Archive for category Ideas
Links with Your Coffee: News and Notes from Matthew Hurst
Posted by MattHurst in Ideas, Professional Networking, Work on June 16th, 2010
At IDEO’s Humanizing Social Media event in February 2010, we explored the implications of social media on interpersonal communication. Rather than perpetuating the discussion of case studies and e-commerce during Social Media Week, this social experiment left us questioning how the communications shifts have impacted the way we develop new friendships online. Our cellphones were left at the front door and we exchanged our clothes for a plain white t-shirt affixed with buttons which carried tags that describe ourselves, like “blogger” and “geek” in my own case.
It was an thought provoking exercise, and now I can finally share the results from this experiment with you. We had a great night at this event, so much that I was awarded the honor of “Person with whom you’d most like to stranded on a desert island with”! Look for yours truly to take a staring turn during the panel discussions, as captured in this video.
A little further news and notes not quite long enough to warrant a blog post of their own: Read the rest of this entry »
January’s 7
Because every other meme or trend ends up getting shared on Twitter, each month I offer at least 7 new ideas worth remembering. In celebration of the new year here are 10 important ideas I want to share.
Application: Red Laser. I think of Sales as framing devices that convince me into buying things I don’t really need. Red Laser turns my smart phone camera into an barcode reader, from which it can search online for the best prices on each item. By adding much need price context to my shopping, I needn’t miss out on saving money on a good deal any longer.
Colleague: Kristin Arena. I met Kristin through mutual friends who (like her) studied broadcast journalism at Mizzou’s J-school (which is widely reputed to be the top school in the country). I’ve come to know Kristin even better through Twitter and Social Media. She is in the enviable position to take advantage of this convergence, having transitioned towards a career in PR. She would make a great addition to any organization interested in its future.
Game: The Simpsons Arcade. This is the arcade game you remember playing in your movie theater’s arcade, bumping elbows and all, lovingly recreated as a new solo adventure on your iPhone or iPod touch. Easily the best liscensed Simpson’s game I can remember and worth the few bucks it costs.
Nostalgia: the Gawker decade. Because journalists love retrospectives, we’ve experience a deluge of nostalgia leading up to 2010. I think Robot Chicken got it right; today’s rampant materialism and memes are just tomorrow’s sitcom fodder. Sorry BoingBoing.
Social Network: Tumblr. OK so maybe Tumblr is more like a blog than a social network, but the same might be said of Twitter. Although it’s nothing new, I’ve only started to use Tumblr to it’s full potential recently. Besides The Brew Noob, you can follow my status blog Retweet This or my photoblog Speaking in Megapixels.
User-generated thingie: Waze. This GPS enabled app for smartphones combines the usual map/routing capabilities with crowd-sourced traffic data. There’s also a gaming element to Waze that has me hooked. Waze encourages me to use my iPhone while driving about as much as the TomTom app would, except I get to keep the $100. Now if only I had a car…
Video: Simon the IT Dummy. Full Disclosure: I helped promote this video series as an intern with 2ChicksInc. I’m sharing it of my own volition now, because I LOL’d. And because Simon is a Geek Stud.
This Blog’s for You: How Beer indicates a Changing Marketplace.
Posted by MattHurst in Blogs, Influence, Social Media on December 23rd, 2009
When Anheuser-Busch’s sale to InBev was announced, years of branding began to unravel for the King of Beers. The maker of the Great American Lager (their slogan) was a family-owned business based in the American Midwest which had spent decades creating their brand based around nationalism and tradition; they were being purchased by a foreign corporate conglomerate. Almost immediately columnists were writing about how the sale was indicative not of globalization but of the American economic recession.
In spite of how the stories were framed, A-B products Budweiser and Bud Light continue to be the best selling beers in the United States (if not the world). The sale is only the latest consolidation between the world’s largest brewers; in the years prior rivals like Miller and Coors had combined into SABMiller, not to mention A-B’s own acquisitions before their own sale. The beer business is as complex as any other industry, but major brewers like Anheuser-Busch have relied on a wide national market empowered by mass market advertising to drive up demand for their product.
The rising popularity of Craft Beer parallels the changing media landscape of the past decade; as audiences become fragmented, their consumption choices are changing. Once mass market advertising for brewers would create print and broadcast ads designed to appeal to the widest audiences where they converged in a limited media market. Brand loyalty was thought to begin when young adults learned about their products, and like their beers these branding techniques were meant to reach the largest audiences. However this same target audience no longer converges in the same mass media sources, often turning online to learn about new products across a ever wider range of new media; about the only place this market would still see their ads might be watching the Superbowl, during which only the largest brewers can afford to advertise.
Consumers today have more choices in where they get their media from, especially online, which have opened up opportunities to build niche audiences like those in the craft beer market. Along with a growing audience of beer lovers, craft breweries have taken to blogs and social media to promote their products. This audience is passionate about their interest in craft beer, inspiring brand loyalty among those who are reached out to directly by brewers who share their values, not unlike the nationalism appealed to in Budweiser’s branding. Most importantly this passionate audience of craft beer advocates likes to tell others about the beers they love, usually acting as opinion leaders within their network of friends and thusly growing the market for tasty craft beer every year.
Of course mass marketing still works in many markets; many consumers of Blue Moon (a SAB Miller/Coors product) believe it is a craft beer, and niche beers like A-B’s Michelob brand enjoy limited popularity. But the mass media advertising techinques do not work as well online, as demonstrated by the expensive failure of Bud.tv and other websites. It has been suggested that beer in America’s national beverage, and as America changes so will it’s tastes.
You can learn more about Beer marketing and the craft beer movement by reading my blog The Brew Noob (on Twitter @BrewNoob).
December’s 7
Every month I share a short list of ideas that I think deserve your attention, or at least commandeer my own. This month I’ve included a few extra as an early holiday gift to readers. I want to wish everyone a Happy Holidays, and hope to see you in the new year.
Blog: Framing Science. Matthew Nisbet will change how you understand science. We take for granted that the facts should speak for themselves, but our understanding of these complex subjects are largely a matter of communication. His blog covers so much of what I learned in his classroom, and it is recommended reading if you care about climate change, public policy, or evolution.
Colleague: Nina Keim. I met Nina as a Graduate student at American University (maybe Classmate is a better title), and have always been impressed by her initiative. Unlike some of my peers, Nina displays an endless curiosity; she seeks out new ideas in communication and isn’t afraid to try them out for herself, often before their value is readily apparent. Rather than merely acting as an informer, Nina embodies the role of an opinion leader in her own right.
Meme: PR does not equal “Press Release”. Sure Press Releases still work, but the question is “should you send one?“ At #PRCamp we first realized that the words Press Release should never be used near anything Social Media. PR practitioners build relationships and tell stories, and in today’s media landscape that cannot be limited to broadcast and print news releases.
Music: Bob Dylan’s “Christmas in the Heart”. I’ve made many jokes over the past month about the music video, which I’m convinced will soon become another Rick Roll. What convinced this unassailable icon to record his first Holiday album may have been a favorite charity, but I’m convinced it must’ve been Santa.
PR Agency: 2ChicksInc. Full Disclosure – I’ve been working (as an intern) with this start-up PR group over the last month. Working with the women who are its namesake, I’ve learned how a boutique PR firm can use their expertise to innovate online campaigns. And their generous part-time position has helped me continue my own career search (thanks again for the opportunity).
Shameless Plug: The Brew Noob. My side project has evolved from 140 charecter beer reviews on Twitter into a Tumblr blog of own right. As usual, I’ll test the brews so that you can enjoy tasty beers.
Social Network: Hot Potato. Why use hashtags or checkins if you only want to talk about an event while it’s happening? It’s not meant to replace Twitter or Foursquare, but its a new take on an old idea. Another revelation we made at #PRCamp was that not everyone will use Twitter (the brand), but that SMS/mobile messaging (the idea) were here to stay. Try it.
November’s 7
Since moving to New York City I’ve kept busy; enough so that I skipped the month of October with this recurring feature, in which I share the ideas currently shaping my life. Between applying for jobs, connecting with professionals, and getting acquainted with the neighborhood, I have more to share than ever.
Blog: Scouting NY. At the last Future of Local Media NY event we talked about finding a niche for your blog; I think Scouting NY has an appeal to an audience outside this city. By treating New York not as a tourist or resident, but as a scout for film locations, it reexamines the metropolis as though for the first time. Be sure to check out their series revisiting locations from famous films set in NY, including my favorite “Ghostbusters”.
Colleague: Jonathan Coffman. I connected with Jonathan not as a professional, but as a peer; he was one of the first people IRL from Twitter. Since then he has made himself available as a professional resource, but with a personal touch using social media . Jonathan seems unafraid of ambitious projects, and inspires others to try the same through his personal example; to say he has developed a personal brand is an understatement.
Group: #PR Breakfast Club. Of all the professional networks I’ve been connecting with, this online group must be the most friendly. Almost immediately I was welcomed into this tight-knit club upon joining their happy hour on Twitter, and IRL that courtesy was returned. This club is connected in every sense that a group should be.
Meme: BAD09. I had the opportunity to participate in the third annual Blog Action Day, and I’m glad to say I wasn’t alone: 13,604 blogs helped spur discussion of Climate Change. This 500% increase in blog posts were read by over 18 million estimated readers, demonstrating the power of individual bloggers to organize and influence others online.
Music: The Beatles RockBand. Since September it seems like The Beatles have been everywhere, and now they finally come together again through this special edition of the music game franchise. Playing as the fab four might seem intimidating, but this game manages to pull it off; I have been singing along the whole game. You will respect Ringo after playing the game, and It’s still the only way you can (legally) download The Beatles music.
Social Network: MyPRSA. If all social media is based on building relationships, who better builders are there than PR professionals. Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel by competing with other social networks MyPRSA incorporates them into a professional network that better connects colleagues, so this relaunched network is indispensable for job seekers like myself.
Website: Craigslist. We all will need to use this site at one time or another, because it is the closest thing to a monopoly on the internet. Many sites do specific aspects of Craigslist better (and make more money), but if you want to find an apartment or job, this is usually the best place to start. For a site that looks almost the same as it did 10 years ago, Craigslist has developed a model for web 2.0 communities.
Blog Action Day: Changing Minds (and Climate)
Climate change is a fact, but it’s also a choice. Everyday we make decisions about our energy consumption, most of which will have an effect on global warming. Sometimes these decisions are impacted by policy, but climate change is not inevitable; we can slow and maybe prevent its effects through our own energy conservation choices.
This year’s Blog Action Day is a call to speak out about climate change, but by now most of us know what we should say about global warming. Probably the biggest contribution individuals can make is to turn their attitudes into behavior, at least by adopting energy conservation as a way of life.
In my Master’s thesis I compared different strategies to promoting energy conservation through case studies of three communication campaigns, including We Can Solve It, Flex Your Power, and Energy Star. As an example the above advertisement, from the Flex Your Power program in California (following their energy crisis in 2000), is only one part of a comprehensive social marketing campaign which has successfully reduced total energy consumption by at least 14%. These ads go further than merely providing all the reasons you’d want to save energy, because they give people actions to use in a way which make them seem fun and easy.
Of course no one approach to this issue works with every audience, and energy conservation is only part of the solution to climate change. In the future I’ll be posting more about my original research into energy and communication, but on Blog Action Day I would encourage you to do your own research. My former professor Matthew Nisbet has studied communication about climate change, which he blogs about extensively, which helped inspire my own study of energy conservation. Perhaps leading your own study about what you can do would be the best use of your energy today…
September’s 7
Every month I share a list of trends and great ideas, because of the benefits they have brought into my life. This last month has been filled with personal triumph and tumult in which I’ve finished an internship in DC, visited friends far away in Kentucky, and celebrated a 3rd-anniversary in NYC (where I’ll be living by the next time I write this feature next month). For extra credit, and because this assignment is late, please keep reading after the bump for a few more good ideas worth sharing this month.
Blog: Lifehacker. Whenever I’m in search of inventive solutions to everyday problems, (including some I didn’t think were problems), this blog is my default resource. Apartment hunting? Check. Turn an old PC into a NES arcade? Ditto. Going paperless in the home and office? Indeed. Lifehacker makes the impossible seem practical with it’s a DIY aesthetic.
Colleague: Renan Borelli. As a colleague at NMS, Renan was an exemplary addition to every team: innovative, analytical, and fiercely ambitious. As a mentor of my own he demonstrated climbing the ladder through his own example, and shares my passion for social media. I’m also happy to call this colleague a friend of mine.
Comic: Toothpaste for Dinner. I LOL’d.
Location: Louisville, Kentucky. This river city is is more than a one horse town; it’s a metropolis of burgeoning home-grown food, culture, and is the home to many of my esteemed colleagues. On my recent visit I rode in a VW Karmann, tasted inventive brews, listened to a coffeehouse concert, and attended the Kentucky State Fair. I would visit again.
Meme: Auto-Tune anything. This should be old news, but in spite of Jay-Z’s wishes this vocal gimmick refuses to go away. It has been the subject of much debate between me and my colleagues lately. And now with the “I am T-Pain” iPod app, this fad is irrevocably bound to this time in history (or at least news coverage of it).
Politics: Health Care Reform. Regardless of what you think the best solution would be, the status quo in is unsustainable. Those who believe in shutting-down necessary changes, through the undemocratic tactics of an angry mob, only serve to
Why The Twitter Backlash Proves Its Influence
The backlash to Twitter was inevitable. As recent attacks on the social network/microblog have made clear, people depend on Twitter to communicate although its users of this site continue to be stigmatized. In the same week the AP published its new restrictive guidelines for online media, another AP story employed such recycled clichés as “tweeting about lunch plans, the weather or the fact that Twitter is down.”
Full disclosure: I’ve been addicted to Twitter since I started using it in September of 2007. Since then I have witnessed its explosive growth as a daily user of this social network, growing from thousands of daily users to millions now. These attacks are evidence of Twitter’s importance, and like Facebook before it this social network is gorwn large enough to be experiencing a backlash.
Unlike many social networks before it, Twitter has become an agenda-setting media. This might seem obvious because broadcast and print newsmedia about Twitter have been nonstop, frequently breaking news stories or framing an issue through its social media context. As a social network (although many of its users of Twitter do not think of it as such) Twitter facilitates interpersonal communication in which opinion leaders, or at least some with a large number of followers, introduce new ideas to their network which help set the public’s agenda.
Because Twitter serves an audience that is constantly engaged in the discussion of new ideas, frequently accompanied by hyperlinks, Twitter has succeeded at become agenda setting media like none before it. To be sure Facebook, itself a much larger social network, only recently overtook email as the primary means for most individuals share news stories and links to websites. But rarely have these social media, including social bookmarking websites like Digg and Delicious, taken part in constructing the news agenda with the wider public much less offline as Twitter does.
The explosive growth of Twitter is not necessarily because of any special function the site offers (there have been other microblogs before) but because of it’s core of users, who themselves have set the tone of what Twitter should be used for. This isn’t to say there is a right way or wrong way to use media, just that some practices seem to work better. The critical difference in using a social medium comes from those who are using it; in this case the core users who serve as a social model are opinion leaders in diverse subjects such as communications, celebrities, and politics. And it’s easy to see the appeal; opinion leaders are provided a platform to introduce ideas about culture (and even about themselves), while the accessibility of the platform allows individuals to interact within their network of connections which make even celebrities (who continue to lead the way onto Twitter) seem approachable by any fan.
Perhaps this model of influence offers a clue to one recent trend on Twitter, in which power-users remove all of the users they follow in order to reconstruct a list which better reflects a tightly-knit social network. While some organizations scramble to create a list of followers on Twitter which seems to be the largest, these users illustrate the power of influence over a small agenda-setting audience they want to stay tuned into. Because in social media influence is not measured as the number of followers who might read the monolougue you’re broadcasting to them, but by the relationship between individuals which is built through a dialog.
Never before has there been such a media tool to listen to the audience’s ideas, and to engage them in conversations about them. The backlash may have been inevitable, but it has almost always come from those unwilling to participate in a dialog; it would seem from what I’m hearing that Twitter is here to stay.
August’s 7
They say one’s influence is limited not by the frequency of their communication, but by the quality of ideas and recommendations. At risk of diminishing my own role as an online opinion leader of sorts, here is my monthly anthology of 7 ideas I think are worth sharing with others.
Blog: Things Marketing People Love. If you ever work in or with a marketing agency, this will make you LOL. You have heard these words bandied about as if they were sacrosanct, although on their face they mean very little. Since we’ve already learned about white people and journalists, why not marketing? And make your own submissions via Twitter.
Colleague: Gabe Bullard. Back when we were working on Highway 61 (revised), there was no one who’s insights into online communications I trusted more. That hasn’t changed, so if you’d like to share these ideas, he’s still on the internet.
Meme: #hcmyth . With so much disinformation being active spread about Health Care reform, why not make fun with ridiculous myth-making of your own? My colleague Beth Carpenter helped start and promote this hashtag on Twitter, which set off any number of LOL funny myths about health care. My favorite? “RT @tobytobitobe : Under ObamaCare, all Starbucks beverages will be pre-ordered “skinny, nonfat, hold the whip.” It’s for the best. #HCMyth“
Music: Blip.FM . As you might have guessed reading my post about music and opinion leaders, I am enamored in the peer recommendation system of Blip. Or maybe I just enjoy playing DJ, even if it’s just to my Twitter followers.
Social Network: 3121. This is an idea who’s time has come; the social network for Capitol Hill staffers. While you need a House, Senate, or Committee email address to sign up (still in beta), it’s easy to see the promise of a networked directory (3121 is the extension of the Capitol switchboard) that connects people and ideas in such a focused audience. Congrats to the National Journal and New Media Strategies, and god luck on launch.
Theory: Balance of Power. In politics, this describes a group of strategically allied parties that come together to create parity in systematic power. In the world of hip-hop, there are Great Powers (Jay-Z, Kanye West, 50 cent) and middle powers (The Game, T-pain, everyone on Def Jux). This theory actually works well when it’s explained at length, so please
Video: Mister Rogers defending PBS to the US Senate. Your favorite neighbor was always there for the children, inspiring many generations of kids to know they are special and loved.
One time I was asked “what’s cool and new in your ‘hood?”, to which I replied:
Being polite, friendly, and helpful. Lately I’ve been helping my new neighbors move in, or even just talking with them about things I would ordinarily care less about. Since we’re together we might as well stay. Sometimes they don’t even steal my packages.
But as usual, the cool things in my ‘hood are IMAGINATION and MAKE BELEIVE. It helps out a lot when you live on the wrong side of the trolley tracks. Won’t you be my neighbor?
Please support your local public media.
Have You Heard? Music is getting Social
Posted by MattHurst in Influence, Social Media on July 29th, 2009
Think of the last album you bought, and compare it to the your first record. If you’re like me the first album you bought was a favorite from the radio (The Simpsons Sing The Blues), whereas the last album I bought (Bitte Orca by The Dirty Projectors) was a recommendation from a friend. It’s not just the music formats that have changed, but what we listen to and the experience with music that is transforming online.
In the past the music industry has relied on taste makers such as DJs, critics, and marketers to help introduce new music to would be record buyers (or downloaders). However over the last decade Opinion Leaders, those most influential individuals in your social network, have played the most important role; think of these people as your friend who is usually the first to introduce you to a band that you go on to love.
Online these opinion leaders have started popular music blogs, their influence measured by their expertise within genres and their appeal within their blogging audience. Offline these taste-makers usually have the largest music collection among your friends, and they make frequent recommendations that are just for you. Opinion leaders are the arbiters of new music in a marketplace no longer limited by the label-centered distribution, serving agenda setting roles with their personalized recommendations that mirrors the shift from mass-media driven popular music (radio, Rolling Stone, MTV) to online distribution meant for niche fans and private listening (iPods and YouTube).