• by James , September 22, 2010

You’ll recall my last post taking on a bitter tone as I discussed Twitter. I didn’t get it. “Status updates?…that’s it?” I thought, as I accused Twitter of existing for those who are too self-absorbed/socially inept to express their thoughts to real people. Boy, was I wrong. (my apologies to the self-absorbed/socially inept folks out there) Biz Stone and David Letterman were on campus last Friday evening for an open conversation about Twitter. I walked away with a few things:

Soap Box Moment #793
Having taught the basic speech course on campus, as I’ve already mentioned, I must first say that Biz Stone is a great presenter. I’d say it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to make simple slide presentations appeal to younger audiences. Biz made it work. He put up a text-less slide containing a picture with no movement, no hyperlinks, etc--just a seemingly random image. Then he began telling a story. Still, the audience was thinking, “explain the picture.” Finally, after hearing several minutes worth of a story, he clicked his remote and a blue strip appeared on the slide with black text over it. The text was the moral of the story and tied everything together. The image made sense! It was great. In the course of a 15-minute presentation, the audience had 6 or more “ah ha!” moments. That’s the way to do it. That’s how you hold an audience. Nice job, Biz. You get an A.

Now, about Twitter.

Have I mentioned how wrong I was? As it turns out, social media isn’t always about posting original material. It’s more about spreading information (e.g. NPR news updates, traffic reports on the way home). I learned that I can be a good “Twit” (is that right?) even if I don’t Tweet. We get so caught up in this notion that we must produce content that we forget we can just be consumers. It’s okay to only use Twitter to “re-Tweet” information. Or we can use it as a tool that collects stories from a broad range of sources so that we can read them in one place. It’s like…I don’t have to submit to the newspaper to enjoy reading it. Make sense? Maybe you already held that view about social media. If so…good for you. If not, I hope you’re inspired to find new ways to use Twitter. I am.

I’m the executive producer of a college-wide multimedia project and I’m already planning to use Twitter to advertise our monthly online publication. That’s the other side of it—the posting side—but it’s not random updates about what I’m doing throughout the day. Like many companies, we’ll get to use Twitter to tell our followers about updates to the site. Our followers can then tell their friends and so on, so forth. How great is this: free advertising to (potentially) 5 million people. And all I have to do is Tweet. To any businessperson who claims he/she doesn’t need social media like this, I say, “Get your act together. This is the simplest, most effective way to put your name out there. And it doesn’t cost you a dime. It’s worth the 3 minutes it takes to figure the site out.”

Am I reformed? Yes. I’m cleansed of my doubts…and Tweeting about it. Join the conversation!