My Twitter 20 Interview on Conversation and Community

In case you missed it, I was a guest on Jay Baer's Twitter 20 interview on Twitter this week. Thank you for that, Jay. It was fun, especially since I had no idea what questions you were going to ask.

I met Jay at SxSWi when I had the opportunity to have face time with him and a group of smart professionals like Debbie Weil and John Havens of BlogTalk Radio.

We had a reunion recently at Marketing Profs B2B Forum in Boston. The Twitter appointment with 20 questions was a natural progression - although some call the medium a regression.

The ultimate presence tool, Twitter allows people to be "on air" without having to move away from the office and making a big production. Everyone can play and participate.

Some of the points that resonated - read: were retweeted - most with the audience from the dialogue were (emphasis mine):

• Companies should let go of assumptions when listening. There’s such a thing as thinking you’re too smart.

• Hire those who lean forward, who are curious and interested, who listen before they answer, who love learning.

• Brand is not the logo, it needs to permeate every aspect of business… and take into account the feedback it receives.

• Customer service is marketing. Your processes are marketing. So is your receptionist, your building, your people…

• How about a community facilitator, a content curator, and a team of conversationalists for product development/innovation?

• It’s a team effort to help the organization own its brand. Think about the words: organization, company->organism, together.

• conversation is the art of thinking together to find something new. It’s good to have new people/ideas in it + mix it up.

• Pick your tools based on your “flow” – where do you feel energy? What suits you? Leave room to explore new places every week.

• Explore, experiment, test, fail – within your abilities to stretch but not to the point of fatigue. Manage your attention.

• Good content writing has not changed – we’ve changed.

• I believe that it’s a team and not one person that defines a company and owns a brand, so here I’m part of a team.

During the interview I asked for feedback - how do you think blogging has changed? Is it now about lifestreams? Is it because there was no innovation in fragmentation that some are moving more towards aggregation and multichannel steaming of the same content? 

Steve Rubel says blogs are out of beta but bloggers should always be in beta. I agree with Louis Gray who responded to the post on FriendFeed that blogs still occupy an important role in the digital ecosystem - that of long form "how to" content and thought leadership.

What do you think? Are you finding it easier to tweet (now potentially trademarked - shall we have to resort to twit instead?) and comment on FriendFeed or Facebook? Or maybe just use a Posterous or a Tumblr account? Should we skip Web 2010 and move directly into Web 2012? What happened to Web 3.0? 

Enough to make your head spin, isn't it? What's your take on all of this? Too much?

Comments

[Alex Damien]

I love this post! All these points are so important and interesting. Thanks for it and I'll be sure to check out your interview.

[Carolyn Ann]

This is, perhaps (erm, "is") off topic... I'm beginning to wonder where the rules of Twittering etiquette are? First we have Republican Senators inanely Twittering while the President of the United States gives a speech, and now it seems to be perfectly acceptable to Twitter while listening to a talk, or a lecture.

Considering that we can only do one thing at a time, if we're Twittering, we can't be listening. (Or as the young man the other day proved: he couldn't drive and text at the same time. As he nearly put my motorcycle and me into the crash barrier.) What happened to listening to what is being said, and thinking about it?

I shudder to think about an inconsiderate twitterer and the theater. It would be enough to get the impolite miser tossed out by their ear!

What happened to showing consideration, and paying attention? Is it too much to ask that, during a talk we elect to attend, that we actually stop thinking about ourselves, and start thinking about what the person on stage is saying?

Sorry. End-of-rant-here. :-)

Carolyn Ann

[Mark McGuinness]

Of course it's easier to tweet, tumbl etc. but who said blogging was supposed to be easy? :-)

There's still a place for what Yeats called 'the fascination of what's difficult'.

Great interview.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Alex - thank you for stopping by. Hope you enjoyed the interview.

@Carolyn Ann - common sense is not that common it seems. People who would not otherwise send confidential information by email, all of a sudden think it's alright to tweet it. I admit to tweeting while at events. Usually to gather feedback from the community or crowdsource ideas... your more important point here is listening, thinking/processing, then talking/writing. That's what my blog is for, thinking together and I could not easily live blog for that reason. There have been people on stage without a point to make and plenty of bullet points to not make it with. But I digress. Thank you for bringing this to the fore. We've become a culture of sound bytes.

@Mark - thank you. Blogging is definitely not easy. I never went for the easy stuff, apparently :)

[Joe Mescher]

Web 3.0 ... Web 5.0

The debate over what to 'call' new web technology tools reminds me of an article on The Onion a few years back (this was when Gillette had JUST introduced the super-amazing three blade razor for men)...

So the Onion write up says, "Schick says Screw It, we're going with 5 Blades!"

About one year later there was a REAL 5 blade razor on the market.

I do have a point (I think...).

Your statement that customer service is marketing rings true to me. No matter how many tweets, blogs, or videos you produce, if I can't get help using your product when I need it = FAIL.

Think I'm out of line? Hell, Chris Brogan even slammed his beloved Apple when they couldn't/wouldn't help with a service issue.

With respect to Twitter vs Blog vs YouTube, use them all - or whatever works. When sharing a post or video, I like to Tweet some tasty morsels that lead back to my blog, where the meal resides.

Yikes, with the length of this comment, I'm in danger of turning it into a standalone post!

-Commando OUT-