Social Butterflies: Kelly Rusk on women in social media

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?