The Intersection of Online and Offline

I have had a bit of fun lately with Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson on the “For Immediate Release” podcast, leaving my best “bullshit bingo” comments (”…leveraging our synergies to create a new corporate paradigm..”), but I am afraid that I have to use a term that could fall into that list, describing how Twitter has not jumped into the mainstream:

Convergence.

A series of events over the last several weeks has convinced me that Twitter has gone from a shiny new toy to an overloaded fail whale to an integral part of how we exchange information on a global scale, one that is intertwined with others ways that we send and receive information.

Neville Hobson tweeted about this as well, showing a chart of his tweets and offering comparisons between his and Geoff Livingston’s stats (I’ll leave my own stats out as my New Year’s resolution is simply to get this blog’s Technorati ranking above my shoe size), but I have seen Twitter firmly etch its spot in how we communicate over the last week through convergence.

It’s a horrific example, but the tragedy that took place in Mumbai last week demonstrated how information can be gathered, analyzed, dismissed or accepted and then propagated to an audience craving information.  And by propagated, I mean either through people reading others’ tweets and commenting on them, or through the “old” media picking up tweets and news leads.

I took a look at Blog Pulse, and rather than searching for the word “Mumbai,” I decided to search for the hash tag “#mumbai”. For those of you who have not used this before, hash tags are a way to identify your topic matter in a way that is uniquely identifiable for all.

Here are the stats that I found on Blog Pulse.  Consider that this does not actually measure the tweets themselves, but how those in the blogosphere used the hash tag as a tie-in to Twitter:

I can’t do the math (sorry, Katie Payne, but I am not a math guy), but what we are seeing is the “convergence” (there’s that word again) between the twitterverse and the blogosphere. The spike in the hash tag “#mumbai” demonstrates a cross over from people writing about it in Twitter to people writing about it in blogs to people writing about it in Twitter - and also getting into and from the mainstream media.  As I wrote a few days ago, with such as large population, India as what are likely millions of expats who were desperate for information as the tragedy dragged on.

Finally, what convinced me that Twitter is here to stay is that we are now seeing CNN use it as part of their regular newscasts, including the Mumbai tragedy.  Rick Sanchez annoys the hell out of me, but you cannot argue that a mention on CNN is worth a whole lot of Tweets.  AND - they have more than 60,000 followers.

Two days after Indian authorities restored control in Mumbai, people are still talking and tweeting about it, as we see on the index page of Tweetscan (the larger the word/hashtag, the more mentions).

I’ll leave others to discuss geopolitics and what is likely to happen in India next, but I have not joined the ranks of the true believers that, due to its convergence with other forms of communications, Twitter is here to stay.

Mark

Once again, smart people like Todd Defren write smart blog posts.  I began this Sunday morning (like other propeller-heads out there) by perusing my Twitter feed and my favorite blogs, searching for some writing inspiration ok…ok..it was AFTER the sports section).  It did not take long.

In Todd’s post “Content Marketing: Think MULTI Media,” he lays out some thinking that I believe is at the (”INTERSECTION” - shameless blog self plug) of good social and multimedia thinking overlaid with the new marketing fundamentals that you have to deliver meaningful content to your target audiences in pieces that they can choose.

Summarizing what Todd’s sports-dad buddy said:

In other words, you may need to create a white paper and/or a podcast and/or a videoblog and/or a webcast of the same content because different types of prospects will have different engagement preferences. “

“Engagement preferences,” to me, means a couple of different things.  One of which is some people like to see video (if you are interested in seeing an excellent demo of the Google Android phone, check out what Neville Hobson did), and others like simply to receive the information in a language that they can understand:

It all starts with a “content asset audit.” With an average tenure of just under two years, most corporate marketing executives can’t even find most of the content on file at the corporation, much less map it to a strategy. Think, ‘random acts of content.’

“Once content assets are cataloged, marketers need to map assets into a sequential lead nurturing ‘curriculum,’ i.e., moving prospects through a series of content-focused engagements - each of which signify a higher degree of complexity/value and a closer proximity to sale.”

I read this as, it’s “figure out the information and format that people want, and give it to them in pieces that interest them.”

This is critically important.  Just this week in my day job, I spent quite a bit of time developing a new way of measuring our media coverage.  Thanks to Katie Payne’s excellent thinking, I am basing much more of my analyses on the fact that most people don’t read stuff anymore — they scan. That’s why a headline is more important than the first paragraph which is much more important than the 12th paragraph.

My take-aways?

1. Understand your audiences
2. Segment them
3. Develop multiple forms of content that are likely to appeal to them, based upon some research
4. Spoon feed them digestible forms of content
5. Rinse, lather, measure, repeat.

Another great post, Todd.

Mark

Courtesy of a Neville Hobson tweet, I may be having  a big, fat crow sandwich today about Cuil.  Turns out that their visits have dropped faster than John Edward’s denials of a love child:

Thanks for pointing this out, Neville.  I’ll be having that crow sandwich at some point today.

Mark