Social media has become a dominant force on the internet, with many people relying on it as their main source of news and information. It allows for easy and widespread sharing of content among vast networks of connected individuals. While social media provides benefits like facilitating new connections, it also presents challenges regarding privacy and the potential for spreading unchecked information. Government organizations and businesses need to embrace social media's importance by strategically engaging users and forging new online relationships through platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
66. “ The new paradigm, particularly for reaching youth, is you have to go to where people already are on the Web. People don’t visit you, you have to go to them” “Half the world is now under the age of 30” “The Web has gone from 75 percent English three or four years ago to 70 percent foreign languages now” Social Media and Public Diplomacy
67. Social Media and DFAIT employees We need to deploy our diplomats differently, i.e. through not only the traditional means of personal interactions but also by forging new connections using the power of social media tools. Note: Show 2-minute segment of interview with Alec Ross, Special Advisor at US State Department (9:30 to 11:50): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcywfhtvYl4
Social media is God. It has overtaken porn as the number one reason why people use the Internet. So why is it so popular? Social media is like sex, it's addictive, no question about it, and if you're getting tired of it, if you suffer from social media fatigue, it's because you’re doing it wrong. If markets are inefficient, we got economists for that. If your company is inefficient, call a management guru. Human relationships is one area that has been inefficient in our societies in spite of modernity and vast increases in knowledge, and I am not talking about broken hearts, dysfunctional families or friendships gone South. What made social media a phenomenon is its ability to make relationships more efficient.
Originally conceived as a tool for communications among individuals, particularly younger generations, social networking has morphed into a new vehicle that business leaders are using to transform communications with their employees and customers, as it shifts from one-way transmission of information to two-way interaction. That's one reason Time magazine just named Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg Person of the Year.
Met with the Editor of the Political pages of the Miami Herald, who by the way I found on LinkedIn after listening to an interview he gave on NPR on my way to work. He told me that in the last five years the circulation had shrunk in half.
In the meantime, people are using social media in record levels, and the keyword is social.
Social media, according to some sociologists, is resulting in cocooning and social disengagement.
Not just the way we consume media that has changed. The way we communicate as well. That’s anyone born after the baby boomers. Most people in this room.
Canadians spend more time on the Internet than watching TV. And now that Netflix has expanded to Canada, that trend is sure to increase.
Canadians spend more time on the Internet than watching TV. And now that Netflix has expanded to Canada, that trend is sure to increase.
No one social media tool is God. There are many religions, and lots of segmentation. Many niche social media tools are mushrooming. These are for like-minded individuals, such as parents, dog lovers, entrepreneurs (sprout, Canadian), cancer patients, etc. Almost all are owned by start-ups and funded by angels or VCs.
Studies show that people trust other people`s product reviews, why sites like Yelp or TripAdvisor are so popular, and why Amazon, Target and other large retailers have included customer reviews. The same is true about the way people think of Canada. If they hear a CEO, a trusted publication or organization sing praise about Canada, they are more likely to believe it and repeat it than if it comes from DFAIT’s website. Syncapse, a social media consultancy firm based in Toronto, released the results of a study in March showing that social media platforms were among the most influential marketing channels available: 84% of consumers, for example, value recommendations from friends and family above all other sources or forms.
Central to the a company's social media strategy is disseminating deals and coupons to followers and fans on Facebook and Twitter. Ford made history in 2010 by being the first car company to unveil a new model not at a trade show in Detroit or Las Vegas, but on Facebook.
What goes into one side of the screen
Comes out on the other as amplified many times over
Second tenet. When you connect to someone, everyone esle knows it on Facebook and can in turn connect with that person. LinkedIn gives you access to your contacts’s rolodex. Once you decide to follow someone’s tweets, you can find out who esle they are following.
The result is an exponential growth of your network.
The result is an exponential growth of your network.
The result is an exponential growth of your network.
Main tool. More etiquette and professionalism than others. Uber database of contacts and what they do. More interactive than TRIO. More accurate too because people change their own contact info, which by the way is more comprehensive than that in TRIO because it gives you a person’s education, employment record, events they’re attending, books they’re reading, and more importantly who they are connected to. In addition they post status updates like Twitter, which gives you a window into what is of interest to them. In short, lots of material to break the ice, to go from a cold call to a warm call.
From my homepage, I can see what my contacts are up to, connecting with, reading, recommending, who is viewing my profile, and who I could potentially connect to. In addition, I can integrate my tweets with my LinkedIn status updates.
Belonging to groups is useful, among other it allows you to share best practices, professional improvement, get answers to questions from other professionals, can allow you to give better advice to clients, but also because you can grow your network: linkedin allows you to send invitations to people you don’t know if you went to the same school, have worked at the same place, OR belong to the same group.
What most people think about when they think about Twitter. It’s for self-absorbed, narcissistic people, who want to broadcast they daily and sometimes hourly version of “me”, ie a noisy medium filled with mindless and trivial updates about what people do or think.
social networks have also changed the concept of being off the record. It has erased the boundaries of privacy and made the world so much more transparent then before, but is it a good thing? I will be taking part on a panel discussion about NAFTA in a few days. On it will be a rep from the powerful union AFL-CIO. Although we’ve been assured by the organizers that no media will be in attendance and that the event will be held behind closed doors, the reality is that any comment I make could be picked-up by someone in the audience, including by the union rep, and go viral on his blog, facebook page or twitter account.
A 33-year old Pakistani became an instant celebrity by unknowingly tweeting about the helicopter raid on Bin Laden’s compound as it happened. He was quickly flooded by requests for interviews from Al Jazeera to mainstream US channels and has over 100,000 followers. Twitter says that there were about 5,000 tweets per second during Obama’s speech. As of Monday morning, there were over 365,000 “Likes” on Facebook about Osama’s death. The chatter highlights the fact that people consume several forms of media at the same time. It shows as well how social media has changed journalism. The right person in the right place at the right time with access to a social media platform through a cell phone or a laptop can become as effective as a foreign correspondent or a diplomat.
A 33-year old Pakistani became an instant celebrity by unknowingly tweeting about the helicopter raid on Bin Laden’s compound as it happened. He was quickly flooded by requests for interviews from Al Jazeera to mainstream US channels and has over 100,000 followers. Twitter says that there were about 5,000 tweets per second during Obama’s speech. As of Monday morning, there were over 365,000 “Likes” on Facebook about Osama’s death. The chatter highlights the fact that people consume several forms of media at the same time. It shows as well how social media has changed journalism. The right person in the right place at the right time with access to a social media platform through a cell phone or a laptop can become as effective as a foreign correspondent or a diplomat.
Clarence House, which speaks for Prince William, announced his engagement with his future wife Care Middleton through twitter.
Another way journalism has been impacted by social media is in the fact that social media has now become newsworthy in and of itself. It has now become commonplace for media outlets to publish articles about the social media aspect of an important and developing story. The Royal Wedding was the dominant trend among Twitter and Facebook status updates. Most news organizations recognize that social media is a good way to promote their work, to find both stories and sources, and thus they encourage their reporters to use it, although with some restrictions. Bloomberg’s policy has become a model for others: “ask questions first, tweet later”.
Facebook is not yet in China but if you look at the rest of the so-called BRIC countries, you will find that the number of Facebook users is experiencing its fastest growth in precisely those countries. During the last calendar year (May 2010 to May 2011), Facebook’s audience has grown by 294% in Brazil, by 314% in Russia, and by 160% in India. During that period, Facebook users in Canada registered a double-digit growth and now reached 18.2 million users, it over half of Canada’s population.
Also, choose your so-called friends carefully. Easier said then done when managing a group because anyone can « like » you and become part of it (still, you can edit what gets posted and put clear rules of engagement).
In the private sector, the value of social media from a business to consumer standpoint is proven.
This is why more and more companies are expected to join and increase their presence in that space.
The three rules that have changed the game of public diplomacy. Think about how that affects our work.
We should go further, it’s not something that should be done from the center only. We ought to be encouraged to add our social media addresses in our email signatures. We should also have them on our business cards. Some cute logos wouldn’t hurt though I think it’s not going to fly (no pun intended).