Erickson’s report and interview discussions provide insight for digital designers and developers like Manning, but also important ideas for those in online marketing and communications.  He likens digital designers to architects and urban planners who are creating public spaces to encourage people to interact, communicate, and live together.  He suggests that we look at online spaces in terms of the interaction they support and promote.

It’s a compelling analysis well worth the investment of time.

Post-graduation.

Our professors and advisors warned us to think ahead and be prepared for it, but there was no time to. There were too many thumbnails to sketch, too many emails to read, too many content dummies to print out and bind, too much sleep to catch up on. It almost didn’t matter to us, sleep-deprived and over-caffeinated 3^rd year art students, what was going to be going on in our lives two years from now in the thing called the “real world.” Some of us knew what we would like to be doing after college, but most of us had yet to figure out what we liked to draw best. Besides, two years away was still too far away. If college so far taught us anything, it was that about 43 minutes is enough for everything to change anyway.

But now it’s happened. Suddenly, my student ID doesn’t let me into my home the studio building anymore, I must pay the full price for student-discount art supplies, and the only new email in my inbox is the automated ad from GradPhotos hassling me to purchase the overexposed photo of me holding my BFA degree.

That’s it, then. I’ve been pushed out of the nest! No more advisors, dorms, studio-mates always willing to give my drawing a good critique, no more free printing, or free access to centuries-old typographic specimens, no more anything. (Starting to think that maybe that’s why it cost $45K a year…)

So. We’ve been trained in design, typography, drawing, various analog and digital tools, and yet…

…what do we really do now?

I’ve been fortunate. I went almost immediately from graduation gown to first day here at Manning, and thus I had (thankfully) little time to wallow before I got things to draw, printers to use, and the company of creative people restored into my life again. Many of my peers have just as quickly begun internships and joined up with other creative agencies, or are working smaller interim jobs until they find their next step.

But what Manning and just about every other creative organization has in common is that none ask their artists and designers to be assembly line workers. They hire the artist for their skills, indisputably, but very important down the road is the artist’s “touch” that they have cultivated themselves. (A “style” is not quite the right word — illustrators can utilize different styles, but their “touch” — something inherent and underlying to the way they make images — is only their own). More than it’s human, it is also something unique to every artist — and for illustrators, a crucial part of their voice. Inherent and unique though it may be, it’s not quite DNA-inherent. Rather, it is a result of the combination of existing work we have been exposed to, our interests, idiosyncrasies, drawing habits, all that good irreplicable stuff.

I think the single most important thing that a young illustrator can do for themselves right now is keep drawing, thinking, and making, whether for a job or not. Unlike many fields, for artists, resting on laurels is not allowed (not too much, at least). Once we stop being inventive with our tools and curious with our minds and stop pushing our own boundaries, the work we produce stagnates, and becomes not only uninteresting and uninspired to view, but also unfulfilling to create. (During my senior year one of my professors, out of determination to simply unhook me from working digitally, made me spend half-a-semester drawing exclusively with a scraggly 2-foot stick he picked up outside, dipped in ink. And I had to do it in front of people.)

Needless to say, we didn’t pick the easiest major. And now we’ve been orphaned from all the professors, scraggly sticks, and helping hands that have guided the way so far. How do we continue that growth that began when we first decided we wanted to study illustration?

A lot of that will come from the work we do, right on the job.

Here at Manning, I am working with Patrick and Namkyu on everything from storyboards to websites to iPad children’s books. Not everything I will get to make will be something I’ve done before, or something I even thought I liked making (kind of like in school, actually!). Much of it is even more concerned with design, than image-making. But that aspect of illustration as a professional practice — the rigor of working on deadline to specifications outside your own — not only shapes the illustrator’s growth, but serves to define the nature of this kind of image-making itself.

For example, say I liked only ponies and watercolors, and I was left to my own devices to make some pictures. Naturally, I might take weeks happily indulging in watercolor paintings of ponies. But, if the client needs a Norse warrior riding a giant hot dog into space and it has to be done by the end of the week — and let’s say I had to do something like that every week — I would start to work differently. I would find different solutions to drawing people, environments, and objects, mark-making and inventiveness that I didn’t consider when I had infinite time and ponies; and the unfamiliar subject matter would demand efficiency in research and execution that the ponies did not.

Brb, taking a break from writing this to draw a Norse warrior on a hot dog now.

But, it will also mean a lot of self-direction.

I’ve kept a number of “pet” illustration projects around for years now, mostly comics and fiction-illustration — anything to keep me drawing and developing my own interests even while school was going on, and I can’t overstress its value. In the larger picture, while “working on deadline” is an influential experience, it may be a while before a young illustrator is in that kind of environment. Or, perhaps, even once they are, the illustrator may find there is not enough opportunity to experiment freely or explore their interests for personal enrichment.

Personal projects allow for exactly that, and they don’t have to be much different from what we’re so used to from school. A visiting alumnus of our art program, for instance, told us how he simply began to draw based on a simple premise: animals in suits, one a day for 100 days or so. Apparently the result was a hit. (Not that I would have expected otherwise!)

A few years in art school gave us all a hint as to what kinds of things we are interested in drawing. One of my classmates has a penchant for the grotesque, silly, and odd; I have a special attachment to war stories and sequential storytelling; another loves everything fantasy; yet another discovered he has his best hand with on-location drawing. So on and so forth. Now it’s time to grab that and roll with it!

(Before it completely changes in a few years.)

It will mean being extremely proactive.

While the design student’s curriculum revolved around preparing the student to enter a creative agency environment, the illustration student, it seems, was being prepared for something entirely different: indefinite wambling around. “There’s no shame in knowing how to pour a good mocha,” one of my illustration professors told us with a smile.

So, that is, to start actually getting gigs, it means pretty much the freelancer drill. Prior to joining up with Manning, I come from humble freelancing roots, both in web design and illustration — but never did I hear “pound the pavement” repeated so many times in the professors’ instructions to us from here on out. Nobody was going to be standing around to help.

Call art directors to introduce yourself.

Enter every illustration contest you can.

What’s that, you lost the contest and all that money? Enter the next one.

Print up 600 self-advertising postcards every month and spam newspapers with them.

Your website won’t save you; make physical portfolios.

And fly them to New York.

Basically, everything that would give a shy person a heart attack.

But, more simply, this just means making some new friends, which might not be as hard as it seems. Nearly every city, wherever we all are scattered to, has some kind of art society, graphic novelists’ club, guild of people that like drawing dogs, and the like. Chicago, where I am, even has an alumni society for graduates of my college — plenty of places to make connections. (And Manning is the first of them, in fact.)

And it will mean looking to our heroes.

Some months before graduation, one of our professors assigned us this: figure out who your heroes are. Not like, “John Kennedy” or “my mom,” but people (dead or alive) whose work and voices we can look to for creative nourishment. Our professor called this our “tribe” — people who think, work, or aspire to the same goals as we in our careers, to whom we can look for inspiration and “guidance.” We are, presumably, on a similar path as them, which they have trodden, and we have not.

Finding them has been a slow process, at least for me. My former classmates and I have inklings of what our voice and work in the illustration world will be, but hardly a concrete idea. And how are we to search for heroes when we do not know the “search criteria,” if you will?

Certainly, I found a few completely randomly — stumbling upon the work of fellow artists from a Slavic background whose politics-heavy roots inspire their thinking, following links online to discover an artist who has explored a subject that interests me, revisiting graphic novels, so on and so forth. As we meet more people and discover we not only like drawing ponies, we also really like drawing submarines, that list will change and expand more.

Hmmm.

The web devvy half of me really itches to start working on a website that is kind of like Pandora or last.fm, but for illustrators — it helps you find your tribe. You could join, log in, list a few people whose work you already admire, characteristics of your own work, media you want to experiment with, or your larger goals. The website, in turn, would match you up with other people who also are obsessed with drawing Little Red Riding Hood steampunk remixes, help you reach out to them, and direct you to galleries of artists who were alive 70 years ago who pioneered the genre. It would be great!

I wanted to write this post to share my two cents on the road ahead of me and my fellow creative industry debutants, but also to encourage those who are a few steps ahead of us (whoever might be reading) to know you can reach out to us, too. Even those of us that are happily employed are still facing some of the same questions about their ultimate artistic self-actualization. And, truly, there is nothing more encouraging than a story of your own out-of-college life, the name of a particularly friendly newspaper art director, the address of a good graphics library, or just an email to say hello.

That said, I should probably get back to work. These ponies aren’t going to draw themselves.

The legal profession has been turned upside down by changes in technology, new competition, globalization and the recent recession.  Firms have been forced to rethink their business model, to reevaluate their practice areas, provide alternatives to hourly billing and implement new technology, all of which are radically changing the way law is practiced. But many firm websites don’t reflect these changes – and remain the same static law firm brochure websites of 10 years ago.

We’ve spent a great deal of time looking at these sites in conjunction with the work we do for our law-related clients and are truly surprised by what we see. While there’s some variation from site to site, we observed five troubling practices with these brochure style sites.

Poor Use of Imagery

We realize that it can be difficult to find the right photographs or graphics to visually represent what a firm does. But what do photographs of architectural elements have to do with practicing law? Lawyers represent people, not architectural elements of buildings. Rather than falling back on the visual cliché of stock building photos, why not spend some time thinking about the kind of images that would resonate with potential clients?

Designed for the firm, not the user

Most sites are structured like the law firm’s practice, rather than a user-centric approach based on their viewers’ information needs. Most sites rigidly follow the organizational structure of the practice – rather than the way clients are looking for content about legal services.  The sites feature generic copy about the firm’s practice areas that fails to distinguish the firm from its competitors who are saying the same thing. The first step in designing any site should be a thorough analysis of the user and why they would want to engage with that firm’s website. That information should guide any decisions that are made about structure and usability.

Not enough fresh, relevant content

Many law firms’ sites feel like a static, impenetrable wall where all you can learn about a given attorney is what school they went to and what areas of law they specialize in. Most fresh content is limited to news releases about new hires or client victories, and very rarely do you get to see the thinking and personalities that distinguish one firm from another.

SEO challenged

Most firm sites are poorly optimized, and if they have applied search engine optimization, it is for terms so generic that hopes of gaining much traffic are remote. SEO has its place, but only in conjunction with a thorough understanding of the target client’s needs. Firms need to make sure that there is content on the site that is relevant, engaging and informative to those individuals. If so, that content will attract the right users far more effectively than putting too many keywords in poorly conceived copy.

No social media strategy

Having a linkedin profile and blog is not a social media strategy. Unfortunately, many firms do not understand the importance of integrating a well-thought out social engagement strategy into their website or interactive marketing plan. The idea behind social media is that it is social. Firms need to be active participants in the conversation about what is happening in law and the legal profession. Initially it is a non-billable time commitment, but not having a social media strategy is closing the door on clients who value these tools in their own lives and businesses.

The First Step to a New Site: The Discovery Process

To give them credit, most established firms appreciate that the web is their most important tool for of marketing communication and outreach.  Now it’s time to change the status quo thinking of what that website should be.

It starts not with designing a new website, but by developing an online digital strategy that identifies target audiences, and determines the goals and objectives for the firm. That discovery process uncovers a number of important realizations that informs all online marketing and communications including the firm’s web presence.

It’s similar to the process that lawyers go through as they unravel the details of a complicated case. They need to understand the facts surrounding the case in order to develop a good strategy for their client and challenge any assumptions made about the case. It’s that same willingness to question everything and make sure there are no sacred cows that will determine if a firm gets the right online digital strategy or not.

It’s time for more firms to consider this re-examination process and bring their online engagement strategies into 2011.  It’s time for their web presence to be on the same par as their legal work.

We’ve just launched the site and so far we’ve been very pleased with the results of our little social media experiment. We’ve used tweeSP to find gifts ideas for friends and family, or just had fun seeing what presents are recommended for celebrity tweeters.

Many people question the value of Twitter, but here’s one example of how tweets can be used in an incredibly interesting and useful way. So take tweeSP for a spin and see if you get some interesting gift ideas for the last few people on your holiday shopping list.

PS – for those of you scratching your head over our name for this cool new toy, it’s a play on Twitter and ESP. Now aren’t we punny!

]]> http://www.manningproductions.com/blog/2010/12/big-things-come-in-little-tweets-manning%e2%80%99s-twitter-gift-idea-app-launches/feed/ 0 http://www.manningproductions.com/blog/2010/07/birth-of-a-meme-vuvuzelas-go-viral-everyone-wins/ http://www.manningproductions.com/blog/2010/07/birth-of-a-meme-vuvuzelas-go-viral-everyone-wins/#comments Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:15:03 +0000 Doug http://www.manningproductions.com/blog/?p=2027 For anyone following the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the vuvuzela is an impossible-to-ignore aspect of the tournament’s location. A traditional South African musical instrument, soccer fans have turned the now-plastic noise makers into the Jar-Jar Binks of the sporting world – loved by few, hated by most, ridiculed by all. The buzzing noise has gotten so bad that FIFA briefly considered a ban in response to players, commentators and broadcasters complaining about it’s impact on the game. Now, if they’d just stayed in the soccer stadiums where they belong, I’d have nothing to blog about. But the vuvuzela has become an internet sensation as well; that’s right: its trademark buzz has gone viral.

The first to take advantage of all the vuvuzela buzz was the British website Vuvuzelatime, which allows users to “Browse the web as if you were at the 2010 World Cup” by providing an overlay of a man blowing the hated instrument and, of course, blaring the equally hated buzz. To see it in action on the new Manning site, click here. Of course, others quickly jumped on the buzz bandwagon: There’s at least two Twitterers out there dedicated to making posts which imitate the horn’s sound, and a hash tag (#vuvuzela) to boot; Youtube has added an option to add the monotone hum to any video; and the techblog Mashable has even dedicated an article to their favorite Vuvuzela-themed tributes. This is, of course, ignoring Facebook groups, mobile apps and flash games which are too numerous to count.

Youtube's new Vuvuzela-izer. Also, a kitten in a hat.

All this attention means vuvuzela vendors are enjoying a huge windfall. One grocery store — in England no less! — has already sold over 40,000 at £2 a piece; their briskest sales measured one horn sold every two seconds so far. Vuvuzela producers are struggling to keep up with overwhelming demand, churning out an amazing 20,000 a day. These sorts of numbers show what happens when a product, idea or brand go viral – immediate, global exposure which translate into amazing opportunities for growth.

What is especially important to notice is the vital role the internet, and it’s social media features, have played in building up the vuvuzela hype. Emerging communication tools (Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Mobile web and apps) have been particularly well leveraged to spread vuvuzela fever and build it into something more than just a traditional African horn. It has become THE symbol of the World Cup. This is every brand builder’s dream and shows, once and for all, that if we want to grow and communicate online, it is no longer possible to ignore these marketing tools. We have to develop an overall online strategy that takes these traffic sources into account or risk losing out on being the next Big Thing.

This is not the University of Arizona Mascot. It's just a Devil. And the Facebook logo. Make of it what you will...

Facebook is trying to take over the world/the internet/your life! Or at least, that’s the impression someone might get by perusing blogs, news aggregators and general web industry water cooler discussions.  With the implementation of their “Instant Personalization” feature, Facebook basically drew back the curtain on the amount of personal data they’re willing to share with other sites. Couple this with the brouhaha over their almost constant mis-steps and backtracking with regards to their privacy policies and it’s almost like Facebook can do no right.

On one hand, I understand their goals—Facebook is a free site that is sitting on an internet gold mine. All of the data that users blithely enter leave marketing and analytic folk drooling and is a great way to monetize an otherwise money-bleeding site (Ads can only do so much, after all). Additionally, the Instant Personalization feature seems like a well intentioned idea—enter your data once, in Facebook, and then let it do the heavy lifting to help some of our favorite sites (ie: Pandora and Yelp) provide us with a better user experience.

But while their goals maybe noble—or at least, not evil—most web denizens seem to feel like they’ve gone too far. In the past week, blogs have exploded with anti-Facebook sentiments. Some bemoan the ever increasing loss of privacy (this post contains an interesting infographic on the shift and this one discusses how hard it is to actually keep your profile private) while others discuss Facebook’s assertion that the age of privacy is over.  Facebook says this commotion is all a product of journalists stoking a non-existent fire, but a growing trend on Google shows people asking how to delete their Facebook account and protests have sprung up urging users unfamiliar with the issues at hand to kill their Facebook accounts.

Regardless if we’re moving towards a more open society or if Facebook is overstepping their corporate bounds, the discussions engendered about the role of social media is an interesting one. We here at Manning promote the use of Facebook for our clients as a tool to open untapped lanes of communication with their clients. We also love it as a means to promote events and keep people up to date with what is going on with the company.  However, in light of Facebook’s recent actions – including censoring inter-profile private messages—the onus is on us to be vigilant and make sure that the trade offs we’re encouraging our clients to make are worth the benefits offered from a Facebook profile. Since we here at Manning take your privacy seriously, you can be sure that we will be monitoring this closely for a while to come.

KS: Well, I graduated from DePauw University with degrees in Philosophy and Environmental Geoscience and minors in Spanish and Chemistry. While there I was lucky enough to travel the world and work with a lot of great organizations helping others. After graduation, I took the LSAT while working in Washington D.C. and then got out to San Diego, where I surfed all day and dreamed up a business where I sold childrens clothing in order to fund the dozens of good causes with which I’d worked in Haiti and Central America.

Kyle Smitley, founder/owner of barley&birch image via Inc.Magazine

In November, I was named one of Inc. Magazines Top 30 Under 30, and by our first anniversary, we were selling in 30 retail stores, moving into larger office space, and revamping the website we’d quickly outgrown. We have funded 3 schools and a clinic in Haiti and El Salvador. We hope to see upwards of $1.5million in sales for 2010. We will be announcing a plethora of great partnerships and undertakings.

PM: So I knew bits and pieces of the story, but hearing it in full for the first time, it sounds like it’s been a fun ride. I think one of the most interesting parts of what you’re doing is the way you are defining success at b&b. All companies are concerned with profits, but for you guys, money is not an end in itself, but rather a means toward your bigger goal. Our company has done a little of this… And I’m aware of a few other companies using this model- perhaps most notably, Patagonia. Do you find that there are particular benefits that stem from earmarking your earnings in this way?

KS: I think the benefits really depend on the type of person. I have a hard time being super money-focused, so this sort of earmarking helps me. Without it, I’d really dislike working all the time to get more people interested in organic clothing when many of our customers are hurting financially (yet trying so hard to be environmentally responsible.) But with the social (and of course environmental) good we are doing, I don’t even hesitate to sell, sell, sell. I know that if I do everything I can to get this $7k account, I will be able to call the school we fund in Haiti and tell them to add on to the building for their teachers (who live hours away and are forced to stay on site when rains wash out the roads). That sort of motivation is wonderful and a huge benefit.

Speaking from a business-only point of view, it helps give the product higher value for consumers. Our extremely high standards and aggressive mission also helps us stand out against the the snoozy, pastel-appliqued baby clothing that is currently flooding the market and is doing nothing with their profits beyond fattening the owner’s wallet.

“Without Twitter we would not be in business. Period.”

PM: I agree with your sentiment that if you can’t put in the hours on something you’re passionate about, then you need to re-evaluate some things. So let’s transition to the thing I really love about what you’re doing: embracing social media. A big part of your success has been your ability to build your brand online. I follow you on Twitter and you aren’t just writing your company’s posts… You ARE b&b. You connect with your customers on a personal level daily. If it weren’t for the explosion in social media, does b&b exist today? Would you be doing 1.5 mil in sales in your second year?

KS: I would honestly say no. Without Twitter we would not be in business. Period. I should explain though: On Twitter we’ve connected with people– people who like us and what we are doing. And these people see the tweets from me on my good days (building a community center in El Salvador and getting a big order) and on my bad days (having a fire nearby trigger our sprinkler system destroying inventory, me pulling countless all-nighters and getting bad grades because of it.) People feel our triumphs and progress. Twitter enhances our transparency. No one wonders if there is a heavily-funded corporate parent to barley&birch. We appreciate the support of every customer and let them know. We appreciate the support of every mom blogger and let them know. (Mom bloggers love us and we love them!) We keep spreading the love around and it’s like… the compost to our bamboo-like business.

PM: That’s about what I figured. It’s incredible to me that a law student can use these tools to supercharge a brand essentially in her free time. (and I refer to you as a ‘brand’ as positively as possible) I see how your customers react to you, and it’s clear you’ve connected with them. Any tips for people out there who think social media is a fad…or a just a way for preteens to discuss Justin Bieber? (It is only fair to mention, however, that it serves that purpose excellently as well.)

KS: I’d say, “UR DOIN IT WRONG.” or something like that. The best advice I received about Twitter was in chatting with @cheeky_geeky in D.C. (He’s super smart.) He told me that the best users of Twitter understand that it’s a conversation. So you shouldn’t just talk at people, you should talk with them. Engage with your audience. And that is the difference. I know I have an audience when we do cool things because I let them know that I enjoy tweeting with them (and I do!) so in a year of Tweeting about a kids clothing line (and not doing anything to get followers, not having the capability *yet* to send people there from our website) we have 3,000 followers! And love each one of them.

One of the designs from barley&birch

PM: I think there are a lot of people out there who are skeptical about whether this ‘overnight sensation’ is something that has real lasting value. And on top of that, there is definitely a generational factor at play in terms of really embracing this change. It’s a little bit like the oft-lampooned VCR clock…people are intimidated by what they perceive as scary technology…so for example: there was never a time when you visited your grandparents’ house and the VCR did not have a blinking 12:00 on the display.

Obviously, you did not major in Tweeting at DePauw or buy Blogger instructional videos off the TV at 4am. What do you think allowed you to adapt to this medium so quickly? And what lessons have you learned along the way?

KS: I think I adapted quickly once I understood what it could mean for us. It became, for me, a new way to tell our story and a way to meet new people. So I just figured it out. On a basic level, that is. Then, as I got more comfortable and saw that there could be an increased functionality in another social media vehicle, I would add that. So it was a natural flow. And along the way, the more people that found out about us and saw what we were doing– the quicker we grew.

I also forgot to mention that blogging/Twitter/Facebook/etc. should all be considered free advertising to anyone starting a business with no money. It’s an easy way to get the word out about what you are doing without having to drop a couple grand on a magazine ad that you will get zero return on. We have yet to spend a single advertising dollar, yet our web hits basically double each month. Social media!

PM: So you mentioned that you are actively working on the next evolution of the b&b web presence. How do you plan to build on your social media success going forward? Anything you can share about your new site and how you plan to use the web in the future?

KS: We are incorporating the blog into the site, so our customers can see exactly what we are doing at any given moment. We plan to dedicate a large part of our homepage to a news/updates area that will change weekly as new things happen with the business. We’re also going to try to feature new content monthly that has to do with our updates, inspirations, etc. Its just about telling more and more of our story to more and more people.

One of my favorite parts of the new website is that we are bringing together a bunch of our favorite bloggers to write for the family/community portion of our blog. They’ll be covering a wide range of topics–everything from quick snacks to babywearing to punishment. It will serve as a huge resource, and hopefully drive traffic from their blogs. And we think it’s a valuable tool for people interested in that kind of content.

PM: The guest blogging idea is an interesting one. You’re trading on the popularity of people who are your peers, but not necessarily competitors… and both parties get a chance to expand their audience. It seems like lately there has been a shift away from companies using social media like blogs and Twitter to just scream at their customers, “ME ME ME!”, and more toward providing content of genuine value. Scholastic is a great example of this with their This Week In Education blog. I think there’s the potential for almost an osmosis effect to occur– where your customers appreciate you providing information and insights relevant to their entire experience (in this case, parenting), and reward you by purchasing your product.

You’ve mentioned a few times that b&b stands for more than just clothes. For example: your work in Haiti and your commitment to environmentally responsible products. Is this guest blogging kind of an extension of that mentality? That if you’re going to sell to parents, you feel obligated to be a genuine member of their community?

KS: Exactly! Our whole position is that essentially business doesn’t always have to be (and I believe that it shouldn’t be) only about making money from people. I really believe you can simultaneously be a responsible member of the marketplace, world and community to which you sell. The coolest part is that doing it that way, merging the responsibility with being a merchant, really helps both to grow. We reinvest our money into the community that then helps us drive traffic and increase sales.

It’s another way of reiterating that we are not just after their money, we are interested in improving the world.

PM: Well Kyle, this has been a lot of fun. I wish you continued success with b&b and we’ll be following you guys closely! Thanks again for giving me some of your (severely limited) time.

KS: You’re welcome! And maybe next time I’ll turn the questions toward you!

You can learn more about Kyle and barley&birch at her website or by following her on Twitter.

As someone who works in the web world, Twitter fits nicely in my tool kit. After all, it is folks like us that created the service that is currently winning the Webby People’s Voice battle for the entire internet. Twitter is a representation of what the web has become: real-time, democratic publishing platform and the finger on the pulse for the planet. I use Twitter in many ways, but one of my favorites is as an aggregator for the cutting edge in web design and development. Follow my workflow outline to see how I have put Twitter to work for me.

Step 1: Someone Knowledgeable Posts Something Interesting

At its core, Twitter is a publishing platform. The idea behind the service was as a mass text-messaging status update system. So yes, networking has always been integral to the service, but the network isn’t very valuable without the communication. Twitter allows an industry leader, like Smashing Magazine, to publicize their own content (new articles), share cool things they stumble across, and take the temperature of the industry via polling. There is no lack of publishing platforms out there,  but Twitter allows shorter bursts of conversations or valuable content to be pushed to the entire Twitter universe (75 million users, as of January.)

Step 2: The Network Feeds Me the Content

As a life-long nerd, face-to-face communications have never been a strong suit. However, I don’t find myself any better adapted to networking with lost chums via Facebook. However, the ability to locate and follow interesting thought leaders appeals to me greatly. Twitter’s built-in search, suggestion tools and @replying has opened a new world for me by introducing me to brilliant minds in our field with very little effort on my part. In fact, @replies and retweets quickly expand my own network by shedding light on the networks of the influencers. If some random chap I have never heard of can enlighten @smashingmag, then perhaps I should at check out their feed. At the moment just finding interesting publishers who can enlighten me and push me in my career is as much networking as I need. Perhaps one day I will be a Twitter influencer, but that is the subject of another post.

Step 3: Twitter Acts as Niche Content Lens

Recently, Twitter unveiled the Lists function, which allows you to group other twitter accounts anyway you would like. I have setup different buckets for my social contacts, science news (NERD!) and industry leaders. Given five minutes between meetings or during my commute, I might scan my work resources list to see any 140-character chunks jump out at me. Of course, this one lists gets on the order of 100 tweets a on a Monday; an average Friday is probably closer to 300. This volume is impossible to keep up with, but psychologically I have been able to let go of this. I think the ethereal nature of Twitter allows this while my brain nearly explodes every time I open my RSS reader.

This concentrated list of content that only pertains to my interest in professional development allows me to quickly stay on top of the state of the art, while allowing me to continue to use Twitter in a more traditional fashion as well.

Step 4: I Bookmark the Shiny, Process and Save

So if I only allow myself 30 minutes or so a day to scan Twitter, how can it represent a valuable resource? Luckily another new Twitter feature has swooped in to save me. The Favorite feature, nearly identical to Gmail’s star system, allows me to take the naturally ethereal content of Twitter and save it for later review. Commonly I will scan my work resource list on the morning commute and in tiny breaks throughout the day. Given bigger windows of time, the afternoon commute and my last logon of the day, I review my favorite tweets from the day to see if the language that caught my eye has any real value to me. If the body or link contained do in fact seem valuable, I will keep the favorite label applied. If the tweet linked elsewhere to an in-depth article that can’t be fully processed during the review period, I capture the link using a ‘Read and Review’ list in my Google Tasks system. I review this list periodically during dedicated times of research. If the tweet or link contained have no value, I will remove the favorite label to remove the noise from my favorite list signal.

The Favorite feature allows me to hold on to interesting tidbits even if I can’t process them immediately and keep a running list of the information that has the most value for me.

Step 5: I Share with the World

If a particular tweet has lots of value, I will often retweet it in order to spread the word or thank the source. This is most likely when a tweet offers breakthrough information that relates to a project that I am currently working on.

Hypothetical Step 6: Harness the API

I am not yet taking advantage of the Twitter API, but I certainly could harness this tool to do really interesting and novel things with my work and favorite lists.  For example, I could create widgets for my own sites that share the valuable content that I have stumbled across. Or, I could create custom applications that were focused on making the above outlined process more efficient. Additionally, as the MIT Technological Review noted, researchers are exploring ways to capture, filter and analyze the “torrent of information”.

Not Just for Justin Beibers Any More

To be honest with you, I still don’t know what a Justin Beiber is, so I must not be a l33t tw33ter yet, but I have found Twitter to be valuable resource for me as I grow in my job. Sure I post original content too, but right now it is the resource nature of Twitter that I am getting the most return on.

Mitch briefly touched on some of this in his most recent post and Mashable’s Real Results series just posted a great article on this a few days ago. The Mashable article does a particularly great job at  highlighting some key concepts that I feel are often lost or overlooked when companies enter the social media fray. While Mashable focuses on how small businesses in particular are leveraging their social media presence, I think their points translate well to businesses of any size. While the entire article itself is worth a read, here are three points I’d particularly like to highlight:

Social Media is a Conversation, Not a Sales Pitch

The great thing about social media is that it gives companies a means to have intense, personal connections with their clients; in fact this is actually why most people are attracted to social media! Problems arise and companies take flak when we arrive at their sites expecting a conversation and instead get hit with the internet equivalent of a billboard.

Think of it this way: everyone knows and dislikes the self-centered jerk who only talks about what they’re doing, how their life is going, etc. – basically selling how awesome they are 24/7. Don’t be this jerk. I know the reason businesses invest in social media is to improve their bottom line, but patience is a virtue! Facilitate open dialogue with your clients and they’ll do your advertising for you when they rave about you to their friends, family and Twitter followers.

Just Because You Build it, Doesn’t Mean They’ll Come

I’ve often encountered the opinion that because social media is “user driven,” it practically runs itself. This could not be any further from the truth. Many a corporate blog has died a slow and painful death because there wasn’t a push to constantly update with fresh content. Many a “official” twitter feed has laid dormant, with nary a retweet, because of dry content.  It’s not enough to tell your current clients you have a blog, you have to give them a reason to visit. Whether that means soliciting feedback from clients regarding a new product, or asking users to describe their favorite part of your service, the onus is on you to build a community that users are happy to come back to again and again.

The Mashable article has a great story about a restaurant that tweets regulars to make sure that they’re enjoying their visits and to solicit feedback. This is a wonderful example of a company actively nourishing their online community and giving their users a reason to engage with their social media applications.

Social Media is a Double-Edged Sword, Just Like Everything Else

When people talk about the negative aspects of social media, the uncontrollable nature of user created content invariably comes into play. This is especially true for online review sites like Yelp, as well as more company-owned features, like enabling comments on the company blog. While there is potential to provide a platform for negative reviews and inappropriate discussions, it also sets the stage for you to distinguish your company for grace under fire. I know that some of my strongest loyalties lie with companies who acknowledge their mistakes and do the right thing.

For example, since moving to Chicago I’ve been in an uphill slog with UPS in an attempt to get my packages. When talking to them on the phone didn’t seem to be working, I took to Twitter to vent my frustration and my friends were soon retweeting my service woes. In a matter of hours, I was put in contact with UPS customer service people who are actively working to get my situation resolved and my friends are now tweeting about the positive experience I’m getting. Now, some might say that it’s bad for UPS to have my disgruntled tweets so obviously associated with their service and brand but what I think is key here is that people who are watching my little melodrama on Twitter are actually getting to see the entire story play out, from complaint to resolution. This is actually taking a negative event – me complaining – and turning it to a positive – providing them the opportunity to highlight their customer service and willingness to go the extra mile to satisfy a customer.

As a small business owner points out in the Mashable article, the benefits of positive comments and reviews far outweigh the negative opinions.

Hopefully this helps clear up some of the clouds surrounding social media and how it might benefit your company and your bottom line.

Now, it may just be because I’m an English major and thus love the evolution of the English language, but to me one of the more interesting results of this attempt to leverage the social media masses is the appearance of the social media lexicon in mainstream advertisements. The earliest example I can think of regarding this meeting of words involves the 2007 AT&T ad for text plans:

While I acknowledge that the terms used in this ad are also utilized in text messaging, their origins are firmly rooted in the world wide web – specifically the chat features and forum boards which were the original social media locations. It’s should also be noted that at this time the marketing team still felt that now-common terms like “IDK,” and “BFF’ required the subtle explanation that their captioning provides.

What’s interesting about this ad is the way AT&T’s marketing team almost forecasts the future by showing a range of people using these new terms. The youngsters are well versed, as is to be expected, but Mom has no problem understanding their garbled syntax and even Grandma has bought into these terms. Flash forward a mere two years and similar expressions are appearing everywhere, including the tweets coming out of Capital Hill!

To really see the extent to which social media’s terminology has pervaded the mainstream, I present a recent ad for a new Samsung Camera:

Some key “A-ha!” moments in this ad for me were:

1. The lack of explanation regarding what “The Angles” might be (If you don’t know, check out Know Your Meme’s explanation).

2.  The emphasis on the new camera as packed with features that make it ideal for use on the web. This is subtly done throughout the ad, the best example being the shot of “Frankenstein” in which the useful nature of the small LCD screen on the face of the camera is plainly displayed. Their tagline of “Own the Angles” also falls into this category.

3. The screenshots of well known social media sites using great pictures supposedly uploaded from the product. It’s assumed viewers will recognize the layouts of sites like Facebook and  Myspace.

In a nutshell, the Samsung ad represents the complete immersion of social media in our daily lives. It assumes intimate knowledge of the appearance and use of social media sites as well as with it’s memes and terms. So if you’re one of those hold-outs who’s snug in the knowledge that social media will soon go the way of the Dodo, it’s time to tune in and sign up — it’s here to stay.