Erica Glasier: Oversocialized! Social media & interactive futurism from sunny Winnipeg

Despite all the moaning about dying print publications, people are still eager to absorb daily news. What they expect out of the experience has changed, though, according to a new Pew Research Center report. Now people want multi-platform news on demand, customized, and spreadable.

Next in a series of interviews with female Canadian social media stars! The premise, which you can read about here, investigates how women act towards each other in the quest to be head social butterfly.

Kelly Rusk is Manager of Marketing and Communities at Ottawa media analysis and PR measurement firm MediaMiser, and she blogs about community and conversations at Web 2.What? She has nice hair.

While women may be more inclined to social media, it seems in terms of influence (i.e. number of followers, subscribers, fans etc) men still seem to win every time. I’ve seen tons of links leading to that conclusion and it’s been bothering me lately about why that’s the case. NYU professor (and social media author) Clay Shirky did an interesting post that theorizes about it.

I think on a macro level, women want to be supportive of other women, when it comes down to individuals “cattiness” can exist (and I definitely don’t think it’s intentional).

This past September myself and two friends co-founded Girl Geek Dinners Ottawa which is a spin off of Girl Geek Dinners London (and now takes place in over 45 cities in 22 or so countries). And as such I made a conscious decision to be more open and supportive of other women… Not that I wasn’t before (and I certainly was never publicly critical of any women), but if I found myself thinking negatively about another woman in a professional capacity, I now make an effort to reach out or try to meet her with an open mind.

What I learned from talking to Kelly

The idea that women who self promote are perceived as “bitches”, and that inhibits them from speaking up, surfaced a few times the comments of Clay Shirky’s A Rant About Women. It’s a good idea to examine your preconceptions once in a while.

Winnipeg now has its very own version of Girl Geek Dinners, so get yourself over to Facebook and check it out.  The inaugural dinner just went down, featuring Coree Francisco of Girl One Interactive. I hear it was both girly and geeky Why not put yourself out there and speak at the next event in March?

The first in a series! The premise, which you can read about here, investigates how women act towards each other in the quest to be head social butterfly.

Here’s Kate Trgovac, Vancouver social media star and co-founder/President of LintBucket Media, which sounds like a very cool place to work. Kate blogs about social media over at My Name Is Kate.

Provocative topic and series of questions! Well … while I am the first person to complain about the lack of prominence of women in marketing in general and social media in particular in Canada, I’m concerned when we start saying things like “women are more suited professionally to social media b/c of ABC” because that leaves the door WIDE open for statements like “men are more suited professionally to be a doctor, be prime minister, be a brigadier general b/c of XYZ (or PMS, as the case may be)”. While, historically, women in society may have had more call to develop and use skills that are aligned with social media, in general, anyone, regardless of gender, can work on their people skills and start to turn a taciturn nature to a more social one (we only need look to Austen’s Mr. Darcy for evidence of this )

Regarding the cattiness, I have not personally noticed that women are harsher to their own. I have witnessed both genders being catty to their own sex and to the opposite one. And I have experienced incredible generosity from both genders as well. We are in one of the most narcissistic and self-involved industries around. Heavens, we use our product (media) to talk about our product (media) – our professional lives as social media marketers are the very definition of “self-referential”. Combine that attitude with the money that flows around the marketing, technology and media industries, and you have a recipe for cattiness that has nothing to do with gender. Frankly, we’re ALL waving our chubbies (natural or strap-on) around to compare size and ultimately grab a piece of the pie for ourselves. Continue reading

Tactica Interactive, Winnipeg-based interactive agency & my husband’s company, recently launched the Reason to Live campaign with the Manitoba Suicide Line. The launch, held at Klinic, featured Minister of Healthy Living Jim Rondeau & some moving Aboriginal singing from one of the campaign participants and his father.

“A key component to this approach is the use of social marketing strategies to reach youth in particular, and spread the message about the resource,” says Tim Wall, Director of Counselling Services at Klinic. According to Janet Smith, Program Manager for the Manitoba Suicide Line, “using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube can play a critical role in suicide prevention and engage youth in conversations that promote awareness, understanding and help-seeking behaviours”.

The viral components of the campaign, designed for easy social sharing on Facebook and Twitter, include several powerful videos telling the stories of Manitobans whose lives have been affected by suicide. Watch for yourself; the first-person accounts are very compelling. Tactica’s social media strategy is already having an impact, according to program managers; with callers indicating they’d seen the message of hope online.

The challenge with this project was that it needed to have a social component, but there was no content to share. Tactica had to figure out what was the most compelling aspect of the Suicide Line’s work, which was of course the personal accounts of people who’ve dealt with suicide. Tactica decided to produce a series of videos, the most direct and easily shareable method of storytelling. If you want people to talk, you’ve got to give them something to talk about.

This is the kind of real-time, granular brand monitoring you can achieve with social media (Doritos is pictured here). Brand Bowl 2010 demonstrated the percentage of positive and negative reactions on Twitter to Super Bowl ads and extracted people’s reactions down to the most frequently-used words, as the reactions were happening.

Twitter may not be where your audience is talking about you—I’m still blown away by the recent stat that only 1.45% of Canadians tweet, as opposed to almost 20% of Americans—but this shows the level of sophistication available to brands interested in monitoring their influence & measuring their social media ROI. As a marketing nerd, I’m inspired by this.

Introducing an interview series with some of the most influential Canadian women in the social media scene, wherein they ponder the thesis:

“Women are more suited professionally to social media, because they’re friendlier, chattier, reveal more and make alliances more quickly than men do”.

I picked the brains (ew) of a number of very generous and influential ladies, including Kate Trgovac, Kelly Rusk, Monica Hamburg, Adele McAlear, and Tara Hunt, on their experiences with other women in their careers. Given that social media is a bit of a matriarchy, had they encountered professional kindness from other women in the popularity contest that is social media, or does cattiness get in the way?

“Are you helpful to other women jockeying for head social butterfly—spreading the love—or do you confess to not linking it up like you should to hold others down? Do you have a sneaking suspicion that’s happened to you, or seen it happen to someone else?”

This topic is such a hot button and the answers are so good that I have to devote a post to each of them, so those will be coming right up!

In repsonse to Who should do your social media? my friend Liz Hover commented “I don’t think social media should be ‘assigned’ to a department. I think everyone in an organisation should be a part of social media”. Let’s address this idea as complimentary to establishing an official branded social media channel.

Do you know where advertising is ranked on the list of credibility these days? 17%. That means 83% of people think it’s a waste of time. Couple that with the fact that more information was created in 2009 than in the entire history of the world, and you’ve got a lot of people who don’t have time for your message, and wouldn’t believe it if they were forced to endure it.

Who do people listen to when it comes to a company’s product, service, or reputation?

• 64% take it on faith from “an expert”
• 41% would believe a conversation with an employee
• 44% would be convinced by a friend or peer

And where might people encounter a friend, who might happen to be an employee, who’s surely employed because of their expertise? Why, on a social network, during the almost 20% of time they spend online at all. Your brand voices are out there every day, interacting with existing and potential customers. Continue reading