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?

Social Butterflies: Kate Trgovac on women in social media

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. read more