Mike Spear

Director of Communications

Genome Alberta

Navigating the Social Media Minefield

• Former Canadian Broadcasting Corporation journalist with CBC President's Award and Peer Awards, Farm Writers' Award, and RTNDA awards for my programs or newsrooms.

• SysOp with CompuServe of Columbus, Ohio in the 90’s

• Published in peer-reviewed journals

• One of the founders of ScienceBorealis.ca

• Part of our National genetics, ethics, and society team

• Owned a Newton, Palm, Psion, iPAQ, and numerous chainsaws

• Genome Alberta is a not-for-profit research funding organization

• Funded by 2 levels of government, academic institutions and industry

• Our communications goals centre on:

• Visibility across stakeholders & demographics• Acceptance• Leverage• Position ourselves for later• Be seen as an information source

“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.” Sherlock Holmes

And that is all you need to know ……

http://explodingdog.com/title/iwasthinking.html

“I’m sorry it’s really not that hard. Common sense, creativity and an understanding of your business and your audience will get you up and running quickly. Insights are important but you don’t need a PhD.”

Tom Murphy, Director of Corporate Communications for Citizenship at Microsoft. http://tpemurphy.com/blog/?p=910

The web is less than 25 years old so is far from mature, or stable. Social Media even less so.

Only 1 in 3 people are using it globally, Sweden tops the world in the new Web Index http://thewebindex.org/data/index/ , U.S. next, the UK, and Canada in 4th.

In a recent BBC Radio interview Tim Berners-Lee wonder how much of the ‘Net is breadth and how much is depth

Byte Magazine, 1983

Social Networks are not new:

“Highway of thought” NY Times, Sept.14, 1852

“ A slender wire has become the highway of thought. Messages follow each other in quick succession. Joy spreads on the tracks of sorrow.The arrival of a ship, news of a revolution, or a battle, the price of pork, state of foreign and domestic markets, missives of love, the progress of courts, the success or discomfiture of disease, the result of elections, and an innumerable host of social, political, and commercial details … “

The article appeared 9 years after Morse’s first commercial telegraph line and it ended with, “A great Future awaits us”.

Technology has changed but human nature has not

“Technology and Ideology: The Case of the Telegraph",James Carey

When the first issue of Life appeared on Nov. 23, 1936, the 200,000 newsstand copies sold out within 24 hours, leaving disappointed customers and vendors clamoring for more. Defying expectations in the midst of the Depression, the magazine’s circulation rapidly soared to nearly two million readers.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/books/review/75-years-the-very-best-of-life-illustrated-224-pp-life-books-36-95-book-review.html?_r=1

Genomics: The Power and the Promise November 27th and 28th in Ottawa

At the end of day 1 Tweetreach stats:• 298 tweets• 134,927 impressions• 29,115 followers

Planning the social media for the event started well in advance but was separate from the media plan

“Social Media is not a fad – it is a fundamental shift in the way we communicate”

The technology is new with better speed, reach, and scope

The how, where, when, what, and to whom has not changed

Social media and online activities and tools are a reflection of us - not a 'new us'

Choosing the tools:

You Must Enter the Tiger's Den to Catch the Cubs

Madison Avenue has always known to enter the culture where you want to compete

I share my genome

“All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer. ”

- Robert Louis Stevenson

And I will of course add in the online and social media language, videos, and mp3s

So many companies are chasing the social media hype, thinking it is a great way to connect with customers when they haven't even gotten their telephone interactions with customers' right."

- Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO

 

"Better deployment of the wrong subject won't fix the problem..."

- Conrad Wolfram of Wolfram Alpha

Go back to the basics to find your audience

Social media services seem torn between protecting their users, empowering their users, selling out their users, and annoying everyone."

-Baratunde Thurston of The Onion, writing at Fast Company online

.

Knowledge is only one factor among many influences that are likely to guide how individuals reach judgements, with ideology, social identity and trust often having stronger impacts”

Bubela, Nisbet et al. (2009) Nature Biotech

Psychometrics Work Research Group at the Manchester Business School peer reviewed study of social media users

As always there are ways to interpret data but:

• The way we use SoMe changes as more people adopt it, so we'll see more changes.• Our emotional attachments to media tools changes as the

tools’ capabilities change. • 'Net statistics, more than many other media statistics are

about a moment in time.• Stats more important at the engagement level

Government & non-profits tend to polarize.

“A politician's job is never to inform you, it's to persuade you. Public debate is about mitigating risk.” Clay Johnson at MESH 2012 in Toronto. Author of the Information Diet

http://www.informationdiet.com/

“Moral incentives need to replace material incentives.”

Che Guevara

"Strengthening ( Internet) network culture construction and management," ..... "will help extend the battlefront of propaganda and ideological work. It is good for increasing the radiant power and infectiousness of socialist spiritual growth."

Hu Jintaopast President of China

We chose SM route because:

• Cheap• Easy• Intuitive• Replaces other tools• Risk free

PlanningSocial Media Research  8-25 hoursSocial Media Planning   10-20 hours BlogCreation                      10-15 hoursDevelopment                40 hoursMaintenance                5 hours/week LinkedIn Creation                       1 hourDevelopment                 5-15 hours         Maintenance                 3-10 hours/week Facebook (Fan or Group Page)Creation                       3-12 hoursDevelopment                10-50 hoursMaintenance                 7-15 hours/week

TwitterCreation                        1 hourDevelopment                 15-40 hoursMaintenance                 3-7 hours/week

YouTube (branded channel)Creation                        3 hoursDevelopment                  5-20 hoursMaintenance                  2-7 hours/week

One and a half staff needed to look after social media channels

from a blog post by James Bennett, Head of Content, Melcrum

Also see: Social Media Budget – How Much Should You Invest?

http://www.tribalcafe.co.uk/social-business/social-media-marketing-budget

/

• Integrate, Integrate, Integrate

• Reuse, Recycle, Reduce

Yoza.mobi – Now in limbo land but was great cell phone stories site

Ushahidi.com an open source project to facilitate information collection, mapping, and interpretation

iCOW http://www.icow.co.ke/ is an ag platform, developed for small scale farmers, accessible by mobile phone and web

TERA (Trilogy Emergency Response Application) allows two way communication via SMS text messaging

OCEARCH: Global Shark Tracker: http://sharks-ocearch.verite.com/ Crowdsource research and awareness

B4RN - A project to find new technology, business models, and financing to bring high speed internet to rural England. http://b4rn.org.uk/

Deep Thunder Project – an IBM community sourced hyper local weather forecasting initiative. Gaining momentum in Brazil leading up to Olympics

David & Goliath

mspear@genomealberta.ca

@mikesgene or @GenomeAlberta

http://genomicsnews.ca

http://www.genomealberta.ca/blogs

http://www.slideshare.net/mspear