Don't Tweet and Drive!

So, I don't follow NASCAR, but thought this little ditty on mashable.com was a pretty funny read. I will admit, my first thought was "How the heck could this guy be driving at the speeds they do and be tweeting!" You'll see in the tweet samples that this question does come up (he was delayed because of wreck and fire on the track) but I also thought it was amusing that he had his cell phone with him in the car during the race. That said, he gained more than 100,000 followers in 2 hours because of his tweets from his car!

Just another indicator of how addicted we can be to our phones and our social media outlets.

Twitter: It's not just for irrelevant info anymore!

As we continue to explore the benefits of utilizing social media to promote businesses, candidates and celebrities, I thought it was interesting to find an article in the February 19 issue of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about a very creative use for Twitter.

Francis Kariuki is the administrative chief of a remote village in western Kenya. He uses Twitter to send out alarms about thieves in the village, missing livestock and positive, hopeful messages to uplift the spirits of the people in his village. Even though many of the villagers cannot afford smartphones (he has only about 300 followers), thousands of the 28,000 residents of his village have found other ways to follow Kariuki's tweets, either via text message or third-party mobile phone apps. Kariuki states in the article that his use of Twitter has brought down the crime rate (even the criminals in the village follow his tweets!) and saved money and time because he doesn't have to send letters or print posters to distribute information.

The article goes on to explain that Twitter is experiencing huge growth across Africa, stating that "over the last three months of 2011, Kenyans produced nearly 2.5 million tweets." The thought is that with the expanded use of social media, there will be a huge movement within the country towards the use of social media in different ways.

We hear about uprisings against governments through social media, advice on the best utilization of social media to promote business and, of course, what a favorite celebrity had for breakfast via social media, but I think Kariuki's use is by far a unique and useful method to improve the lives of his constituents. Want to follow his tweets? Here's the link: https://twitter.com/Chiefkariuki

Really??? Are You Kidding Me???

All I can say is… "Really????? Are you kidding me????"

If you don't want to click on the link, here is the story. A long-time high school football coach and teacher was forced to resign his teaching and coaching positions after accidentally posting a nude photo of himself on his Facebook page. He maintained that the photo was only supposed to be viewable by his girlfriend, uh huh. It was estimated that the photo was online and viewable to the general public for no more than ten minutes—long enough for a parent of one of the coach's players to see the photo. The parent reported the incident and the coach later resigned his teaching and coaching position.

It is said that with age comes wisdom. Apparently, that wisdom skips over 40-something guys who are trying to impress their girlfriends. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

I realize there might be a learning curve for those of us that have not grown up immersed in computers, instant messaging and social media. However, I would think that common sense would intervene and would tell a 40-something man, a high school teacher and coach for Pete's sake, that it's probably a dumb idea to post a photo of his naked self anywhere, much less on a social media site!

I proposed in a recent media law class paper that school districts need to start educating not only their students on the ins-and-outs of social media, but also their teachers, administrators and quite possibly, the parents of students on social media and the potential pitfalls. Policies that mandate limited usage of social media for employees of school districts are one thing but perhaps it is time they actually bring some social media professionals into the schools to show the adults how to (and how not to) use Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Just because it's not face-to-face contact...

When I first heard about Twitter, I thought it was a silly way to waste more time than I had to waste. I was late to the Facebook game because it too seemed to be an enormous time-suck although I am now fully engaged in the addiction that is Facebook! Eventually, I was drawn in by the Twitter craze and am now in the not enviable position of trying to convince the attorneys in the firm where I work that Twitter is not a waste of their time either.

In Kevin O'Keefe's January 5th post in Real Lawyers Have Blogs, he discusses the value in law firms utilizing Twitter. Probably the most important point he makes is this: Twitter is not about how many followers you have nor is it just about distributing content. Twitter is about establishing relationships and engaging with people. I thought of how the firm where I work utilizes Twitter and I realized that all we are doing is posting links to e-alerts and events. As a firm, we are not engaging with our audience. As O'Keefe states in his post, "Sure you need to share content on Twitter to get the opportunity to build relationships with your Twitter followers, but the end goal ought to be engagement with real people, not a lot of followers." We are not engaging anyone.

It is hard to convince a group of extremely cautious people that social media is a great way to engage people and build relationships. The ironic thing is that lawyers typically embrace word-of-mouth referrals and face-to-face networking. When attorneys were first allowed to dip their toes into the pool of television advertising, one of comments that I heard most was that they didn't need to advertise on TV, or in anything for that matter, other than the yellow pages. They insisted they engaged the majority of their clients via word-of-mouth referrals and through networking.

What is amusing about this is this is exactly what social media, including Twitter, is about: networking and word-of-mouth referrals, except it is not done face-to-face. Networking involves listening to what people have to say about their needs and their issues. Or networking is about getting to know people you may not already know so that they know about you! Therein lies the beauty of Twitter (or other social media avenues): your potential network just got larger because of the sheer numbers of participants that may be interested in you and your contributions.

Now I just have to convince the attorneys and other powers that be!

Let's Give Them Something To Talk About...

If Children's Healthcare of Atlanta wanted to get people talking about childhood obesity, they have certainly succeeded with their latest ad/media campaign, "Strong4life." Utilizing social media and a traditional website, Strong4life.com is asking people to "join the community" against childhood obesity. The campaign has a Facebook page and have utilized a Twitter feed. They have also posted short videos on YouTube that illustrates the need for Georgia to start addressing the problems associated with childhood obesity. As of February 1, their Facebook page had 684 likes. A glance at their Twitter page shows Tweets acknowledging other Tweets commenting on the initiative, both positive and negative and Tweets acknowledging stories regarding the initiative in the mainstream media. They definitely have people talking.

Not all of the talk is in support of the campaign. A very vocal group of bloggers, i.e. mommy bloggers, started their own campaign, via social media, complaining about what they perceived as the negative message conveyed by the "Strong4life" ad campaign. Claiming the Strong4life ads focuses on shaming obese children, they unleashed a "Twitter Party" utilizing the hashtag #Ashamed. I've included a link showing the statistics of the tweets from that day—the bloggers' Twitter Party was pretty effective with the #Ashamed hashtag showing up in just under 1% of 200 million tweets for that day. Not bad for a ground roots campaign. Children's Healthcare of Atlanta is listening too. A spokeswoman for the hospital stated "We needed this to become front and center. We needed to start tackling this as a community."

The fact that comments, both positive and negative, are being made via the social media stream, and the fact that the originator of the conversation—Children's Healthcare of Atlanta— is listening to those comments, proves that social media is clearly an effective tool for creating a community, albeit a virtual community.

http://www.hlntv.com/article/2012/01/31/mommy-bloggers-ashamed-twitter-party-raises-awareness-about-anti-obesity-ads?hpt=hp_c2