Comments on: Guest Post – How Do You Use Social Media? – from Doniree Walker

By: curiousillusion

curiousillusion — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 07:49:54 +0000

Although… I do have high hopes for google buzz being the best big thing. But methinks, it won't be.

By: curiousillusion

curiousillusion — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 07:49:32 +0000

Okay here goes…
1. I use it personally only, definitely not professionally. Relationship-building, and maybe self-promotion for my photography. But not seriously.That doesn't make sense does it?
2. Ummmm. Nothing comes to the top of my head. That can't be good.
3. I would just say that twitter exploded, and become popular the last year. I mean, I know it's been around for a while but nearly a year ago to the date I re-joined twitter and it seems around that time, everyone joined too. And as a result, it's everywhere.
4. Um… I like it all. Twitter, facebook. Flickr counts too right?
5. I never know, I'm always late to the game. You tell ME what's the next big thing and then, when its popularity starts to fade, I'll end up joining.

By: ericamayer

ericamayer — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:28:41 +0000

1. I use social networking in two ways, personally. A.) to spread a message of awareness, love, conscious thought and B) To network w/other professionals in the broadcast/ad industries. I work for WCCO-TV, and I think they've been doing a better job than most as connecting w/viewers through social media-i will be a contributor for our new project “The Wire”-a new way to view news through social media. Rad.
2. Pepsi. I am mildly obsessed w/their social media campaign “The Pepsi Refresh Project.” -an awesome example of using social media to create buzz, and help others. Win.
3. Well, I didn't really become an active participant in social media until about a year ago (besides simple socializing on facebook), but…from what I can tell the longer social media is around, the shorter the attention span some people have. I think twitter will continue to grow, as people crave fast, instant information.
4. I'm a tweetaholic. <3
5. New big thing in social media? Not sure…I think you'll see more and more companies implementing internal social media. My husband works at Target, and says he uses their internal version of twitter a lot. Interesting, to say the least.

By: Gayle

Gayle — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:08:52 +0000

Woo, extra-long comments, here you come!
1. I actually try NOT to use social media professionally. Because I am a journalist, I don't want to give any one a chance to accuse me of bias. Maybe I worry too much about that, but having my professional likes and dislikes out there is not cool. Also, explaining that I am a FacebookFan of Coke and not Pepsi (not real examples) only because Pepsi doesn't even *have* a FanPage still means that someone is examining my FacebookFan-ness. This is probably going to have to be rethought in the near future, but it's working for now. The line between personal and professional has long been blurred but it's still hard to deal with it (for some of us).
2. Frankly, I think every newspaper in the world is sucking at using social media at the moment. It seems a lot of editors think opening up comments on a blog post counts as social media. Booo! When there is a big news event, reporters should be expected to Twitter. For main stream press, that means the Olympics should have a zillion Twitter feeds, one feed per sport per news outlet; Haiti should have (had) a Twitter feed. For trade press, that means Twittering the SodaPop Convention (also not a real example), the Pairs Air Show or CPAC (real examples). Reporters should be expected to *Twitter the Damn News* and *not their opinion*. Can you tell that I believe that social media can keep the news biz alive if the old fogies get on board? What if congressional reporters were Twittering hearings and markups? What if you could actually hear about it when someone added some crazy amendment to a bill? Awesome. Anyway.... Marketing + Social Media + Newspapers = Goodness. Moving on.
3. I am behind the curve, so I probably can't be helpful here. Maybe for me it's been FB Fandom even though I don't participate?
4. Facebook, probably. Does my RSS reader count?
5. Twittering people money instead of giving them cash or even PayPal-ing. See yesterday's Wired: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_future...
Have fun in Minnesota!