When Will Twitter Be a Household Name?

By: Sam Sova

I was on vacation this last week in Arizona and obviously had to do some golfing. Living in Wisconsin this is obviously not something that you can do at this time – although I do recall being dragged out by my father to golf when I was younger and there was snow in the sand traps and the ponds were still frozen. The two days that I went golfing, I got paired up with a different two-some of players. All four guys were mid-thirties with occupations ranging from an EMT, to dentist, to education. Being a game that does involve conversation, we all discussed what we did for a living. I said social media. Every response that I got was – like facebook…right?

So these people kind of got the idea of what social media was….kinda. They knew it was about building community over the Web, two of them even told stories about friending ex-girlfriends on facebook to see if they were “hot” anymore. But when it came to testing their Twitter knowledge, they were clueless. On the 13th hole at Vistoso and 17th at El Conquistador I pulled out my iPhone and snapped a scenic photo. Absolutely gorgeous in Tucson. After snapping it I put out a tweet that attached the image. Of course, my fellow golf partners asked what I was doing. And I said, “tweeting the hole.”

You can image…. eyes in the back of their heads. I explained twitter was a tool where you post 140 characters or less answering the question “what are you doing?” but I use it more for information gathering from the top social media folks in the industry. They were intrigued. Only one out of four even heard the word “twitter” before, but didn’t obviously look much into it. So the question is, when does Twitter get the type of props that Facebook has?

Take a look at my post called “Are You Using Twitter?”. Is twitter right now just for the techies? I’ll tell you right now that only a handful (and I have small hands) of my gen-y friends are actually on Twitter. And only one or two actually use it on a regular basis. Will it only catch on if Facebook acquires Twitter? I look on facebook and see how much people love to fill in their status updates with crap. Useful information. So maybe I like Twitter how it is now. There is some crap out there, but it is mixed in with valuable information. People linking to content that can make me more knowledgable instead of wasting my time seeing the countless facebook status updates on Sunday afternoon of how everyone is hungover….although very funny if I have a clear head, which has been the case for a while now.

We’re Back…Take a Breath and Step Back

By Sam Sova

So it has been a while since any of us have posted anything. For those of you not in Milwaukee, when summer hits things get hectic. Nights are filled with sports, grilling, beer, brats, and of course wine (for those that go to Jazz in the Park). So for those of you that were/are following this blog, I will speak for everyone and say that we are sorry. 

So anyway, in the last month off of this blog I have been through some awesome experiences at the day job around Web 2.0 and social media. I have been building a social media strategy for the organization during the last year and am amazed of the number of people that just want to “dive in” to social media…not only in our organization but what others in the industry have done. It is absolutely insane that after giving presentations I will get a plethora of emails and calls that start with “we should do a blog on… or we should start a podcast on… or even better, lets start a social network like facebook. Clearly, just impulse behaviors (unfortanately how my buying behaviors are!). But the real question is, once you do that one blog post or podcast, what is next?

Here’s the deal. If you look at companies that have tried the Web 2.0 thing and have focused JUST on the tools, they have most likely failed. They were the ones that bought into the emails and calls described above. They were the “impulse buyers” of social media that did not take a step back and look at the big picture. They did one awesome video podcast and were left saying….”great, what’s next?”

As cool as all of this new stuff is like Twitter, Friendfeed, Digg, and the basics of blogs and podcast, you have to take a step back and look at the big picture. Is your culture even ready for any of this yet? Are they ready to have to figure out how to use RSS and download podcasts to their mobile? Or are they behind in the tech wave and have difficulty watching online video? These questions (and many more) are ones that need to be taken in order to have a shot of being successful, because in a large organization (Fortune 1000) sometimes you have one shot to do it right.