worked for the sites I belong to.

Kunz understands that “keeping Facebook conversion rates up and customer acquisition costs down requires a constant battery of audience-targeting refinement, creative testing, and website ‘landing page adjustments,’ whereas those unfamilar with social media think it’s about the number of times the Like button has been pressed.”

If you have a massive budget, it’s easy to get your Like numbers up quickly- just offer people a cool trinket in exchange for their Like.  However, it won’t mean much in the long run if you don’t deliver on your core product & connect with your target demographic.

Social media is about postive engagement.

Maintain conversations which lead to trust and exponential word of mouth endorsements. The way that advertising and marketing works hasn’t changed, only the tools have.

Consider a class of senior students attending a lecture taught by the most popular high school teacher versus a substitute who just joined the faculty a month ago. Who would the students respect? Whom would the students pay attention to? These same dynamics hold for virtual communities. Social media strategists need  resources and time to build a trusting audience.

Show people you care about them & they will care about your product or service, in turn.

It’s important to note that sucesses cannot & should not always be measured in Likes. People may not be commenting about your company online, but they could very well be bringing the conversations offline. This is why social media is so difficult to quantify.

On the flip side, if people are adding to your number of Likes, do something! How many times have we liked something only to be faced with silence?  We toss the ball onto a company’s court & it just lies there, & too often dies there.

If your customer invites interaction, seize the opportunity. Acknowledge their compliment.

1) Do something!
Kunz “tested a dozen big brands, including Apple (AAPL), Bank of America (BAC), Starbucks (SBUX), and others, “liking” them on Facebook to see how they would respond. I then checked into Facebook 31 times over the next week, each time scrolling back through several hours of friends’ posts, to see which brands would reach out to me. On average, the brands I had liked engaged with me 0.6 times over seven days—an awful performance, given the basic marketing precept that three or four interactions are required per week to trigger consumer response. I liked you, Zappos (AMZN)—and you didn’t return my call.”

2) Make your response personal, if possible.
Don’t reward your audience’s attention with some generic algorithm: If Like, respond with form letter. It’s difficult and time consuming, but don’t be just be adequate, be outstanding. What makes a good hotel great? Personalized services. The best hotels offer more than a clean, safe space to sleep and relax.  They anticipate their guests’ desires. As a new client, they won’t know your preferences, but they will try to please you nonetheless. After you’ve visited several times, they will have built up [providing you share this information] a database of your favorites. Thus, during your next stay, your room will be outfitted with your fruit, flowers, etc of choice. Without your further input. The most extraordinary hotels will even provide private butler service.

Make deep, lasting connections & appeal to people’s emotions.

Of course, this level of service is hardly feasible for most companies’ social media strategists; and that is where volunteer brand ambassadors enter the picture.  A trustworthy social media strategist is worth his/her weight in gold, but unpaid brand ambassadors are priceless. The latter group is motivated to endorse products or services not for money but genuine love (See Apple fanatics.) The social media strategist should absolutely be an active participant of the communities s/he wishes to engage, but ultimately, his/her job should be to cultivate & lead proactive teams by leveraging the trust s/he has built up in his/her followers.

 
Lisa Chau has been involved with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. Since 2009, Lisa has worked as an Assistant Director at the Tuck School of Business. In 2012, she launched GothamGreen212 to pursue social media strategy projects. You can follow her on Twitter.

Image courtesy of AllMediaNY.

Public v. Private

Posted on by Lisa Chau

I love social media and I’ve been tracking the growth of Web 2.0 since its inception. My independent study in graduate school focused on blogging when many people still considered it a wasteland of angsty teenagers, geeky technophiles and middle-aged women posting updates about their cat(s).

Although, companies have slowly– and reluctantly– embraced social media in recent years, we’re still in a pivotal transition period. Industry leaders are still tripping over themselves to keep up with the competition while trying to fully understand why their Fortune 500 companies need social media strategists in the first place.

We are at a watershed moment.

Part of the reason I value social media is because it expands my professional presence beyond my title, beyond my desk. I’m not just a number cruncher; I’m not just the logistics manager. I have traveled around the world; my squash game needs [a lot] of improvement; I enjoy the humour of How I Met Your Mother.  Nonetheless, wait for it- there is a line, and that is where management is should be paying attention.

The question is not if we should incorporate social media into business. We’re way past that point. The question we need to ask is how?

Simply arming the staff with corporate Twitter and Facebook accounts is simply careless. Guidelines need to be put into place so employees understand what is in/appropriate and expected. What employees write publicly reflects on the companies which employ them. Even if their bios read, “My thoughts my own.” As Dorie Clark wrote in “It’s Not a Job Search, It’s a Permanent Campaign” (HBR): [Everyone] is also now expected to perform round-the-clock personal brand maintenance, and most people don’t even realize it.

As we move forward into the next phase of business conduct, we need to educate not only veterans of industry, but also newly minted graduates who have not known a world without the internet. I recall being shocked by a Wall Street article years after business casual dress codes had been adopted across the board. Apparently, some of the self-selecting audience of the newspaper did not realize that they ought not dress for work as if they were undergraduates ready for a hedonistic night in fraternity basements. Even as recent as two days ago, the newspaper ran an article titled, “Yes, Mark Zuckerberg Does Wear Ties Sometimes”. The Facebook CEO substituted his signature hoodie for a suit jacket and tie to meet President Obama.

I am definitely not saying, don’t have fun or don’t be yourself. I love fun and think there should be much more of it in the office. Just be mindful of your audience. Impressions count. Do your clients really need to see you dressed as a pirate dinosaur and chugging a bottle of vodka while riding a mechanical bull? Is it worth possibly losing a million dollar account or contract? (In both cases, probably not.)

 
Lisa Chau has been involved with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. Since 2009, Lisa has worked as an Assistant Director at the Tuck School of Business. In 2012, she launched GothamGreen212 to pursue social media strategy projects. You can follow her on Twitter.

Photo courtesy Doug Woods.

Maximizing Your LinkedIn Presence

Posted on by Lisa Chau

If everyone jumped off a bridge, would you? Maybe not.

If all your friends joined Facebook, would you? Maybe not.

But, if all the companies you wanted to work for are using LinkedIn to recruit, would you complete a profile? Probably.

Thus, began my 36-hour marathon of finally rounding out the LinkedIn profile I abandoned 5 years ago.

Conceptually, LinkedIn is great. It allows me to:

1. Share my resume with employers without attaching documents to my cover letter. No more worrying about viruses or document/ program compatibility.

2. Keep a live inventory of my professional experience. The link to my profile is permanent, but the information can be updated as often as necessary.

3. Collect endorsements from connections who have been vetted and recommended by others. I don’t make human resource departments do any more work than necessary to verify my profile.

Practically, LinkedIn has a few areas for improvement. I’ve encountered or heard about from my connections these problems:

1. It can be difficult for people to leave recommendations. People who run multi-million dollar departments / companies / investments can have a hard time figuring out how to leave me a recommendation. Yes, I am certain they are not just making excuses not to endorse me since I spent hours instructing about half a dozen people through the process.

2. Some people have two accounts and are not able to merge them. For these people, LinkedIn’s technical support group hasn’t been able to resolve the conflict. One person’s problem is attributed to having two emails with different middle initials; another has two accounts but only one email.

3. The algorithms aren’t always accurate. For example, LinkedIn suggested to one person they join the Dartmouth Class of 1987 group — She wasn’t even born, yet, in 1987!

LinkedIn was founded in December 2002, and launched in May 2003, and it’s growing faster than ever. And regardless of what problems some users might encounter, it is becoming more and more necessary to have a professional presence on LinkedIn. Here are some tips to maximizing your profile:

The Basics:

  • Include a professional but inviting photo of yourself. You should be neatly dressed in front of a plain background. Smile.
  • Provide a comprehensive outline of your work. Your resume should be up-to-date, with a focused summary.

Recommendations:

Recommendations are the most powerful piece of your virtual ecosystem. They will also take the most time and patience to cultivate. However, the reward is work the effort.

First and foremost, use these 2 rules when soliciting recommendations:

  • Always be polite. Even if you don’t get the recommendation.
  • Understand that people are busy. They are doing you a favor when they write you a public endorsement. If you don’t get a response after 2 reminders, move on to the next connection.

Try to get recommendations from people you reported to, people who report to you, and peers. Ideally, get three recommendations per position that you have held.

I have found that the best time to ask for an endorsement is at the time of initial contact- when you ask to connect. After the person has agreed to write something for you, use LinkedIn’s built-in tool for your request. The system auto-generates a link for your connection to follow and complete their testimonial of you.

Always make the process as easy as possible for the other person.

That said, the best method to help yourself is to help the other person.

1. Write a sincere and unique (Don’t call everyone a “rock star”. Be specific!) recommendation for the other person. This will give them an idea of what you expect them to write for you. It will also make them feel good.

2. Provide your connection with information they will need in writing your endorsement, like how and when did you meet, the kind of work you did together and what you’d like to have emphasized.

3. Offer to write a draft.

Make sure you know your way around LinkedIn enough to help your connections complete the process. Approximately one out of every three people I contacted needed some sort of further assistance.

Good luck, and let us know what tips work best for you!

Lisa Chau has been involved  with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. Since 2009, Lisa has worked as an Assistant Director at the Tuck School of Business. In 2012, she launched GothamGreen212 to pursue social media strategy projects. You can follow her on Twitter.

The Role of Social Media for Libraries, Part II

Posted on by Lisa Chau

I first encountered Heather Backman while tweeting about my personal experience with the Howe Library. Heather is the Programming, Public Relations and Outreach Coordinator for Howe Library in Hanover, NH. She was hired by Howe in October 2010 and part of her job entails handling the library’s publicity and social media outreach activities. Prior to her arrival at Howe, she earned a B.A. and M.A. in English literature from Stanford University and a M.S. in Information from the University of Michigan. She blogs– and you should read it. Catch the first segment of my interview with Heather here.

She discusses here how technology such as e-books affected the library.

In one sense, e-books have changed very little about what libraries do or how we do it; they just allow us to deliver a basic library service in a different medium. Some people have said that e-books are “killing” the printed book or that they spell the end of libraries, but that hasn’t been my experience. To my mind, the e-book is not “killing” the printed book, just supplementing it. We are still buying physical books in large quantities and I expect that we will continue to do so for a long time. I would go so far as to say that I doubt the physical book will ever completely go away. Even if it does, libraries are more about information-sharing than about lending physical items; handling e-books may mean changes in some of our procedures but I don’t think that libraries will cease to exist when the e-book predominates.

E-books have, however, also been what I’ve seen people refer to as a “disruptive influence.” This doesn’t mean that their impact has been negative, but just that they’ve shaken things up in the library world, in both good ways and bad.

E-books have created a whole new area of demand for libraries. In many ways this has been a boon because it has enabled us to provide technologically up-to-date services to a segment of the population who may not have used libraries before. It’s great for customer relations when we can offer people a service that they want but may not expect to find at a library – and it’s clear that people want e-book lending and troubleshooting assistance. Currently, we offer e-books and audiobooks for download via a service called Overdrive, which we subscribe to as part of a statewide consortium. It is used almost to the point of straining the system; most of the books are checked out at any given time, and we get very frequent questions on how to use the service. We offered a class on using Overdrive as a test for patron interest and had 40 in attendance, which is pretty good for this kind of program at Howe Library.

The popularity of e-book lending also raises some complex questions for libraries. For instance, it necessitates that we reconsider how we allocate our budgets. How much should we take away from book purchases to fund e-book purchases? This is tricky because there are at least as many of our patrons who still don’t use e-readers as there are patrons who are enthusiastic e-book readers. Physical books work for everyone; e-books are only usable for a specific segment of our user base. The issue becomes especially difficult because we can’t always get the same books in physical and electronic format. As of this writing, out of the “big six” publishers (Random House, HarperCollins, Penguin, Hachette, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster) only Random House allows libraries to lend e-books with no restrictions (learn more here). HarperCollins will sell e-books to libraries but requires us to re-purchase a book after it has been lent 26 times. Penguin recently announced that it would not be selling any new titles to libraries, and for a while, older Penguin titles that we had already purchased were unavailable for lending. (Actually, between the time I wrote that sentence and the time I’m editing it, they announced that they are pulling out of Overdrive altogether. A good basic summary of the situation is here.). Hachette, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster also won’t sell to us. This aspect of the situation is, to put it mildly, frustrating. We want to give our patrons what they’re asking for but in many cases we just can’t. For instance, if you want to read the new Steve Jobs biography, which is published by Simon & Schuster, you’re stuck with the paper format if you want to get it from a library and/or if you don’t have the money to buy the e-book yourself.

Amazon adds even more complexity. For a long time, the company would not make Kindles compatible with Overdrive. It was a big deal when they finally decided to allow library lending of Kindle books, but the launch of that functionality was very quickly overshadowed by Amazon’s launch of its own separate Kindle lending program. And Amazon’s involvement is exacerbating the issues with other publishers. Amazon is radically changing the face of publishing in ways that are not necessarily beneficial for the publishing ecosystem. Now it’s launched its own publishing house, making it a competitor with other publishers at the same time as it is a vital distributor for them. I think that this makes the publishing houses even warier of participating in anything Amazon is involved with, and that includes library e-book lending.

Librarians and publishers are at least trying to talk to each other but it doesn’t seem as though much progress is being made yet. With the most recent news from Penguin, it’s hard to be optimistic right now. Although publishers have legitimate concerns about how they are going to make money in the world of e-books, I honestly believe that they are shooting themselves in the foot by not working with libraries, and causing a good deal of collateral damage in the process. It’s frustrating to see libraries get bad PR (“I can’t get such-and-such e-book from my local library” can feed into stronger perceptions of public libraries as obsolescent in the Internet age) due to factors out of their control.

On the other hand, there are rays of light. Many patrons are impressed that they can get e-books from their local library at all; it does help us to show that we are more “with the times” than some people who haven’t set foot in a library for years might expect. And we are evidently still able to provide reading material that our patrons want and enjoy, judging by the heavy use of the e-books that we are able to lend.

Lisa Chau has been involved  with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. Since 2009, Lisa has worked as an Assistant Director at the Tuck School of Business. In 2012, she launched GothamGreen212 to pursue social media strategy projects. You can follow her on Twitter.

The Role of Social Media for Libraries, Part I

Posted on by Lisa Chau

I first encountered Heather Backman while tweeting about my personal experience with the Howe Library. Heather is the Programming, Public Relations and Outreach Coordinator for Howe Library in Hanover, NH. She was hired by Howe in October 2010 and part of her job entails handling the library’s publicity and social media outreach activities. Prior to her arrival at Howe, she earned a B.A. and M.A. in English literature from Stanford University and a M.S. in Information from the University of Michigan. She blogs– and you should read it.

LG: I first encountered the @howelibrary Twitter account in response to my praise of the librarians’ handling a recent power outage. Do you engage with a lot of people via social media?

HB: I’m working on increasing our reach through social media channels. As I write this, we have 210 followers and follow 137 accounts on Twitter, and 142 likes and 47 check-ins on Facebook. We usually get a few clicks on the links we post, and a couple of times per month someone will retweet one of our tweets or like one of our Facebook posts.

What I would ultimately like to see is people treating our social media presence as another natural avenue of communication with us, like e-mail or phone. Right now, I instigate almost all of our social media interactions. I monitor local hashtags like #upval and #uppervalley, and I have a variety of searches set up for tweets that mention relevant terms and that are posted by people close to Hanover. If a tweet comes up for any of these searches and I think the library could add something to the conversation by replying, I’ll reply. The responses vary between trying to give the library some “personality” and offering information. In the past couple of months, for instance, I’ve commiserated with someone about having to get up early, replied to a tweet complaining about not being able to find a good space to work in, and suggested some additional books for someone who enjoyed The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. No one has yet to directly tweet at the library requesting information, but I hold out hope that it will happen one day!

LG: How do you choose what to post on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr?

HB: For YouTube it’s fairly simple– if we make a video, we post it. (We aren’t creating lots of videos right now, so we don’t upload to YouTube often.) Our use of Flickr is similar, though a bit more sporadic, probably partly because we don’t always manage to get photo releases for everyone in an image (so we can’t distribute the photo) and partly because staff don’t remember that we have a Flickr account. We also put photos on Facebook if we think that our patrons would be particularly interested in seeing them.

Announcements of upcoming events and other library news always go out on Facebook and Twitter. Other than that, my primary consideration for what I post is whether it is likely to be interesting or useful to our followers. This is a highly subjective determination; I try to make note of which links get clicked on and/or which posts get a response and use that information to guide future decisions. Book-, library-, and information-related content predominates, although I’ve also shared things like Lifehacker articles and electronics reviews. It’s vital that libraries be perceived as unbiased sources of information, so I try very hard to keep our feeds viewpoint-neutral and to avoid politically-charged topics (unless I’m linking to a neutral explanation of a current political issue).

LG: What is the role of social media for libraries? Isn’t someone either a library patron or not? Can you convert him/her into becoming a library visitor?

HB: The purpose of a library is to educate, inform, and enrich the lives of its users, and social media provides a way for libraries to achieve these ends in a new medium that is becoming a major channel for communication and interpersonal interaction. Through social media, I try to inform people of library events and services in hopes that they will take advantage of whatever meets their needs or interests.

One of the best parts of social media is that I can do all of this proactively. I don’t have to wait for someone to come in and ask me a question at the reference desk. I can monitor the public stream for people who are already talking about things relevant to the library, and then I can join the conversation. It permits the library to add value to people’s lives when they may not have even been aware that we could help to begin with. And it enables us to do so in a way that feels personal. Howe places a premium on excellent customer service and on building relationships with our patrons.

There are certainly people who just don’t use the library, as well as people who may pop in occasionally but who are not regular visitors. But I absolutely believe that non-library-users can become library users if they’re given a good reason to do so – after all, turning non-users into patrons is part of my job!

If I make contact with someone who hasn’t used the library before, I’ve created an opportunity for that person to learn more about us, and hopefully to come to perceive us as valuable and start using the library in other ways. I don’t care whether this first contact occurs because someone wanders in to use the bathroom; to sit at a computer for five minutes or they encounter us on social media.

I’ve had successes in this area both in person and via social media. I’ve answered questions about what the library has to offer from people who had never been to Howe before and came in to attend a non-library meeting held in our building. In the online realm, I had one interaction with a local Twitter user complaining that the college library was too quiet for him to get work done over winter break. I found his tweet through a search, replied to let him know that Howe might be a suitable work location (after school gets out, it’s bustling here!), and he tweeted back to ask whether we had WiFi and to say that he’d think about checking us out. Whatever the medium, I’m just trying to put the thought in possible patrons’ heads that we are a useful resource.
 

Lisa Chau has been involved  with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. Since 2009, Lisa has worked as an Assistant Director at the Tuck School of Business. In 2012, she launched GothamGreen212 to pursue social media strategy projects. You can follow her on Twitter.

Twelve Twitter Tips

Posted on by Lisa Chau

Twitter Tips to help you make the most of your time. Yes, there are actually strategies for maximizing your 140 character missives. My advice won’t apply to every case, but I hope it will serve as a good guide for helping you craft a personalized approach for your needs. The suggestions below are primarily geared towards businesses, but can used for personal accounts, too.

1. SMILE
As I mentioned, there are exceptions to my advice. So, if you’re a haute couture fashion model, you might want to skip to step two. Everyone else, you’re here to engage and collaborate. Project approachability. Smile! Be the “person I’d like to have lunch with,” not “person I’d rather walk up 20 flights of stairs to avoid rather than share an elevator with.” Be a confident, compassionate leader, not a dull, disinterested slacker.

If you’re really camera shy, you can use a logo or photo of an inanimate object. I wouldn’t advise it, though. People want to put a face to the tweets. Either option is still infinitely better than the default Twitter egg, however. If you can’t bother to put up any profile image, why should anyone bother to take you seriously?

 
2. PERSONALIZE
This step is an extension of picking a good profile photo to represent you. Whenever I look at a new Twitter profile, I look at the photo first [out of instinct], then the bio. Who is this person? Why would I care what s/he has to say? Tell your audience who you are — Concisely & directly: What is your function? What is your expertise?

I highly advise a link to a fuller bio for people who want to know more about you. My suggestions are LinkedIn or About.me If you have various social media accounts, the latter will neatly organize all of your redirects in one place.
 

3. HUMANIZE
Yes, there is a definitely a place for Twitter accounts that just broadcast news. They are called news outlets, like The Wall Street Journal or CNN. For most other companies, I believe it’s much more effective to humanize your Tweets. Because there will be some people who are only interested in corporate updates, I urge keeping two accounts. One that is business-oriented (Product launches, formal announcements and the such) and a second that allows for more creativity (Employee stories, thoughts about other industries, etc.). Humanize yourself and your staff. Who works at your company? What are they interested in outside of the office? Build an emotional attachment to your brand.

Hootsuite makes managing multiple accounts very easy, even on an Android phone.
 

4. BALANCE
If you plan to keep a business account that is not limited to formal corporate announcements, make sure you balance the ratio of personal to professional tweets.  I would aim to keep work-related updates around 70%.
 

5. SCHEDULE
Decide when you want to send out your updates. If your company is international, but based in the U.S. you might want to schedule tweets to out at 9PM US time to appear on an Asian timeline at 9AM. Figure out what time slots work best for your company and plan accordingly.

I’m currently experimenting based on Dan Zarrella’s concept of “contra-competitive timing.” In numerous cases, he discovered that the most successful times and days to publish new content are off-peak times. “It’s like when you’re at a noisy party and it’s hard to hear the person talking to you 2 feet away, but… When there is less other noise to compete with (ie fewer tweets, emails, blog posts, etc) your content can gain attention more easily.”

Again, I recommend Hootsuite for this job. Huge fan.
 

6. DISTRIBUTE
Now that you’ve decided XYZ day at XYZ time is optimal for you to tweet, don’t bombard your followers with all your insights at once. I don’t think that anyone needs to send out more than one tweet an hour. Any more than that, you’re should either be classified as a good friend (in which case, you should just text my personal phone number or email me directly) or a spammer (in which case, just stop. Stop now- seriously).
 

7. SPECIFY
You have 140 characters to tell me something. Give me details.

Pointless: Checked out some clothes. Totally going shopping.

Much improved: Went to Hermes fashion show with @heatherpixley. Must buy green cashmere turtleneck Heidi Klum wore.

Quality tweets attract quality followers.
 

8. CHOOSE
Don’t blindly follow everyone who follows you. Yes, it might feel a little rude, but it’s better than cluttering up your feed with updates that are completely irrelevant to you. I have no interest in buying real estate in Florida. Sorry.
 

9. ORGANIZE
The more time you spend on Twitter, the more feeds you will follow. Make organized lists and use them. Otherwise, things have the potential to become very messy and overwhelming after your feed tops 50 unless you only follow very niche accounts which don’t update often.

It’s also a great public service. I’ve found some great lists compiled by others. I can follow 36 new photographers or 63 CEOs in just one click.
 

10. ENGAGE
Give. Receive. Share.

Exchange information and build relationships. This is how you will make the most of your time on Twitter.

Empower yourself and others. Remember, we’re here to be social. In fact, Social Media Week’s theme in 2012 focuses on “Empowering Change through Collaboration. This theme is designed as a call to action, allowing individuals- like you- and organizations around the world to explore how social media empowers citizens, increases mobility, enables mass collaboration, develops hyperlocalism, maximizes interconnectedness, fosters knowledge creation & sharing, bolsters leadership, and encourages global empathy.”
 

11. EXPERIMENT
Twitter is best understood and used by those who do. Experiment. Everyone needs a different strategy. Find the approach that works best for your specific case. I would be remiss not to tell you to heed caution in your activities, though. This is a very powerful vehicle for communication. The larger the corporation, the higher up in management, the more visible you will be. Be vigilant in your messaging choices and stay on course.
 

12. ENJOY
Of course!
 

I hope this list helped you. I could go on, but I like the alliteration of Twelve Twitter Tips. Also, I reached my word limit for this post.
 

Lisa Chau has been involved with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. Since 2009, Lisa has worked as an Assistant Director at the Tuck School of Business. In 2012, she launched GothamGreen212 to pursue social media strategy projects. You can follow her on Twitter. 

Interview with Luciano Quarta, Administrative Law Expert in Italy

Posted on by Lisa Chau

Luciano Quarta is one of the biggest experts of administrative law in Italy. On 9 January 2012, he was featured in the Italian newspaper, Italia Oggi, as the week’s “Avvocati Oggi” (Lawyers Today). Luciano focuses on governmental topics like public contracts, public network utilities, town and country planning law and especially energy law. He works with private companies and public administration authorities, either as an advisor or a litigator in the Italian Administrative Courts: Tribunale Amministrativo Regionale (TAR), Consiglio di Stato and public Arbitration Courts.

Luciano is a regular contributor to Italy’s specialized reviews on administrative law issues and has spoken at numerous international conferences on public contracts, public network utilities and town planning law. He is also an officer of the Italian Army Reserve. Every year, he dedicates time and expertise towards the NATO Corps and serves as a LEGAD (Legal Advisor). Today, we’re learning more about him.

Luciano, tell me about media when you were a child.

I was not even 10 years old when I learned about the death of Judge Vittorio Occorsio in 1976. I found out through traditional media at that time: TV and newspapers. At that time, any given Western European country had only 2 or 3 national TV channels. Everything was completely different back then — Spain was still led by Dictator Francisco Franco; Germany was split in two and the internet could not even be imagined by common people.

Today, children have plenty of new methods to get information about the world around them, including the internet and social media. I think that having more information sources is always an improvement. However, parents need to take responsibility of guiding their children through the many media options: TV, internet — anything.

Having a very international perspective has always been one of your main goals. In this context, does social media help tremendously in broadening your horizons?

Absolutely, yes. Before social media was commonly diffused and accessible, the only way to widen one’s view of the world was by travelling. Beautiful. Enjoyable. But complicated and expensive. Now, it is much easier and cheaper to embrace international perspectives by sharing someone else’s experience through the web via text, photos and video.

On the job, social networks and discussion forums allow for the exchange of professional ideas with colleagues beyond Italy. Additionally, I am able to find new ways to provide my professional services globally.

What do you see as the main difference in social media use in Italy compared to the United States?

Social media communication in Italy is an important field of expression for political organizations. Italians have tired of seeing the same faces as Ministers, Presidents and members of the Parliament for the past 40 years. They are sick of making heavy sacrifices so that government officials enjoy unlawful and enormous privileges.

Consequently, Italian blogs and other social media have become tools of political aggregation. One of these movements is “5 Stelle,” founded by Beppe Grillo. He started a political campaign based on environmental issues and fought against global market control by financial lobbies worldwide (entities like Goldman Sachs or the rating companies: Standard & Poors, Moody’s, Fitch, etc.). The campaign talked to the people about “conspiracy theory.” However you want to consider it, today, “5 Stelle” is a true political organization present on the board of many local governments, and it gives a voice to underrepresented opinions on “official” public information channels, like major TV stations and newspapers.

Another interesting project was started by Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the CEO of Ferrari. He is also a key player in the FIAT group and within the Italian economy. His foundation is “Italia Futura,” focused on pushing innovation and the replacement of the entire old-school political guard — In Italy, commonly considered dinosaurs. Using social media as a platform, his website attempts to aggregate the youngest and most brilliant minds in any intellectual field to push out outdated politicians. I like this project greatly. I think it has very good vision and intent.

In 2007, you joined Grispini & Partners, Law Firm in Rome, as a partner and chief of the Administrative Law Department. Due to high levels of discretion and confidentiality, not much is known about the firm other than that it was involved in some of the most important real estate operations of the last years: the Enel (the Italian National Energy Company) spin–off, the re-organization of the real estate patrimony of Ferrovie dello Stato (the Italian State Railway company), and the constitution of the Real Estate investment fund of the Autonomic Region of Sicily. Where does social media fit in under such circumstances?

Strict confidentiality makes the situation difficult. It’s quite interesting to observe how big real estate and financial groups manage their public communication. Very often, these companies don’t consider social media communication at all. In my opinion, it’s not wise for them to undervalue this topic as a part of their public information policies.

As a professor, you have taught at the University of Dusseldorf; the University of Malta; and the Scuola Superiore dell’Economia e delle Finanze (the internal Superior School of the Economy Ministry). Do you cover legal issues in the context of social media in any of your courses?

I have covered legal issues in some of my courses, especially those which involve students who are military personnel. An inappropriate use of social media can compromise the image of a whole nation or cause a strategic action to fail.

Is social media and law becoming a growing trend in the discussion of law?

Yes, absolutely. There are plenty of discussions about issues related to intellectual property, the protection of the privacy, national defense issues related to military secrets, etc. The list is very long.

Please share your thoughts on freedom of speech on the internet as it pertains to individual rights and professional limitations.

I don’t agree with any limitation to the freedom of speech. However, it’s equally important to balance professional limitations, by which we mean those limitations on the freedom of speech related to occupational roles and duties. Non-disclosure agreements typical for lawyers, advisors and military personnel can be reasonable. Anyone who accepts a commitment, an appointment or a role, ought to be aware of the associated boundaries.

You are interested in freedom versus reputation. Please explain.

It’s quite simple. Anyone’s freedom is limited where another’s freedom begins. Everyone should be free to say whatever they want, but when they use this freedom, they must take responsibility for their actions. Thus, it is important that we be able to authenticate the identity of anyone who publishes information on the web that can affect someone else’s life and reputation. An exception, however, would be for the identity of dissidents in dictatorship countries since anonymity is vital for personal safety and the development of democracy there.

Should companies have the right to control their employee’s online activities regarding personal opinions?

Absolutely not. The only acceptable exception should be military personnel for the reasons we discussed above, and only within the limit of what is strictly necessary. Whenever there isn’t any risk to national security, freedom must be respected, regardless of military status.

What is the best way to distinguish personal versus professional online identity?

If it’s not clear by context, one can declare his/her identity and affiliation. For example, I now state that I am sharing my personal opinions as an individual, unrelated to my law firm or the Army.

 

Lisa Chau has been involved with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. Since 2009, Lisa has worked as an Assistant Director at the Tuck School of Business. In 2012, she launched GothamGreen212 to pursue social media strategy projects. You can follow her on twitter.

Coverage of SMW12: Socializing the News

Posted on by Lisa Chau

Who

Moderated by Peter Himler – President — Publicity Club of New York
With Panelists:
Anthony De Rosa — Social Media Editor, Thomson Reuters
Craig Kanalley — Social Media Editor, NBC News
Elizabeth Heron — Social Media Editor, The New York Times
Jake Porway — Data Scientist, The New York Times
Mat Yurow — Social Media Producer, Bloomberg News and BusinessWeek
Steve Krakauer— Senior Digital Producer, CNN/U.S

What

The Socializing the News luncheon began with Publicity Club of New York’s President, Peter Himler introducing Jake Porway, the Data Scientist at The New York Times’ Research & Development Labs to demonstrate his company’s Cascade app, which I must say is likely the most *beautiful* tool presented during Social Media Week 2012.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQBOF7XeCE0

Project Cascade goes beyond the two dimensional graphs most companies currently use. It’s a three dimensional representation of how news is shared and how it spreads. The app uses data from the New York Times website and Twitter, well-worn territory but and it adds a key element: information from bit.ly, the URL shortener. By working with bit.ly, staff were able to see when New York Times links were shortened or expanded. Altogether, a full tapestry is exposed: Read; Share; Engage.

Person 1 browses the NYT site, reads an article of interest, uses bit.ly to shorten the URL, shares on Twitter; Person 2 clicks on the  bit.ly link, expands the URL to read the story; Engagement via returning to the NYT website, retweets and conversation. A very powerful data set emerges from these actions. Using the tool developed at the NYT, researchers can see the cascade of events which happens whenever someone tweets one of their news stories.

Project Cascade shows all the sharing behavior based on a tweet. All the layers of retweets. The echo effect across Twitter. The degrees of separation from the original tweeter. Analysts can see the reach of an article by seeing how tall the graph gets, built by layers of retweets. They can also see when others enter and leave a conversation, streaming over time. Consequently, they can also pinpoint influence by large spikes in the data. Who are key players and what are they saying? The app allows analysts to understand the nature of a tweet and how it spreads by looking at the backbone of influential people. Does it help when someone asks a question or adds their thoughts? Do they use a certain hashtag? How does conversation evolve? On which branch do people enter the tapestry? How do things change over time? Using the tool, analysts have quantifiable data to ask questions like “When is the best time to tweet?” They can test the hypothesis and see what works best. They can see who are consistently bringing people back to the site. Which articles are likely to spread and why. What are the sections which affect the flow of conversation? How do journalists become a part of the conversation? Should we retweet ourselves? Should stories be managed or should they be allowed to grow organically? Now, all these questions can be looked at because Project Cascade offers a lens into what is happening in social media.

But Socializing the News wasn’t all apps. Steve Krakauer shared on how social media has a real impact on what companies do. What happens on the digital space translates into more viewers on CNN. Now, the question is how to harness that. Piers Morgan is a great example of how Twitter can build a brand. He is a personality with a strong following. And it really is Piers who tweets. Google+ doesn’t have a good metric or analytics system, yet, and it hasn’t opened up the same way Facebook and Twitter have. For those reasons, people hesitate.  For big organizations to consider Google+, it will have to show more of the back end data. With Facebook and Twitter, you can have a community where you can hit people with what they are interested in. Cultivating a community that already exists is almost as important as reaching out to new people. But most important is people clicking on links, replying, retweeting and commenting, more so than follower numbers or likes.

Mat Yurow joined the dialogue, offering his perspective from Bloomberg. Bloomberg‘s wire service is its main source of revenue. In a world where Twitter is becoming the source for breaking news, how does a company balance service offerings which are free v. charged? Mobile apps have been optimized for sharing and discussion and that is where the organic growth will happen. At the moment, it’s about building a following. Each social network has its own strengths, and those strengths are primed to be taken advantage of.

His company has found that it gets much more traffic from Facebook and people spend three times as much time reading articles on the site, as opposed to the traffic from Twitter, while LinkedIn is used by reporters to find leads. Play the slow game and build relationships. There are few tools better at relationship building than Twitter. Social media editors are responsible for building their credibility and clout to make people listen to what is being said; PR people are responsible for checking-in periodically even when they are not pushing or selling a story. Become a familiar face on a journalist’s timeline, and journalists will be much more willing to respond.

Yurow instructed attendees to find a way to add value to your followers, and play to the vanity of people. Mention them in a newsletter, and then let them know they have been included. Send out tweets at different times, depending on when people read. Understand your audience and find out when you can offer most value.  Consider scheduling tweets to post at night or on the weekends because social sites may be blocked at your followers’ workplace. Don’t lose your audience because they are not able to be at a desk when you are.

Then the New York Times’ Elizabeth Heron offered her views. On Twitter, the company uses the main @NYT account to break news. However, each desk has its own account and is responsible for its own social media strategy, so things don’t need to be completely centralized. “Hashtag Science” is used to create short hashtags which clearly identify the story and invite people to contribute. For example, #iEconomy to discuss how Apple is affecting the economy; how does Apple differ from other major companies that manufacture in China; do factory conditions affect people’s choice to buy iPhones?

To give readers access to journalists, the New York Times also holds live chats on Facebook, as well as on Google+ hangouts. The company likes to give direct access to reporters who work on series. And this international contingent of reporters is great for crowdsourcing. NYT considers the journalistic value of social media. It’s difficult to quantify, but if the company finds sources it would not have found otherwise or it’s able to cover breaking news more comprehensively, then it is significant. On the business side, the company cares about referral traffic. Engagement metrics are much more important than number of followers.

Craig Kanalley expounded on the role of the social media editor: to tell stories. Carve a niche and innovate to use social media creatively. There are endless possibilities. It’s also part of the employee’s responsibility to break out of a Twitter Monkey role. Engage journalists on Twitter by offering timely information.

Keep in mind that Pinterest is sustainable because it appeals to the mainstream audience, not the tech-geeky crowd. Finally, it’s better to post in real time in possible. Scheduling tweets can make you look outdated if not done correctly, so be careful.

The panel concluded with Anthony De Rosa. He stated that in order to be the place where people go for news, you should be the beacon for all news – it makes you valuable. You shouldn’t feel like you can only report those stories coming from your newsroom. However, make sure to validate; due diligence is necessary. Be a megaphone for your own content, but also act as a curator so you’re the central source for everything. The difference between social media and headlines is that you don’t have to be as literal with the former. Social media writers are aiming to grab attention rather than gain the SEO system. Ride the line of interesting and engaging, but don’t mislead.

Pinterest popped up again as a great distribution channel for videos, and LinkedIn was positioned as good for gathering information because it allows users to filter others by who people are: which companies do they work for and which positions do they hold? Listen on LinkedIn. This function doesn’t exist natively on Twitter, but can be maximized on LinkedIn.

Peter Himler helped us end the event by pointing us to MuckRack, which tracks thousands of journalists on Twitter and social media.

At the end of the event, I walked away feeling like I had a great sense of the myriad ways the news can get social and how companies are doing it.

 


Lisa Chau has been involved with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. Since 2009, Lisa has worked as an Assistant Director at the Tuck School of Business. In 2012, she launched GothamGreen212 to pursue social media strategy projects. You can follow her on twitter.

Interview with Stephen Duncombe, SMWNYC Panelist for Literature Unbound

Posted on by Lisa Chau

Stephen Duncombe is an Associate Professor at the Gallatin School and the Department of Media, Culture and Communications of New York University where he teaches the history and politics of media. He is the author of Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy and Notes From Underground: Zines and the Politics of Underground Culture; co-author of The Bobbed Haired Bandit: Crime and Celebrity in 1920s New York; editor of the Cultural Resistance Reader and co-editor of White Riot: Punk Rock and the Politics of Race.  He writes on the intersection of culture and politics for a range of scholarly and popular publications, from the cerebral The Nation, to the prurient Playboy.

Stephen will speak at Literature Unbound: Radical Strategies for Social Literature at NYU during Social Media Week. I interviewed Stephen to learn more about his work and experiences.

What are the best ways for political activists to harness social media’s value?

There’s the obvious ways: using social media as a way to communicate better than we’ve been able todo before, reaching more people, with more information, faster, easier and cheaper. But what excites me most about the power of social media in activism is less how it is being used as a instrumental tool and more how it is had been integrated into on-the ground activist practice as a sort of social protocol. The organization of social media — distributed, participatory, individualized within the context of a collectivity — is being mirrored on the streets in the very social forms of the protests that are taking place: the largely leader-less, horizontally-organized, mass occupations of public space that are sweeping the world. Back in the 1960s the great critic Lionel Trilling called the demonstrations that were happening “Modernism in the Streets.” I think we could call what is happening around the world today “Internet in the Streets.”

Can you explain the ramifications that recent political uprisings aided by social media channels have had on the social media landscape as a whole, and particularly where restrictive governments reign?

I think the simplest answer to this is that restrictive governments have a hard time reigning-in Twitter and Facebook. They can try, and sometimes they succeed. Some governments, like China, are very good at these restrictions, but repressive governments are caught in a fundamental bind. The very tools of communications and networking that are essential for economic innovations and the wealth of the nation, can be — and are — also used for political innovations as well.

What is social literature?

This is what we’ll find out on February 14! Literature has always been social, that is: it’s a communication between an author and a reader. The development of print greatly expanded the range of this relationship — a writer in India could reach a reader in Canada, but it also restricted the sociality into a one-way communications: the author writes and the reader reads. With the digital revolution all this has changed. Since every digital device is both a receiver and a transmitter, the flow of communications can go both ways and, because these devices are networked, this conversation can be opened up to many others.

You created the Open Utopia, an open-access, open-source, web-based edition of Thomas More’s Utopia. What inspired this project?

A few years back I had the privilege of teaching a Fulbright seminar at Moscow State University on the topic of “political imagination.” In preparation for doing this, I re-read Thomas More’s 16th century classic Utopia. But when I did this I read a completely different book that what I had remembered reading in High School. This time I realized that what More was creating was less a authoritative plan of an alternative society and more an “imaginal machine” — a technology for stimulating the imagination of his readers. How he does this would take a long time to explain, but simply put, by creating an alternative world that he then names No-Place (which is what Utopia means in Greek), more pushes his readers to imagine what an alternative some-place might look like for themselves.

But More was stuck with the technology of his day: the printed page, and so his readers had to do all their imaginative work in their heads and as individuals. By creating an open-access, open-source, web-based edition of Thomas More’s Utopia, I’ve tried to “Open” up the book to the reader’s active participation. In my digital edition of Utopia readers become writers and editors and collaborators.  One of the ways they can do this is WikiTopia–a mediawiki on which people can draft their own ideal society, or collaborate with others in creating a collectively authored Utopia. And with a platform designed by the folks at the Institute for the Future of the Book called “Social Book,” visitors to Open Utopia can annotate and comment upon what More – or I – have written, and then share their comments with others. The idea here is to help people to imagine their own Utopias and share them with others, and not be content with an “authorized” Utopia, be it More’s or anyone else’s.

In what [other] ways does the internet honor the primary precept of Utopia — that is, that all property is common property?

I’ve always thought that it was ironic that a book about the abolition of private property was locked up in copyright. So in my mission to open up Utopia, I’ve created the only complete Creative Commons licenced English language edition of Utopia.  Most of the text I’ve taken from old translations that have passed into the public domain, but some of the letters I had newly translated from the original Latin into English specifically so I could enter them into the public domain.

Do you have any plans of giving another book the same treatment?

I don’t think so.  One of the great luxuries of my job as a tenured professor is I get to study and experiment…and then move on to study and experiment something else. But I do think some of the features of the Open Utopia — the rich media, the ability for readers to become writers, the shared annotations, the lack of a restrictive copyright — are going to be part of any and all books that we all “write” and “read” in this coming century.

With funding from the Open Societies Foundations, you co-created the School for Creative Activism in 2011, and you are presently Co-Director of the Center for Artistic Activism.  What are some of the projects you’ve been working on?

When I’m not mired deep in a historical text about Utopia, I’m trying to figure out ways in the present to create an alternative society for the future. The work we do at the Center for Artistic Activism and the School for Creative Activism is very much a part of this. We think activism is, or rather its should be, an art: it should be creative and it should be inspirational. So we work with grass-roots organizers to bring an artistic eye and a creative hand to their tactics, their strategies and their goal setting. We think you need to do this to be an effective activist in the 21st century. The first rule of guerrilla warfare is to know your terrain and use it to your advantage. Today’s political topography includes signs and symbols, stories ans spectacle, and an activist needs the creative weapons to fight on this terrain. But creativity in activism is also important for another reason: we have to be able to imagine a better world if we want to have any hope of changing this one.

 

Lisa Chau has been involved with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. Since 2009, Lisa has worked as an Assistant Director at the Tuck School of Business. In 2012, she launched GothamGreen212 to pursue social media strategy projects. You can follow her on twitter.

An Interview with Stephen Bates, Oracle Public Sector Director of Business Strategy, on Social Media, Public Companies, and Advice for CEOs

Posted on by Lisa Chau

Stephen Bates is the Director of Business Strategy for Oracle Public Sector, one of the largest technology companies in the world. In this role, he drives program capture to enlarge Oracle’s hardware and software footprint within DoD, Federal Civilian agencies, Canada, and both state and local.

Stephen Bates, twitter: @batess

Q. What is the general consensus among public companies regarding social media? 

SB: Most publicly traded companies have fairly well defined guidance regarding the use of social media. As you know, publicly traded companies are regulated by the SEC regarding disclosure of material information. There is necessary due diligence that must be done regarding public communications. More and more companies are discovering social media as a way to harness their internal intellectual capital, but the free two-way exchange of information via social media remains a concern for a variety of reasons. Most companies will use social media as a marketing tool, allowing them to carefully craft both message and the medium. Others do an extraordinary job of customer service through Twitter (think Starwood Preferred Guest, Zappos, American Express, and JetBlue).

Q. Who are the CEOs who embrace social media?

SB: Aaron Stout has a list of Fortune 500 CEOs on Twitter.

Michael Hyatt, Tony Hsiesh, Scott McNealy, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, Mark Cuban, Jack Welch, Sir Richard Branson, Schmidt, Tim O’Reilly, Fred Wilson.

The WSJ ran an article recently in the Careers section discussing the decline of resumes. Union Square Ventures, headed by Fred Wilson, simply asked prospective candidates to send them links to their web presence. I would imagine Klout scores weighing more heavily in future job prospects.

Q. Who would you like to see using social media?

SB: Firms that are customer-focused. I would love to see Jeff Smisek of United. There are HIGH RISKS, however. Consider the following:

CEOs are busy people with tons of demands on their time.

The stakes are high. If you make a mistake, you can end up in the front page of the Wall Street Journal. And not in a good way.

Financial risk makes it tricky to talk about meaningful drivers to the business (the SEC doesn’t take kindly to potential insider information).

Twitter is hard to learn, so learning “on the job”  — while the world is watching — can be unnerving.

Q. What are best practices for firms to leverage social media?

SB: Be personal. American Express is superb at this. They put a name to their company Twitter account. The Army CIO-G6 also does this; she tweets herself unless tweets are prefaced by “staff.”

Be consistent across all forms of social media.

Be timely and accurate.

Q. You worked as a General Manager at Apple for four years. What are your thoughts about Apple and social networking?

SB: If you recall, Apple wanted to partner with FB, but Mark Z’s terms and conditions were too onerous (See the 7 Nov 11 cover of Forbes magazine.) Apple wanted to buy Dropbox, and while not social, it did round out the ecosystem. Look at how deeply Twitter is embedded into the iOS. Phil Schiller tweets, but Steve Jobs did not nor did Tim Cook. Speculation on Apple’s future product plans is generally a fool’s errand.

Q. What do you see as the next big revolution in social media?

SB: Social overtaking and/or disrupting search. Search will be social. And the marketing metrics will get tighter and more effective. Look at Klout, ComScore, ListenLogic, Radian6 as examples of increasing measurement, but for business and consumer.

Q. Will Facebook exist in 5 years? 

SB: Absolutely, but mainly due to the lack of a credible alternative. I had high hopes for Google+, but I think Timeline was such game changer that few are going to make a similar such an investment in Google+, at least in the short term. That may change in the longer term for those that don’t have such an investment in FB.

Q. If you were hired as the CEO for a startup social media company, what are the first three key issues you would address?

SB: A CEO has two major priorities: Set strategic vision and focus on talent. Delegate everything else to your top managers. Do I have enough projected capital to execute my strategic vision while paying above market rates for my employees? If not, how do I raise and what is the appropriate debt and equity structure? What’s my exit plan? Are my metrics meaningful? Are my employees as fanatically devoted to customer service as I am to them? I spend quite a bit of time in the hiring andvetting process and would train managers accordingly. Employee churn kills companies.

 

Lisa Chau has been involved with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. Since 2009, Lisa has worked as an Assistant Director at the Tuck School of Business. In 2012, she launched GothamGreen212 to pursue social media strategy projects. Follow her on twitter.

An Interview: Amanda McCormick of SocialFlow.com

Posted on by Lisa Chau

Amanda McCormick has been published in the Village Voice, the New York Observer, Heeb magazine, and the Bellevue Literary Review. She honed her writing and online media skills working for big brands like Miramax, Bertelsmann and Lifetime Television, but she is driven by a passion for grass-roots initiatives, entrepreneurs and those working on behalf of the public good (she teaches nonprofits how to bootstrap social media-rich websites on onehourwebsite.org).

Amanda McCormick, twitter:@amandamccormick

She’s responsible for the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s first blog, as well as a blog with longer pieces covering social media trends and best practices, Social Media at Work.  She was the architect of the first co-branded web destination for New Directors/New Films, a copresentation of the Museum of Modern Art and The Film Society of Lincoln Center, which yielded the fest’s best-ever online ticket sales. She created the first social media rich website for the New York Film Festival, and has been seen speaking in places like:

  • Social Media Week New York
  • Wordcamp NYC
  • OMMA Social Media Conference/Internet Week New York
  • The Arts, Culture and Technology Meetup
  • The British American Business Association Marketing Roundtable.

Just recently, Amanda teamed up with the startup SocialFlow and focuseson delivering social media optimization technology to publishers and brands.

SocialFlow applies science/math/analytics to drive engagement in social media.  What are some trends you’ve seen working for the company?

Lots of really interesting ones — as we have a top-notch data and research team who harness the full Twitter firehose as well as a number of other rich data sources to generate incredible studies. A few of the lessons that have made the strongest impression on me: we increasingly use social media to break and talk about news. We did two rather extraordinary stories–one about the way the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death filtered out via the well-timed Tweet of a gentlemen that you may not have pegged as an “influencer,” as well as an interesting data visualization of the spread of news about the East Coast earthquake in the late summer.

One trend that’s been particularly fascinating is how important language is in defining who a person is and how they will engage (or not engage) on the social graph. The old holy grail of marketers–demographics–really only skims the surface. When you are capable of looking at the language people use to talk about themselves and what they care about, you have an incredible edge on predicting their behavior and likeliness to engage. That’s something we are able to do at the massive scale of the social networks and in real time at SocialFlow.

What were specific strategies you used when you created the New York Film Festival‘s website?

When I arrived at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which produces the New York Film Festival each year, I knew there were tons of people, especially young people, who were out there who had heard of us and were highly receptive to our mission to present and preserve interesting world and art cinema, we just weren’t providing the tools that would make that happen. In my two and a half years at the Film Society, I developed their first blog and integrated presence across social networks, but when it came to marquee events like the New York Film Festival, I really wanted to do more, despite not really having any budget to work with.

In 2010, as we planned to world premiere David Fincher’s The Social Network at the festival, and I seized the opportunity to integrate cutting edge social tools on the web to create a new experience for festival-goers. In WordPress I found a framework that I could rapidly develop a flexible platform for our programming that easily integrated Facebook and Twitter in-page. While Facebook Open Graph was relatively new, and most film festivals were slow to adopt it, we were able to offer our audience easy, seamless sign-in and live updates from our events. It helped us capture and connect to a tremendous amount of dynamic discussion among our audience — for the first time, for web visitors, the New York Film Festival encompassed conversation through the web.

You are driven by a passion for grass-roots initiatives, entrepreneurs and those working on behalf of the public good.  Can you share some success stories? 

I really love the challenge of building something from nothing — and finding creativity within limitation. When you’re talking about grass-roots cause marketing and nonprofits, often you’re dealing with organizations that have a wealth of what most brands would kill for — genuine affinity in spades. Social media has leveled the playing field in a lot of ways for causes that have vocal and passionate audiences, so part of what I do through my blog and speaking engagements is to help people leverage that passion.

By that token, small businesses and nonprofits would do well to look within and really mine internal resources. When I worked at the British Tourist Authority, I formed and led a social media “working group” that brought together employees to brainstorm tactics for using social media to market British Tourism to Americans. The working group was egalitarian in natureand included members from all departments and seniority levels, from senior management to customer service reps in the call center. The tactic we came up with, a Facebook fan page about British Film and Television, is still going strong four years later with lots of daily engagement and over 55,000 enthusiastic fans. I think all it took to get there was a little collaborative ingenuity that was able to piggy-back on affinity that was already out there.

Your blog Jellybean Boom shows nonprofits, small businesses, entrepreneurs, artist, and writers how to harness digital and social technology to amplify their message on a low budget. How do you do that?

Here’s the unifying quality of the people that I meet who are in nonprofits, working in small business, or doing their own thing in the arts — none of them are “phoning it in” or punching a clock. They all radiate passion, so the thing that I aim to do with what I blog about is to help to capture that passion in the service of raising awareness around whatever they are trying to raise awareness around. Not everyone’s a writer, but I think everyone can be coached to help translate that passion into communication tools, whether it’s a presentation, a video, or a Tweet.

On onehourwebsite.org, you advise nonprofits AGAINST blogging. What is the difference between a blog and a website?

Blogs completely democratized the process of getting a presence out there on the web — but the wonderful thing about platforms like WordPress is that they have grown and developed so much in terms of their complexity and capability they are incredible platforms on which the budget-strapped or budget-conscious can build a fully fledged website. I tell people to “make it not a blog” so that they take away the most obvious parts (comments, list of posts) that might signal to the visitor “this is a blog.” However I am a big advocate of having a blog be a part of the effort as well. 

What’s your advice for people just stepping into the ever-changing social media landscape?  

On the most basic level social should feel fun or connected to something that you or your organization feels passionately about. I always advise people to “dive in” and learn from the process. Rome wasn’t built in a day and many of us are better and more conversant on one social network than another. The trick is to start somewhere and find your niche.

You’ve co-organized the “Literature Unbound” panel discussion as part of Social Media Week NYC 2012. What was your inspiration?

I come from a background in both both film (I graduated from NYU film school and worked in production and development for many years) and fiction writing (I did an MFA in the subject at Columbia and worked as a reader for both the New Yorker and the Paris Review). At the same time, I am a lover of technology and felt a bit of frustration with the pace of innovation in both environments as digital and social media have transformed the audience’s relationship to interacting with stories in all media. Thispanel was a chance to bring together people I knew were working at and testing the boundaries of what storytelling and literature can be in the social age. We have innovators, entrepreneurs, founders, developers and academics on the panel — I can’t wait to hear what they come up with in regards to where “social literature” is going!

What do you hope to gain from Social Media Week NYC 2012?

I’ve been a part of Social Media Week as either a panelist or attendee since 2009. I’m just excited to see new types of organizations get involved and see what they are doing in the social space. I plan to attend as many events as possible.

 

Lisa Chau has been involved with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. Since 2009, Lisa has worked as an Assistant Director at the Tuck School of Business. In 2012, she launched GothamGreen212 to pursue social media strategy projects. You can follow her on twitter.

How Young is Too Young? Exploring children’s use of social media: An Interview with Andy Affleck

Posted on by Lisa Chau

Andy Affleck is an alum of Dartmouth College. He is leading the development of an iOS/Android application for a startup called Ozmott and is also the author of Take Control of Podcasting on the Mac. He’s written numerous articles for TidBITS and is the proud father of an 11 year old.

Andy Affleck, twitter: @aaffleck

Your son attended the Waldorf School where modern technology and media – TVs, computers, mobile phones, video games, and so on – are severely restricted. Did you adhere to the same policy at home? 

We did adhere to the policy. Our son attended the Waldorf School during the 2nd and 3rd grades and, at those ages, I felt there was little value in technology as anything other than casual entertainment. The school policy was no media during the week (TV, computers, etc.) and limited use on the weekends. So, he got to play on a few websites he liked (Webkinz, mostly) on the weekend. Now that he is older, there is more value to be had, and he is at a school that makes good use of technology both at school and at home.

You left the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Technology in Education program with the firm belief that computers in education make more sense at older ages than at younger ages. What other ideas did you take away from the program?

At younger ages, children need concrete experiences. They will get a lot more out of working with physical objects than they will virtual ones. At a younger age, I just don’t think children are that great at making the translation from the virtual to the real, at least not consistently, so I don’t really think there’s much point in using a computer as an educational tool. It is just entertainment at that age and should be treated the same way TV is. As they get older, their ability to conceptualize grows and they can start to make that translation.

If there was an online course for parents to teach that transition for children into social media, what topics would be necessary?

First and foremost, parents need to understand the mechanics of how these systems work. They need to be able to see who is speaking to their child in the various possible ways (Facebook comments, instant messaging, text messaging, etc.); they need to understand how to properly set privacy settings to protect them; and they need to understand how these systems can be used for both good and for bad so they are prepared to deal with any situations that come up. All too often, parents know too little about the way these systems work (and Facebook seems to go out of its way to make it difficult to understand, and then change it often enough so you never can stay caught up) and so let their kids use them without any proper supervision or ability to help them out when they need help. If kids sense that their parents have no clue, they won’t even go to them for help, so the parents may not even realize there is a problem.

The analogy I like to use is a parent taking a child into a big city for the first time. They hold their hand. They explain the cross walks. They warn them about the scary yellow cars. They explain about keeping themselves safe and what to do if they get separated from their parents, and so on. In the same way, parents should be working with their children to understand this new world of social media, how to safely navigate the streets and crosswalks of Facebook and such and stay safe. They would never let their child go into the city alone by themselves on their first visit and they shouldn’t do that with social media either.

What are the biggest dangers of introducing children to social media?

The biggest danger is a parent who doesn’t understand anything an let their children go without supervision before the child is ready to be alone. I believe parents have a responsibility to teach their children to be good, decent people. They teach their children how to be polite, how not to say mean or hurtful things, how to be a friend to people and how to be kind to strangers. By the same token, they need to do this with social media. We do not need another generation of people who all post the kinds of horrible things you see on any given YouTube comment thread. And we need to teach children that the only person in history who had the right to shout “First!” was Neil Armstrong.

How much of a responsibility should schools take in guiding students towards using social media in smart, effective and ethical ways?

I go back and forth on this one. Schools are involved with socializing children. If your child is bullying another, the school will ask you to come in and talk to them and work with them on a way to address the issue. By the same token, that should extend to social media. Of course, most — if not all! — of what happens on a site like Facebook is not on school property and outside of their jurisdiction. So it is not clear that schools have any business saying anything about behavior online. That said, I think it would be a wise thing for schools to do some work with kids on good online behavior in general the same way they do anti-bullying presentations. I don’t know how effective these things are, but it’s a start.

Some adults have decided that to remove social media from their lives because they feel it’s completely unnecessary. Are there benefits to introducing social media into a child’s life?

I am a firm believer that no child should be allowed a Facebook account until they are 13, as that is the official policy of Facebook. Even when they are 13, it is the parent’s job to determine if their child is emotionally mature enough to handle social media and be a good online citizen. That said, I see a few advantages:

1) It is a great way to stay connected after a move. My son has a number of friends he still talks about that he hasn’t seen in a few years. I imagine him getting reconnected through Facebook in a few years.

2) Often times, kids aren’t going to school in their local community. My son goes to school that’s at least 10 miles away. His best friends outside of the city on the opposite side from us. Getting the kids together requires a lot of driving so after school meet-ups are not common. Right now, they use the phone a lot, but I can see social media taking the place when they are old enough to get online in that way.

3) LOLCATS. Ok, maybe not.

Can we live without social media?

Sure. We can live without all technology. But life would be a little more boring, at least for me. I enjoy my interactions online and have caught up with friends I haven’t spoken to in years who live far, far away. Would I die if my Facebook account went away tomorrow? No. But I would be sad. It enriches my life and I like having it there.

 

Lisa Chau has been involved with Web 2.0 since graduate school at Dartmouth College, where she completed an independent study on blogging. She was subsequently highlighted as a woman blogger in Wellesley Magazine, published by her alma mater. Since 2009, Lisa has worked as an Assistant Director at the Tuck School of Business. In 2012, she launched GothamGreen212 to pursue social media strategy projects. You can follow her on twitter.